No Jewell, no matter how hard you try to change the subject the posts are all linked back to your original post and my response. No matter how hard you try to make this out to be a disagreement on the pentagon or the SF Chronicle, or try to make it cnyndwllr vs Bush, the plain truth is that it was, and is, all about your taking of a position that revealed your true lack of empathy for the men and women that are sacrificing much, including sometimes their lives, in Iraq.
Here's your initial post:
>>"To:CC who wrote (442909)
From: Jewel_o_the_West Thursday, Aug 14, 2003 2:15 PM
View Replies (6) | Respond to of 443471
Is it your position that we should spend more on the troops? Their needs are paid for. The extra pay is gratuitous. Of course, I would support any government decision to give extra gratuitous cash to everybody...the government has all the money and can make more, right...that's where money comes from right. So, you would like lots of it with no limits as I would, and for every body else too. Good plan CC. Why put limits on it for pete's sake."<<
My reply:
>>"To:Jewel_o_the_West who wrote (442911)
From: cnyndwllr Thursday, Aug 14, 2003 2:35 PM
View Replies (1) | Respond to of 443471
Jewell, re: >>"Is it your position that we should spend more on the troops? Their needs are paid for. The extra pay is gratuitous."
Did you really think this out or is this a knee jerk "support Bush" reaction? Let's work it through. Why should we up the hazardous duty pay and family allowance for our troops overseas during this Iraqi occupation? Why shouldn't we? Remember that it's all about competing interests for the dollars we have. Aren't there things that we're spending a couple of hundred million a year on that you see as less deserving than these funds?
If you're really objective you'll analyze this in terms of fairness among competing interests for limited dollars, efficiency in keeping an all-volunteer army, and the importance of keeping up morale among men and women that are having a rough time. Remember, despite the preconceptions of many among the Bush elite, the men and women who go to war are human beings with their own thoughts, dreams and pride. If you treat them like pawns in a game of kings, they will know it and you can expect their performance to suffer.
The Bush people have shown their disdain for the character, pride and resolve of the Iraqi population but this breaks new ground. I suspect this is yet another failure of the Bush administration's top people to understand average Americans. We've certainly done our share to promote that disdain by swallowing every doubletalk rationale they've thrown at us but when it comes to this kind of disrespect, I don't believe our people will ignore it so easily. I believe that if he persists in this path he will learn that America meant it when it got behind our troops. After all, they are us even if they aren't the "them" that constitute the powerful men in and behind the Bush administration."<<
I would have though you couldn't have dug deeper but your later argument that:
>>" People know (or should know) why they enlist in the military. There is no reason for me to answer for people who don't know why they are there. The conditions they are living under are an awful struggle that these people opted for when they signed up,"<<
was a really compassionate one as well, wouldn't you agree?
Why don't you just say that it would be a travesty to reduce this pay for our soldiers in Iraq? Why don't you just say that this president owes it to them to be sure that doesn't happen? Why don't you just say that you wouldn't support that kind of a pay reduction? Why don't you just admit that volunteering for the service does not mean that anything we do to our soldiers is ok because they "opted" for it when "they signed up?" Being wrong is common; stubbornly persisting in being wrong when you know it is uncommonly foolish and more than a little dishonest. |
