Ed Note: I originally saw this piece over at Op-Ed. I immediately called my friend, Bill Homans, and asked if I could publish it here at VetSpeak.org, and distribute it to our lists. As I suspected, he was good with it. Thanks, Bill. Bill's take on this issue sorta turns things upside down in my mind, and demonstrates a political perspective reminiscent of our early days in VVAW as we considered actions and their impact. Finally, a principled perspective on an element of a major hot button issue from someone who's been there, done that. I always appreciate Bill's speaking truth to power in the language of pragmatism and practicality. As always from Bill, some serious food for thought for us all to mull over as September 20th and the Repeal of DADT approaches. Bill wrote this on the day of the events in San Diego, and it is so dated here. WH July 16, 2011 By William P. Homans Today I have drawn a line. Each man must draw his own-- every thinking person ought to be drawing them constantly-- and when I see that gay servicemen and veterans are going to be marching in formation, military music blaring-- a horse detachment!-- at the San Diego Gay Pride Parade, I had to get out my stick and dig a ditch deeply across my own mental sandy patch.
The justification that will be made for such blatant endorsement of our military mission is that DADT Repeal isn't about war and peace, it's only about discrimination. One ordinarily sage commentator on my political discussion board, a gay man who never served, takes this myopic position. I strongly, irrevocably disagree with him. This is NOT a major step in gay equality. It is a SHUCK. I AM one of those discharged for being gay decades before there was anything called DADT. I am almost undoubtedly the only such person you know; mathematically speaking there are not a lot of us, only some 13,000 discharged under DADT, and undoubtedly quite a few less in the entire history of the service.
Now my friend Denny doesn't have any idea, gay or not, what telling that lie when you step forward and raise your hand to take the oath is all about. I do. I HAD to enlist. There wasn't any question about it, my family military history made that a done deal, it wasn't a matter of IF I would enlist, it was only a matter of when. But I knew I was telling a lie when I took that step forward and raised my hand, because although I LIKE girls, and I like sex with 'em, I also was DYING to be with a guy and know what that was really all about (I do not regret finding out, lol). I was a virgin (technically) with both sexes until I was 20 and in Vietnam! I am determined to save one, two, more young gays, and other young people who have given no thought to the entire military mission, and who are seduced by the recruiting fairs, the video games, the enlistment incentives (which have nothing to do with patriotism)-- the Fred Karger Republican electoral bait-and-switch specifically targeting gays and students-- from committing the grave and stupid error of joining a FUBAR mission FOR THEIR MATERIAL ADVANCEMENT RATHER THAN FOR THE CLEAR DEFENSE OF THE UNITED STATES. Or merely for more inchoate reasons of personal or familial economic desperation. And Denny is mistaken here. If patriotism-- to say nothing of a real urgency to fight off invaders-- was the major impetus for people to join the military they wouldn't need the freaking recruiting fairs with their slick and seductive video games. No, it is personal material (which includes educational, since that's what you get educated for, so you can make more money, or even get rich) advancement, or today, desperation to help their families because their parents are now long-term unemployed, that brings 90% of enlistees in. I know one 21-year-old, no father since 7, grunt laborer/jack of any trade you'll hire him for, been the man of the family taking care of his mother and sister since then. I asked him whether he had thought about going into the service (this is a muscle twink, a freakin STUD, tell you what, and almost certainly dead straight). This normally macho poor-white-trash Mississippi kid said, "I don't guess I will, I ain't got no problem with them other people in other countries. I'll just keep workin'." "I always have..." he smiled. It was clear that he HADN'T given joining up any serious consideration. Well done, Daniel (the young man's name). But most of 'em do, and enough of them join to keep this mess going, and the reasons they join have nothing to do with defending the USA. And that is why even the APPEARANCE of gay support of military objectives, whether, as Denny continues to argue, that necessarily implies the SUBSTANCE of that support, is a negative example that, apparently, gays are not only ready but EAGER to set for the impressionable children, including gay children, coming up behind them. Somewhere, Denny, one must draw a line in the sand. And I have drawn my line, speaking now as a bisexual male of