Posted by Sadie from D007125.N1.Vanderbilt.Edu (129.59.7.125) on Monday, February 17, 2003 at 0:40AM :
In Reply to: Yes please. posted by Sadie from D006157.N1.Vanderbilt.Edu (129.59.6.157) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 at 3:02PM :
By "wonderful people" I mean those people who were protesting, e.g. the veterans, the folks who run the NPJC, etc.
I still can't get over it - how can those people, the vets, care so damn much after being so abused by our society, esp. our government? How many vets are homeless or really poor or spend their lives in the VA trying to figure out what disease they have thanks to exposure to all those damned chemicals they were forced to use in the battlefield? So many of them have severe psychological problems, too - they were traumatized. & yet, those guys still have hearts - such big hearts...
A month ago, I saw one vet give a speech in tears - a grown man in TEARS in front of an audience - telling us what it was like for the children in war time. He'd fought in Vietnam & afterward, as part of his job as a journalist, he'd intervied kids from the places he'd fought... & he said kids were the first casualties of war, that he never would have wished those things to have happened to them that did, & that it was our job to prevent what happened to those kids from happening to the children in Iraq. He denounced the sanctions & a future war. What an incredible man.
& then there was the African-American preacher vet who stood up & said that the U.S. military was racist - that more blacks are in the ground troops than in the air, where the white kids fight. This statement contrasted with the mainstream media glorification of the U.S. military being one of the most democratic institutions in this country. Anyway, this preacher was against the war, & he was making the fight against the war more personal.
These are just 2 shining examples of the truly brave of heart that I had the opportunity to meet.
Anyway, maybe I'm babbling. I've been delirious all day - sort of high from meeting such incredible people again. Are they real, or were they just fantasy people, too good of heart to be true???
-- Sadie
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