I always walk right up and say “Thank you for your service to our country. You are a hero.” They smile bashfully and say “Your welcome” or something like “Yes ma’am.” It’s great.
It is one of the pleasures of my life, that when I see a person in uniform, to say, “On behalf of myself and my family, thank you for your service to our country” and shake their hand.
It is an honor, as well. And it doesn’t matter where I am.
YOU ARE SICK
Great work by Steyn. There are thousands of national politicians and media pundits who would increase their knowledge about the war by 1,000% just by reading, and understanding, this one article on the subject.
Congressman Billybob
You have to love Iowahawk.
Have we found those tens of thousands of homeless veterans of the WoT yet?
The very best way of greeting returning vets? A job fair.
Even though the law says that deployed military personnel cannot be fired, many employers do so anyway. There is no easy way to even guess how many returning vets are in need of immediate employment (15%? 30%?).
And right now, many businesses are starting layoffs with the idea of some degree of economic recession in the near term.
But the idea that there are a bunch of prospective employers out there who *prefer* to hire vets, would be the best news that many vets could see, other than returning to their families.
Their tactic was to always speak in broad terms of “compassion” and “caring’ and “inclusion” and “open mindedness” while they worked to undermine and destroy the thing they hate to the very core of their being: America and her Judaeo-Christian enlightenment and mores. This stunt actually worked in the early ‘70’s, just as most of what they did between the ‘50’s through the 70’s bore fruit but they’ve lost a lot of traction now and things are really getting interesting.
Heck, last time I ran into some GIs in chocolate chips, I paid for their lunches (they were in the line behind me at the Wendy’s at Atlanta-Hartsfield. . .)
Oh, cripes. So the NYT is trying to “Kerryize” the troops again. You remember John Kerry? He was the guy who promoted the rumors (all false) that US Troops were murdering savages who raped children by the thousands in Vietnam.
Later the exact same media tactics were used against Vietnam vets by the MSM. I recall having people back away from me at parties if they learned I was a Nam vet. Stories were rampant about Vietnam vets who went wacko. None of the stories noted that the proportion of Nam vets who went nuts was lower than the proportion of, say, psychiatrists or policemen or liberals. Same same as the NYT today. They are boocoo #10 haters of the troops. I say some tripwired claymores set up outside the NYT offices cure their viciousness permanently. (Just kidding). Sorry ‘bout that.
The original NYT article seems to have crawled back under the rock it was found beneath. Usually, the drive-by media would have kept this in the news cycle for at least a week or more. So baseless and poorly reckoned were the statistics played in that article that the usual front page propaganda never really had any traction.
Of course, all the revealing postmortems on that article, such as this ocregister one, are even more difficult to find.
In the old days, pre-pajamas media, the original would have run its usual course, and slandered/libeled the subjects.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Once again, Steyn nails it!
Everyone: READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE!!!!!
WTG, hawk
One of the real shames of the Iraq war and aftermath have been the failure of the claimed “conservative” commentators to have the guts to go against the PC-beltway-Dim line and point out that while each casualty is sad, the US casualty rate in the war on terrorism and the Iraqi theater of operations of the war on terrorism particularly have been quite low. I am glad to see Mark Steyn have the guts to step up.
Those interested should look at US KIA rates in past wars or really compare them to the US population. A thesis of mine is that only because the casualty rate is so low do the press and Dims dare run down the war effort and the troops. If the casualty rate were high, they would be more circumspect in such criticism because in every audience there would be a mother, brother, father, sister, son, daugher etc of one of those who died in battle who likely would be offended by such talk.
You can tell what the media is going to do in Iraq coverage by following their history in Vietnam. It was rather late in the Vietnam war before the media turned to John Kerry's psycho-babykillers narrative.
National Journal’s lengthy and precise coverage of critiques of the “study”:
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/databomb/index.htm
ping!
The answer is clear but the problem seems to be systemic.