Just reflecting on my youth, and U.S. military involvement overseas.

[Butterbean]

I will be very honest and say I haven't read much about Syria, and a huge part of that is because I made the mistake of clicking on one article and was immediately hit in the face with pictures of dead children. I recoil from that instantly and fear of seeing those pictures again has kept me from clicking on any further articles. Just my upfront disclaimer, as I'm really not trying to debate Syria here.

Anyway, I remember the very night it was announced Desert Storm would go forward, and I remember how absolutely terrified I felt. I was 17. Being a gen xer born in 1973, I grew up in a world that was framed from the perspective of looking at war in a past tense or historical perspective. The prospect of it being something present tense was unfathomable to me as a teenager. I naively thought that Vietnam would be the last war our country would go into (yes, yes, I know...I was a doe eyed 17 year old girl, cut me some slack).

As I look back now, now that I'm the ripe old age of 40, it feels like our military has been involved in something ever since then. Like we haven't stopped fighting since then. Perhaps that's just my perspective, I don't know. I have grown weary of seeing men and women in desert themed combat fatigues. It just feels like the times of peace have been so small and brief compared to the times at war. That, to me, is not a good thing. I looked up the wikipedia page, just to see when the U.S. has actually been in combat to compare it to my perspective:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations#1990.E2.80.931999

I find I am torn here. Children are dying, and if it were my children who had died, I would be screaming for justice and for somebody to do something and help us, not to stand idly by. On the other hand, we have had blood on our hands as a country for so, so long....and I don't even know if it's our place to intervene, or if it will be more hurtful than helpful.

I don't even know what the point is here, other than it just feels like we've been at war for so, so long, and I'm wondering if it feels that way to anyone else here or if my perspective is just off.

[Downwinder]

1. Anything to distract us from the tax man.

[Butterbean]

2. You mean military involvement to distract from government follies?

I just finished a really good book, The Forever War, and it is specifically about that. Very powerful read, very sad.

[Downwinder]

3. Does not have to be military.

Can be a side show like Lewinski.

But that is what I meant.

[Butterbean]

4. Ah, I see, yes. n/t

[truedelphi]

5. Every war I can remember has always required the USA to be this

"Humanitarian" giant. We entered the war against the people of Vietnam in part on account of the many Buddhist priests who engulfed themselves as human torches.

We entered the first war against Iraq, the one that started back when you were 17, on account of the lady who came to the US Congress and testified about how Iraqi soldiers had tossed Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators to die!

And of course, the Buddhist monks weren't even asking us for an entrance into a war. They were undertaking a desperate measure trying to get Ho Chi Minh and the government if South Vietnam to treat the monks with respect.

And the story about the Kuwaiti babies was a total CIA fabrication.

But think of this - however many babies that were killed in this one incident - that number of deaths will only be multiplied by a factor of two thousand by the time this new war against Syria is over. Our "humanitarian" efforts in Vietnam took Six Million Lives - that is the number of humans killed, wounded or made homeless. Plus that war took the lives of over 50,000 of our service people.

Decades later and people are still dying there from the cancerous effect of the Agent Orange we sprayed, as well as the many mines left all over the countryside. Same with Iraq - and although no Agent Orange was used, the depleted uranium that was used is causing serious health problems for everyone there, and for the rest of the people of the earth, who happen to share an atmosphere with Iraq.

[Butterbean]

6. I didn't know about any of that stuff with the monks or babies.

I *just* learned about the Mai Lai massacre like, 5 months ago. My knowledge base has always been so lopsided towards biology and the life sciences and stuff like that, and I have always hated history and politics, so I never really learned a whole lot until now. Reading about Mai Lai was just.......holy crap.

[truedelphi]

7. Here is a very decent site that honor the photographer who brought the

public here in the USA the iconic photos of the burning monk.

It's not his fault if the photo was used as a pretext to get our sympathies riled up against the mean and awful Communists over in Vietnam (Not that many of the communists there were all tht pleasant, though)

If you read the text, you get the idea that the monk burned himself on account of persecution by the South Vietnamese government - which ultimately became our ally. Most Americans including myself (I was about nine at the time) blamed the Commies for this happening!

[JoeyT]

8. I'm a few years younger than you,

and it certainly does feel like we've either been at war or winding up for a war my entire life. I was 12 when we started Desert Storm, and I don't really remember not being in a war, or at least a war that we weren't calling a war, ever since.

At some point we have to say "Enough is enough". We can't perpetually be at war.

[Butterbean]

9. Yes, this exactly:

"I don't really remember not being in a war, or at least a war that we weren't calling a war, ever since. " That's exactly how I feel, it seems like we've been perpetually fighting somebody somewhere.