retirement age, at the gays of today being behaviorally manipulated by the Republicans-- and by God, by OURSELVES, if these freaking parades full of gay soldiers in nice neat formation are going to become a ubiquitous thing-- to acquiesce to a continued enhanced amount of gay enlistment in the military. I just won't take it lying down. And that is what is being guaranteed if there is zero progressive gay commentary, and in fact no confrontation, at planning meetings, or on the street if Pride planners can not face dissent in their own meetings. We gays will just be another RIGHT-WING-LEANING, MILITARY LOVING SOCIOLOGICAL COHORT. Kind of like mainstream Congressional Democrats. Is that what your idea of equality boils down to, Denny or any other gay who might be listening to me? I want to put such a concept in a pillow case and bash it against a stone wall six or seven times. It has been so completely clear for this entire century (if it were not clear before) that not only is the military mission faulty, but our various representatives in government can't even stick to one motivation for having started these wars. They change like shifting desert sand. No, Denny, you're very wrong here. DADT was allowed (if it actually is) in order that gays would be able to say, "hey, we won SOMETHING anyway." You see today that the Republicans are quietly-- even publicly, but quietly-- taking over the gay civil rights movement. You supposedly "progressive" gays can't see that? Well, that's no improvement but no deterioration over January 2009. Weren't ready to help yourselves (us) then, aren't ready now. When real, just-want-to-live-together, don't-wanna-bother-nobody gays and lesbians stop letting Aubrey Sarvis and E. Clarke Cooper and their rich, ideologically-Republican-bonded ilk call the tune for them politically, then maybe I WILL live with my man, officially, in a framework of complete civil rights. Till then, I guess I have to hope that the do-nothing Democrats will actually PASS the legislation that more than half of Republicans will fight tooth and nail against, despite their granting gays a headline or two. Or that Republicans will go ahead and vote for gay rights as long as we will go ahead and acquiesce to indefinite wars wherever the US cares to declare them, or not even declare them, just go and start bombing, as we did in Yemen (It doesn't matter in this context that a Democrat did it. Bush set the precedent for unilateral action, and the Republicans will be perfectly happy to say, "well, Obama did it."). We didn't tell anybody, we left the American people to read in the papers that we had already started military operations there. You may turn your head, Denny. You may argue all you like that the issue is merely civil rights, and not the endorsement of the military mission in general. Just a civil rights issue? My hind foot. I insist that gays need to be ANTIWAR, not parading down streets across the country endorsing military service, and by dressing all strack and military-shipshape, making sure that gays/students (for that's who the 2012 campaign to co-opt the votes of the gay community is about) have a nice example so that they too will join up and go fight for Uncle Sam-- and then fight for their PTSD compensation, clean the depleted uranium out of their systems (don't hold your breath, ha ha), and try to make some kind of a civilian (or family, where the two do not necessarily coincide within any specific gay relationship) life for themselves. The Republicans' intention, whether you will turn your head from it or not, Denny, is this: To engineer a nice compliant gay population (like the rest of the population) who will make no more noise than the rest of Americans when multi-billion dollar lies are told, and outrages and atrocities are committed, IN THEIR NAMES. Who will go ahead and join up, and make sure that whatever happens in their own little civil-rights area, AMERICAN BUSINESS AS USUAL, which means WAR and MAXIMIZATION OF PROFIT ON EVERY SINGLE THING WE EAT, DRINK, USE, OR BREATHE-- will go on pretty much without a peep from them. Give 'em their dinky little right! The power to make war-- the power to induce these little rights-demanders to make war in return for their poxy little "right" to be honest about whom they make love with-- is far, far more important, and that is going right over their heads. All the better! Gays, for Crissake (no, for YOUR sakes, and for ours), stay out of the service. Please, y'all, exhibit better sense than American heterosexually-exclusive people! William P. Homans Clarksdale, Mississippi A non-heterosexual-exclusive, unterrorized American with his eyes open! |
Showing posts with label wounded troops. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wounded troops. Show all posts
Saturday, July 23, 2011
DADT: Are Gay Pride & Pride in Service Compatible?
Saturday, April 16, 2011
A Veteran's Commentary on American Values & Priorities...
