Re: Clinton Sells Arlington Burials (fwd)

Jim Choate chided Dimitri:

>You moron, it has *NOTHING* to do with the military. IT HAS to do with
>citizens who died in the service of their country. The not so surprising
>fact is that the vast majority of those eligible are soldiers. The cemetary
>recognizes their INDIVIDUAL sacrifice and NOT anything to do with the US
>Government per se. Selling burial plots at Arlington should involve
>impeachment.

I agree with Jim's acknowledement of citizen sacrifice. However, Arlington,
like all military cemetaries, is maintained by DoD for its own purposes
beyond recognition of the citizen-soldier. You bet it sells plots to sell plots.

Some citizen-soliders, I'm one, wish to have no association with military 
monuments due to inside knowledge of what the military and its advocates
are up to. Better to be buried unmarked in potter's field than near the
grotesque themepark of The Unknown Soldier and its strutting guards.

I wonder if any of the dead, if they had a say, would wish to be 
used for that purpose, or if its only the families and patriotic hustlers
who have a stake in prettifying the horrible truth: that giving one's life, 
a leg, an arm, a belief in valor and sacrifice, for a treacherous, militaristic 
nation and economy is a nasty deal, no matter how it's monumentalized 
with zillions of white headstones arrayed in sylvan vales like gullible 
soldiers going to kill and die in bloody ignorance.

Even morons grasp that these dishonorable plots are recruiting scams 
cooked up by the living up to no good.

Excuse me for losing it, don't want a war over honor, some pissed vet
to gore me with his pegleg badge of valor, some chickenshit reservist 
to earn a stripe.

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on or about 971122:2102, in <1.5.4.32.19971123020247.006c67e8@pop.pipeline.com>, 
    John Young <jya@pipeline.com> was purported to have 
    expostulated to perpetuate an opinion:

>Even morons grasp that these dishonorable plots are recruiting scams  cooked up
>by the living up to no good.

>Excuse me for losing it, don't want a war over honor, some pissed vet to gore
>me with his pegleg badge of valor, some chickenshit reservist  to earn a
>stripe.

    hell, no!  I did mine, gave it all I had in the face of it until the 
    youthful idealism from the farm (despite Harvard) was shot and the 
    pure bullshit of the American ideal was exposed as the world's bully 
    --at least you knew where the commies were; our great American idealistic
    motherfuckers were nothing more than an oligarchy of military-industrial
    opportunists and power freaks.

    if I had not carried too much rank, they would have assigned me to
    retrieve the dead from the jungle detail...  the ultimate in one way
    tickets.

    even if they would pardon me for my sins of telling them to fuck-off, 
    I'll join you in potters' field --probably safer anyway....

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Attila T. Hun wrote:
>     John Young <jya@pipeline.com> was purported to have
>     expostulated to perpetuate an opinion:
> >Excuse me for losing it, don't want a war over honor, some pissed vet to gore
> >me with his pegleg badge of valor, some chickenshit reservist  to earn a
> >stripe.
> 
>     hell, no!  I did mine, gave it all I had in the face of it until the
>     youthful idealism from the farm (despite Harvard) was shot and the
>     pure bullshit of the American ideal was exposed as the world's bully
>
>     even if they would pardon me for my sins of telling them to fuck-off,
>     I'll join you in potters' field --probably safer anyway....

	And the company is better...

Excerpt from WebWorld: 
My only hope, is that I can find the strength of character somewhere 
inside myself to ask the question which lies at the heart of why there
is a 'they' to come for me at all...why, in the end, it has finally 
come to this for me, as for countless others. 

The question is, in retrospect, as simple and basic as it is essential 
for any who still espouse the concepts of freedom and liberty to ask 
themselves upon finding themselves marveling at the outrageousness 
being perpetrated upon their neighbors by 'them'...by 'others'...by 
'Friends of the Destroyer.' 

The question is:
  "Why didn't _I_ do something?"

These are the words that legend ascribes to the tombstone erected in a 
'potters field' outside of the B.TV city of Austin, Texas. The 
tombstone, according to historians who have verified it's existence,
though it was removed after being in place for less than twenty-four
hours, was supposedly that of Vice-Admiral B. D'Shauneaux. 

And the ultimate irony, for those whose cry of lament remains, "Why 
didn't somebody 'do' something?", lies in the empty grave lying next 
to that purported to be the Vice-Admiral's final resting place-the 
grave which, legend has it, is reserved for the last free man or woman
remaining on this planet. The grave whose headstone is a plain and 
simple mirror. 

Legend has it that, at dusk during the spring equinox, that one who 
gazes into the mirror will hear the sound of the Vice-Admiral's voice 
echoing through the labyrinth of the communal mind of mankind,
whispering as if it were a gentle breeze rustling softly through the 
leaves of the aged willows surrounding the site. 

It is a voice tinged with an equal mixture of conscience and remorse. 
It is a voice that whispers, quite simply, 
    "Why didn't I do something?"