D-Day Remembrance

[tjm]

8 hours ago, Terrierman said:

 the vast majority of the population of the U.S. doesn't even know an active duty service member.  ... It all comes from no skin in the game.  

"Thank you for your service" are now mostly empty rote words that are intended to make the speaker feel better, not so much the person hearing them.

Fully agree.

I'm almost always suspicious of those people mouthing their "thank yous"; I wonder if their parents were the ones in the airports and bus stations calling names and spiting on servicemen.

[Mitch f]

My dad was stationed in England on D-Day and said that the day before the sky was absolutely filled with Aircraft. It was apparently the largest movement of men and material in history. My uncle Mitch Fields, the one I was named after,  was in Patton’s third army and was wounded but ended up helping the 101’st Airborne. He had a leave and went to England to present my dad a German Luger…but my dad had left England to come back stateside on leave and left 2 hours before Uncle Mitch got there. The Luger ended up being given to my cousin. 
My uncle Mitch got his feet frozen in the Ardenne forest and almost amputated. He moved to Pasadena California and sold Cadillacs for the rest of his career. 
 

This great generation only made one mistake with their children. They wanted to give them the things they never had. Huge mistake, they should’ve given them things they DID have…..work ethic, gratitude, working hard for a goal. Instead they let the kids turn into hippies and let the  Timothy Leary and Marxist professors of the world install BS in their minds. It’s like the Man who started a business from scratch and built it up to become successful and let their spoiled son take over and run it into the ground…sad. 
This is exactly why the USA is very far behind in educational scores in almost every category. 

[fishinwrench]

I have a hard time recognizing the good that came from us participating in any of the foreign wars.

I feel bad for all the boys that got forced to be killed in all of them, and wish they hadn't allowed themselves to be forced into going in the first place.  

By my personal standards, our military should defend our borders and our way of life.....and stay out of conflicts elsewhere. I'm sure there's probably good reasons why that isn't possible, but I don't know what they are.

[tjm]

Any defense on our own soil would destroy our own  country, read the post above about we destroyed the Netherlands to get to Germany.  Always better to bomb some other country than the one we live in.

[ColdWaterFshr]

1 hour ago, fishinwrench said:

I have a hard time recognizing the good that came from us participating in any of the foreign wars.

I feel bad for all the boys that got forced to be killed in all of them, and wish they hadn't allowed themselves to be forced into going in the first place.  

By my personal standards, our military should defend our borders and our way of life.....and stay out of conflicts elsewhere. I'm sure there's probably good reasons why that isn't possible, but I don't know what they are.

Starting with your first statement, ....which is F''d, ....you need remedial history lessons, Wrench.  The good???  Well for starters, we probably wouldn't exist as a country if France hadn't come to our aid in the revolutionary war.  And Britain and France certainly wouldn't exist if we hadn't come to their aid in WWI and WWII.  Never mind Japanese imperialism, Russia's designs on Europe post-WWII . . . . You're joking, right?

Your second statement . . . "allowed themselves to be forced into going".  I don't know what you're saying here, a certain bone-spur-boy found an exit, but many others didn't.  For those who served, how can you not be grateful and in reverence for their sacrifice? -- whether KIA, POW (not "suckers and losers" as BSB described them).  Sure, Vietnam was a disaster.  Our intentions were good, our intelligence was flawed, and our politics made a bad situation even worse.  Certainly not the first mistake in our country's checkered history.  

As for your 3rd statement about your "personal standards aside,"  this is so myopic and narrow, . ... .a struggle as where to begin to explain . . . short answer, we don't live in a bubble, and never will.  And we cannot pretend that history, treaties, alliances and agreements don't exist . . . . (read that as NATO) . . . . . and there are conflicts, important conflicts, that without some of our involvement would change and threaten our way of life inside our borders, and our long time allies, in a very bad way.  

 

[Terrierman]

Locked for now.  Can't believe a thread like this is going sideways.  But it is.  Anyone who disagrees, PM me or any of the other moderators.