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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTomas Young has died
http://billmoyers.com/2014/11/10/remembering-tomas-young-veterans-day/
This Veterans Day, Remembering Tomas Young
November 10, 2014
by Karin Kamp
Weve just heard that Iraq war veteran Tomas Young, one of the first vets to publicly oppose the war, has died at the age of 34.
Young was featured in Body of War, a documentary by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro that was featured on Bill Moyers Journal in March 2008. The film focused on Tomas, who was shot and paralyzed just days after beginning his tour of duty in Iraq.
Donahue, who visited Young last month at his home in Seattle, said the world had lost a bright light and a talented young man who was determined to speak out against this massive blunder that was the Iraq war.
He was a political animal and he had a political statement that he wanted to make, Donahue told BillMoyers.com. Tomas wanted people to know that this is the drama being played out in houses across the country occupied by thousands of young men and women who fought in the war, he said, referring to injuries that left Young in need of round-the-clock care.
more...
http://billmoyers.com/2014/11/10/remembering-tomas-young-veterans-day/
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http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/11/10/remembering_tomas_young_1979_2014_iraq
Remembering Tomas Young (1979-2014): Iraq War Veteran Turned Antiwar Activist
shenmue
(38,506 posts)m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)RIP Tomas Young.
proverbialwisdom
(4,959 posts)Eddie Vedder sings 'No More'
Uploaded on Sep 12, 2007
At the Toronto Int'l Film Festival on Sept 11, 2007, following the screening of 'Body of War'
Eddie Vedder - No More (Original)
Uploaded on Jan 3, 2012
http://www.bodyofwar.com
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26408-body-of-war
TeeYiYi
(8,028 posts)Thank you for posting Body of War. I just watched it for the first time.
TYY
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Joining the millions who followed before him.
malaise
(268,998 posts)the interests of the 1% and their pawns.
sheshe2
(83,770 posts)for all our Tomas Youngs.
Tomas Young at Ground Zero in 2008 (Photo: BodyofWar.com)
http://billmoyers.com/2014/11/10/remembering-tomas-young-veterans-day/
Thanks for your Op bsis.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)burrowowl
(17,641 posts)So sad, so very sad.
adirondacker
(2,921 posts)blackspade
(10,056 posts)All the best to his family and friends.
brer cat
(24,565 posts)May he rest in peace.
femmocrat
(28,394 posts)Hope he is at peace now.
Loki
(3,825 posts)May your journey be easy.
cry baby
(6,682 posts)Beowulf42
(204 posts)Just a note to thank George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the unnecessary deaths of so many young Americans.
ImaPolitico
(150 posts)Amen to that.
mountain grammy
(26,621 posts)thank you for your service to all Americans in speaking out against the unspeakable.
WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)God fucking damn it
WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)I believe in the idea that is America, but I also believe in Tomas Young, who was re-introduced to me by way of a Chris Hedges article that should be mandatory reading for every sentient American on the continent. Young was shot through the spine and permanently paralyzed during his deployment to Iraq, and later went on to be one of the first veterans to actively and publicly denounce the war...and now? Now, after a number of physical setbacks, he actively seeks his own death, but lacks the capability to do it himself, and will not allow anyone to finish things for him. So he sits in hospice and waits to die.
I believe in the idea that is America, but Tomas Young is dying because he believed, too. He is dying, and the people who delivered him to the slow sunset of his death remain utterly unmolested by the rule of law we Americans take so much misguided pride in. I live with my idea of America in one hand, and the dying light of Tomas Young in the other, and when I look in the mirror, I cannot meet my own eyes. I spent all those years fighting against everything that is ending Tomas Young's life, I made documenting their serial crimes my life's work...and then I let it slide, because Bush was gone, and I couldn't summon the necessary energy to remain outraged over the fact that they all got away with the crime of the millennium scot-free.
It is enough.
I am finished with the moral geometry that says this is better than that, which makes this good. This is not good; this is, in fact, intolerable. Allowing the perpetrators of war crimes - widely televised ones at that - to retain their good name and go on Sunday talk shows as if they had anything to offer besides their ideology of murder and carnage is intolerable. Entertaining the idea that the billions we spend preparing for war cannot be touched, and so the elderly and the infirm and the young and the weak and the voiceless must pay the freight instead, is intolerable.
The pornography of America's global killing spree is intolerable, and, by the by, I am sick of hearing about drones. A child killed by a Hellfire missile that was fired from a drone is exactly, precisely as dead as a child killed by a Hellfire missile fired from an Apache attack helicopter, precisely as dead as a child killed by a smart bomb, precisely as dead as a child killed by a sniper, precisely as dead as a child killed by a land mine, or by a cruise missile, or by any of the myriad other ways instant death is dealt by this hyper-weaponized nation of ours.
Exactly, precisely as God damned dead, and the blood is on our hands regardless of the means used to do the killing. The issue is not the drones. The issue is our hard, black hearts, and the grim fact that the debate in this country right now is not about whether the killing is wrong, but about the most morally acceptable way of going about that killing. Drones are bad, but snipers are better, because you don't hear the buzzing sound in the sky before your lights go out forever. Or something.
It is the killing, it is the permanent war, it is our deranged national priorities. It is the system we live under which requires the serial deaths of all those innocents to maintain our economic health that should appall us. We sup upon the blood and bonemeal that is the byproduct of the idea that is America, and we sleep. And we sleep.
I mean to face the stranger in the mirror tomorrow, and so I must acknowledge my own culpability in all this. I am to blame; I went to sleep, because I have an idea of America that I cling to desperately, and so I bought into the soothing nonsense of cosmetic change even as the sound of the same old gears ground on around me.
I am sorry.
I still believe in that idea.
And I am awake.
William Rivers Pitt | Waking From My Moral Coma
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15088-waking-from-my-moral-coma
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)May you rest in peace, Tomas. The peace you were denied for so many years by those who sent other people's kids to fight for oil.
malaise
(268,998 posts)Babel_17
(5,400 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)RIP Tomas Young
MsLeopard
(1,265 posts)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Reminds me if the day I learned my cousin was killed in Iraq.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)We need them.
Strength, love, wisdom to him and those he left.
democrank
(11,094 posts)KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)pansypoo53219
(20,976 posts)he did gud to invade iWaq. he beeg war preznit! and the GW cheerleaders let him say it OVER & OVER again. no. no you did not do good.
samsingh
(17,598 posts)Dr. Xavier
(278 posts)cp
(6,628 posts)and his intelligence and courage.
I encourage anyone who has not yet seen Body of War to do so. Especially on Veterans Day.
Condolences to Tomas's family. We share your sorrow.
gademocrat7
(10,657 posts)navarth
(5,927 posts)So sad. Good on Phil Donahue. Good on Bill Moyers.
Eternal damnation to the war for profit bunch and their lackeys.
Good men like Tomas Young shouldn't die this way.
MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)LoisB
(7,206 posts)TRoN33
(769 posts)He shall not be forgotten.
Hekate
(90,686 posts)And when I say thank you for your service, I do include the service of speaking out.