DescentBB

From this site:
http://fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

Written by one Fred Reed who's biography credits him with a career in journalism and a tour of Vietnam as a Marine, cut short by a trip home with a Purple Heart.

[quote]
Wars And Their Aftermath

Things Seldom Spoken Of




December 4, 2004

The observant will have noticed that we hear little from the troops in Iraq and see almost nothing of the wounded. Why, one might wonder, does not CNN put an enlisted Marine before a camera and, for fifteen minutes without editing, let him say what he thinks? Is he not an adult and a citizen? Is he not engaged in important events on our behalf?

Sound political reasons exist. Soldiers are a risk PR-wise, the wounded a liability. No one can tell what they might say, and conspicuous dismemberment is bad for recruiting. An enlisted man in front of a camera is dangerous. He could wreck the governmental spin apparatus in five minutes. It is better to keep soldiers discreetly out of sight.

So we do not see much of the casualties, ours or theirs. Yet they are there, are somewhere, with missing legs, blind, becoming accustomed to groping at things in their new darkness, learning to use the wheelchairs that will be theirs for fifty years. Some face worse fates than others. Quadriplegics will be warehoused in VA hospitals where nurses will turn them at intervals, like hamburgers, to prevent bedsores. Friends and relatives will soon forget them. Suicide will be a frequent thought. The less damaged will get around.

For a brief moment perhaps the casualties will believe, then try desperately to keep believing, that they did something brave and worthy and terribly important for that abstraction, country. Some will even expect thanks. There will be no thanks, or few, and those quickly forgotten. It will be worse. People will ask how they lost the leg. In Iraq, they will say, hoping for sympathy, or respect, or understanding. The response, often unvoiced but unmistakable, will be, â??What did you do that for?â?

Quite a lot of it depends on the person. My brother lost an eye in Iraq this summer and he seems to be coping pretty well with it. He has nothing but support for the military and Bush and what we're doing over there.

It's all personal spin and assumptions. Not so different from those articles from Gwynne Dyer you posted about other then this guy has some first hand experience. Even though he has some insight into warfare and the outcomes it has on individuals you can read the personal bitterness in almost every paragraph. It's understandable being that he served in Vietnam. He has a right to be bitter.

He assumes nobody cares. He assumes the government doesn't know what it is doing. He assumes wounded soldiers are considered 'freaks'. He assumes a whole lot and most of it is clouded by his own feelings.

Soldiers from vietnam didn't get the respect because they were pawns in a political war. I think history will dictate a very different outcome for those fighting the war on terror. Nothing you could ever do or say could make up for what those brave men and women go through. You could never make it normal again. The only thing you can do is move on.

Nobody ever forgets and most of us always end up learning about the things that came before us. Sometimes they are things we'd rather not know but in the long run we're better off for knowing it happend. It doesn't make the sacrifices of our troops any less important.

Returning Australian soldiers had a parade and stuff, and it came to attention that "powers that be" had told those australians who were noticably wounded that they couldn't march (or wheel ) in the parade.
The ungiven reason for this was because the government's official stance was that "no Australians were seriously wounded in Iraq", so to stop questions they simply took them outof the parade and told them they (the soldiers) couldn't talk about it to the media.
This was big news here for a while.

(officially those wounded were wounded in friendly fire incidents, so they say it's not counted. but then why forbid those wounded to publicly march? it smells)

Tyranny wrote:Soldiers from vietnam didn't get the respect because they were pawns in a political war. I think history will dictate a very different outcome for those fighting the war on terror.

i know this war as the war on Iraq.

i'm gonna go out on a limb here. Vietnam was part of a bigger war, with a bigger name (was it the "war on communism"?), but that sub-war we all still refer to as "Nam".
are we sure we wish to refer to the "war on iraq" as the "war on terror"?

"The observant will have noticed that we hear little from the troops in Iraq and see almost nothing of the wounded. Why, one might wonder, does not CNN put an enlisted Marine before a camera and, for fifteen minutes without editing, let him say what he thinks? Is he not an adult and a citizen? Is he not engaged in important events on our behalf?"


Thats because that Marine knows what his area is doing and not the whole campaign. Its about the military not the individual. They briefed us not to say anything to the press outside our jobs. Also not to comment on our political views. Just talk about what we are doing to support our mission.

"The war in Iraq is fought by volunteers, which means people that no one in power cares about. No one in the mysteriously named â??eliteâ?

well, it is true that wounded soldiers / dead are not shown often on CNN.

and i personally think that his essay rings a lot of truth. however, right now, as someone else in the thread said, he's making assumptions. we'll have to wait and see if in the end these vets get recognition, or, are thrown away like those from vietnam.

roid wrote:i'm gonna go out on a limb here. Vietnam was part of a bigger war, with a bigger name (was it the "war on communism"?), but that sub-war we all still refer to as "Nam".
are we sure we wish to refer to the "war on iraq" as the "war on terror"?

Yes, why wouldn't it be? Despite what some of the lefties here think about it, that is precisely what it is part of. I guess Vietnam could be considered a part of the war on communism but for the most part that label was mainly with the Russians. Thankfully that situation was resolved peacefully because, unlike with the terrorists, the Russians could be reasoned with.

That is a big reason why this war and these situations are completely different.

I agree BIG JILM! This guy can't believe in what he has written. I know that in my hometown every service member is treated like a hero regardless of generation or wars served in. The "throwaway people" comment almost makes me angry. Then I came to my senses and thought it's just because he is ignorant. SHEESH!

As I said I do not watch television news but I do recall during the Vietnam war that the news every night had film from some battlefield or other and soldiers doing things and saying things that were very upsetting to the viewer that had not been desensitized the way combat soldiers are.

There was a lot of talk of how this kind of coverage raised the level of opposition to the war. People that had thought of the war as the good Americans versus the evil commies started to see the ugly side of any war.
For myself after Kent state, the assination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and all the death and destruction of the war being used to sell commecial time for the news I stopped watching television pretty much entirely. Way too depressing.
As I posted in another thread an image that stays with me was a photograph in Life magazine. A young American soldier was pictured interogating a V.C. suspect by wrapping a wet rag over his face and drowning him with water from a Coke bottle.
Not much of that kind of thing coming from Iraq. Yes there was that soldier shooting a wounded man and the photos from the prison but none of that came from the major network news the way it did from Vietnam. (although they covered both issues they did not take the pictures)
After the pressure the U.S. military faced from coverage of Vietnam they went totally the other way in the first Gulf war keeping journalists miles from the front and fed digested new briefs. That was not popular. In this war the journalists were embedded and in the action but one wrong report and they knew they would be escorted back to the rear to explain to their boss why there would be no reporter from that network giving reports for the duration.
But like I say I don't see television coverage from the U.S. Is there much in the way of battle field stuff other than the big explosions that everyone likes to see?

Ford Prefect wrote:In this war the journalists were embedded and in the action but one wrong report and they knew they would be escorted back to the rear to explain to their boss why there would be no reporter from that network giving reports for the duration.

just like at home in the whitehouse pressroom. ask the wrong questions... "thx for comming, we won't be seeing you again".
or so i hear through teh grapevine.