Ed Note: My friend, Rafe Pilgrim, first posted this piece to OP ED News, on 8 April 2011. When I asked him for permission to re-post on VetSpeak, he informed me that it was available to all who would share it with their readers. I find it well worth sharing...so, here it is...hope y'all will share it, too...WH
The Old Lie: It is Sweet and Fitting to Die for One’s Country
By Rafe Pilgrim
Guest Contributer
In my small town on the bay side of central Florida, our demographics consist of 2 percent Afro-American, 3 percent Hispanic, and 95 percent Other. The Other is more or less equally divided between, on the one hand, Retirees from northern states (whose incomes consist of social security entitlements, pension checks, investment earnings, etc.) and on the other hand, Workers, mostly of local origin, who service the Retirees as electricians, plumbers, mechanics, bank tellers, wait staff, small business operators, grocery clerks and cashiers, etc., many who when losing a job, must immediately depend upon unemployment compensation for their subsistence.
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The very latest official unemployment index in my county is in excess of 12 percent, significantly less favorable than the national index, but nonetheless a gross understatement of the county's economic woes since many of our Workers -- once so abundantly employed in the pre-2008 housing construction boom -- have now been unemployed so long beyond the parameters of the government's unemployment rolls that they have disappeared from not only the entitlements of the system but also from the embrace of the statistics. Moreover, the local imbalance between the former construction workers and those of other occupations is skewed beyond what is typically the case with unemployment statistics across other areas of the country. This presents us with a deceptively low official unemployment index, with actual unemployment of our local Workers probably ranging from the mid-to-higher-twenties percent range.
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Addressing this bifurcated milieu, one might expect extreme differences in their socio-economic persuasions, but strangely they congeal in two aspects. One is in their religiosity in which God will provide the answer to all of our problems, and -- make no mistake -- He has no use for Muslims! The other is in their obeisance to Republican political fundamentalism: we've got to put an end to these freeloaders, those unions, the welfare state, all foreign aid, and tell the U.N. to get lost.
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In addition, any endeavor to examine issues of American military behavior is to be shouted down with the "Support Our Troops" mantra. Examination of issues or debate becomes unpatriotic, and dissent treasonous. Reasonable doubt becomes "conspiracy theory." So, as with "the colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady" our financially cosseted retirees and our jobless who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, are in these respects bizarrely "sisters under their skins."
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We have our share, or more, here of casualties of our historically disgraceful War (What was it for?) in the Middle East, not surprisingly with most of the deaths and amputees from families of economically challenged status. (It is difficult to resist the lure of the $40,000 enlistment bonuses or even the modest subsistence of barracks life in favor of crowded survival in a "single-wide" staked off a dirt road.) None of these pitiful casualties is reported as a victim who wasted his life by hazarding to step on an IED (Improvised Explosive Device, the newly coined weapon-of-man-destruction of this war) but always as a "hero protecting us and defending America," or something very similar.
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Military funerals here are more than sincere expressions of grief and family loss, assuming a celebratory context. Individual caskets are tracked by the press, out of the Eastern Hemisphere and into Dover Air Base in Delaware, then to the hometown, then to the local church for the service, then to perhaps Arlington National Cemetery. Between stops there are parades featuring military color guards, flags and banners, and large public attendance (in most casual attire) at the local football stadium to celebrate our heroes' sacrifice to preserve our freedoms.
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"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." Horace penned it with an air of idealistic superiority. Wilfred Owen knew it for the exploitive lie it had become. When will we learn -- as he knew -- the cost of this treacherous propaganda? When -- by anyone's God! -- will we spare the deaths and the amputations of our youngsters in the service of the greed masters and those who lust for power?
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Our captive media heap napalm upon the vicious fire, extolling the War (of Lies) and beatifying its American victim-soldiers, while suppressing any criticism or even questions. One Florida newspaper, the Citrus County Chronicle, recently featured as its top page-one headline, in expose fashion, the tale of a local high school teacher (who also serves as the school's basketball coach) who dared to show his class in government a video questioning the official version of the cause of the World Trade Center's collapse in 2001. In additional columns farther back in the paper, the account ran on of the visits by "mad" parents protesting the teacher's conduct, but it was noted that this teacher had an otherwise outstanding record. Nonetheless, the County Superintendent of Education would initiate an "investigation" into the matter.
