Anthony Maschek, a purple heart recipient who was wounded eleven times in Iraq and is now confined to a wheelchair, was shouted down and heckled by students, who were angry at the prospect of the ROTC returning to campus after a 42 year absence. He was hissed and called a racist by students angry at the prospect of the ROTC's return.
Maschek is a freshman at Columbia who said, during his testimony,"It doesn't matter how you feel about the war. It doesn't matter how you feel about fighting. There are bad men out there plotting to kill you."
Maschek was an Army Staff Sergeant with the 10th Mountain Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team.
I live at the back gate of Camp Pendleton, the largest Marine Base on the West Coast. I live with marines and drink with marines at the local watering hole. For the most part, the men and women that I have met are poor or lower middle class kids from the south and midwest who saw the military as a chance for a break in their life. Few have any political agenda. They are as a rule, smart, considerate and compassionate. The marines I know well are proud of the positive things that they have tried to do in the middle east, the stuff that never seems to get reported.
Who gives a shit if some guys want to drill on campus, especially a campus that receives federal funds and tax benefits? Assholes need to pick their battles and not heap abuse on a poor kid who has given up way too much already.
10 comments:
WoW!!!! supporting a Marine there is still hope for you ole Buddy!!! and they are after us a dirty bomb turned up in San Diego and they are covering it up, sooner or later if we don't secure our ports and borders we will have a serious attack on our homeland.
L.
He is actually a former Army Staff Sergeant.
Thank you.
As a Viet Nam combat veteran myself, Sergeant Maschek has my sympathy. Rude behavior and hate are not the appropriate responses, especially on a college campus.
HOWEVER:
There is a concerted effort to roll this country back to a 19th century golden past that never existed.
In the 1960s, ROTC was not just offered at the U of Oregon (my Alma Mater) but was a graduation requirement for all male students.
Sgt. Maschek may no longer be an active member of the US Army, but if he still wears the uniform and promotes that organization's goals, he has offered himself as a target for scorn from those who disagree.
Sgt. Maschek and I myself are proud of some good things we and our fellow soldiers have done, but as much as the military recruiters like to hide the fact, the mission of the "Defense Department" and all members of the military is to intimidate, force or kill people who oppose our rulers and their policies. Unlike previous conflicts, most of the support functions (and a lot of "security" duty) are now privatized.
There can be honor in military service when warriors fight against other soldiers for their country's freedom, land and or people. But all talk of "nation building", "peace keeping" "humanitarian efforts" (at the point of a gun) are just PR and in the long run doomed to failure.
Every state, county and city in this country is now facing a budget crisis. The problem plays well into the hands of those of us who believe government is evil and/ or doesn't work, and those who embrace the corporate state, which includes members of both national political parties. The reality is that we can not afford to fight endless wars in other countries, wasting our military (and our privatized "security forces") pissing away our time, talent, blood, sweat and treasure without suffering the consequences of all over extended empires.
Before our elections last year, and in the current debates in congress, our wars and their costs is the 1000 pound gorilla in the room that nobody will talk about.
Sgt. Maschek is right. There are bad men plotting to spill our children's blood. But before we go blaming terrorists or foreign crazies, we need to look closer to home.
Unlike as it was in our undergraduate years, college is now only available to the wealthy, the ex-military or those who go deep into debt. I do hope this spring, in the words of our friend Rick Griffin, "the kids will call BULLSHIT!" and get into the streets.
Thanks for your thought provoking post, Denis. I don't agree with several of your points but you have certainly earned the right to voice them. I appreciate your input, I think your first!
While the first duty of the marine might be to kill, I talk to a lot of gunnery sergeants who will tell you of their mission to help a lot of Iraqis live a better life, in very tangible ways. Maybe their has been a sea change since Nam but I know these guys and they are giving it to me straight.
And just so you know, I am against our being in either Afghanistan or Iraq at this point, the real enemy seems to be the Pakistanis but I say a pox on all their houses, give them all time and let them do each other in. Unfortunately the Pakis are packing nukes...
Native Americans join the Marines to serve their country in combat. This qualifies them as not only as patriots but allows them to be warriors who have fought their enemy.
I agree with the Azure Avian that you have a right to voice your opinion (which you have without my permission, heaven knows, whether you served in Vietnam or not).
But I couldn't agree less with the opinion.
I don't think Maschek literally wears the uniform anymore, but let's say he does. Exactly why does that permit students to treat him with scorn? They don't have to like his choices (to enlist, to fight), but isn't it rather apparent that he's paid dearly? And what makes them so holier-than-thou sure that they're right? I would expect a Vietnam vet, of all people, to know what it was like to be tarred with a broad brush.
Maybe you're right that nation building and peace keeping are not jobs for an American soldier, but there's no argument that if they weren't over there, Afghanistan would be back under the Taliban's boot heel before you could say Khyber Pass. Maybe you don't care. I'm not sure I do, not anymore. We saved their behinds already, and a lot of good people died. How many more must?
But you say there is honor in fighting for freedom. So is it honorable to fight, then not honorable when you've won, then honorable again after you've "lost" the peace? That can't be right.
My opinion is that we desperately needed to go back to a pre-60s mindset. Spitting on soldiers is a terrible and shameful commentary on a nation. Thank God we've gone back to honoring their service, even if we do not honor the war they've been sent to fight.
You final point about the unsustainable cost of wars is the hardest to refute because I'm not sure you're wrong. But I think you are. Just as those putrid students at my alma mater, Columbia, are ignorant of the people who would kill us all without breaking a sweat---as they did on 9/11, as they did to Daniel Pearl, as they've done to thousands of Israelis---so we are ignorant of the goals of some of our enemies. We may want to live together; they do not. We may like to take the world forward; they look backwards. We love and embrace life; they love and embrace death. They tell us so, proudly.
Aren't we at war, whether we like it or not? How could we not be, at least culturally, spiritually, intellectually? And how could we have avoided the slaughter of 9/11? We did not choose this war, but it has most assuredly chosen us.
Bloodthirsty liberal should view that great movie "The Man who would be King" based on a R. Kipling story.
Afghanistan has been at war since ancient times and will always be at war forever.
Sadly, it's what they do best; fight wars.
One of my all time favorites - Caine and Connery at their best!
Movie Name: The Wind and the Lion (1975)
(fictional screenplay by director John Milius):
2 Quotes from many:
Eden: And this is your way? Abducting women and children?
Raisuli: I prefer to fight the European armies, but they do not fight
as men - they fight as dogs! Men prefer to fight with swords, so
they can see each others eyes! Sometimes, this is not possible.
Then, they fight with rifles. The Europeans have guns that fire
many times promiscuously and rend the Earth. There is no honor in
this - nothing is decided from this. Therefore, I take women and
children when it pleases me!
......
Sherif of Wazan: Great Raisuli, we have lost everything. All is
drifting on the wind as you said. We have lost everything.
Raisuli: Sherif, is there not one thing in your life that is worth
losing everything for?
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