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The Citrus County Chronicle chose not to print my letter to its editor, wherein I offered my appreciation to the pilloried teacher "for introducing an exceptional example -- however contrary to popular sentiment -- of the uncompromising importance of inquiry and the supreme need for truth to our students." The Chronicle did several days thereafter, however, feature an editorial headlined: "Conspiracy theories have no place in the classroom."
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Where does this leave us? It seems that Inquiry is now Conspiracy. Truth is now Unpatriotic, perhaps Treacherous, as well as Career-Threatening.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." The seductive lie goes on and on -- and very likely will until it destroys us all.
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Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Planning for the Future
The Hugh Thompson Memorial chapter of Veterans for Peace (VFP chapter 91,
Pat and Jeff are effective and experienced activists, experts at organizing, publicizing and getting media coverage for veterans and pro peace events and issues. They brought handouts and a PowerPoint display full of hints and examples—including video clips—that showed how to plan media events and write and structure press releases. They spoke about the use of talking points, how to attract the media’s attention and who in and when to contact the media.
Pat and Jeff know how to attract and get coverage in print, radio and TV outlets. They also use the Internet and e-mail well. Events that they have sponsored, or been part of, have been covered by local, regional and national media outlets.
After a coffee break, Jan Ruhman, who doesn’t need coffee to speed him up, led a panel on “Veteran Detention and Deportation.” On that panel were Heather Boxeth, a San Diego based lawyer specializing in immigration and criminal defense cases, Luis Alvarez (a veteran facing deportation) and his sister, Angelica Madrigal. Alverez was brought into the country as a two-year-old child. His sister, a naturalized citizen, spoke of the strain on the family, especially their aged mother whose health is failing.
Ruhman put the overall issue, and its scope, in perspective. “Use ‘em and lose ‘em!” occurs all too often with veterans who aren’t naturalized citizens. Paper work that would help their claims for citizenship is never delivered or “lost.” Boxeth gave an overview of the complexity in immigration and criminal law that can easily trip up veterans facing deportation--and any attorneys not intricately aware of the law.
The father / son duo of Tim and Ryan Kahlor spoke of the problems a wounded soldier can have getting injuries treated that the Army couldn’t find and a father’s quest to get Ryan the care he needed.
Tim used to carry around a poster about Ryan, a tanker. Below a picture of him in battle gear was the number of times his tank had been hit by IEDs (6). His injuries were listed. Among them were TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), a detached retina, arm injuries, an ear that kept draining, partial hearing loss and PTSD. No Purple Heart was awarded, though! Seeing a short video in which Ryan appeared and comparing the skinny and unnaturally pale guy in it with “the thousand yard stare to the strapping young man Ryan is once more was shocking. You were glad he had recovered so well, although recovery is not over.
Ryan became, Iiterally, a poster child. As Tim said, Ryan represented *all* the wounded veterans of
Ryan recounted how a platoon sergeant had told his squad to downplay any thing that might render them unfit for duty: “We don’t want no pussy stuff. There’s nothing wrong with you that alcohol can’t cure!!” Ironically (fittingly?), that sergeant was dismissed from the Army for alcoholism.
One of the audience members, Lane Anderson, stressed the importance of getting a Medical Discharge under Honorable conditions instead of an Honorable discharge to ease hassles involving treatment and money.
A last minute addition to the conference program were Colin and Karen Archipley. A former Marine Sergeant with 3 tours in
Started with their own funds, devoted to organic farming and coordinating with Veterans Affairs Compensated Work Therapy, Archi’s Acres teaches veterans organic farming and green house construction.
Located in
The conference’s closing session on Saturday was facilitated by David Wiley. It was a “Regional Strategy Discussion” covering regional issues and how Southern California VFP chapters could help and support each other. Two ideas that came out of the discussion were supporting IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War) supporting and raising awareness about the effects of exposure to depleted uranium.
after dinner, Annie and the Vets played and sang again. Sunday was devoted to hitting the streets of 
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