You preface your story with the words, "We sleep
peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do
violence on our behalf." As for me,
my family and community-- we certainly do not sleep peaceably in our beds at
night "only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our
behalf". Quite the contrary.
We sleep peaceably because of non-violent men and
women who have risked their lives
Your words remind me of a person who has never seen
war or death up close, including the death of innocents. The proof is that no where in your piece can
be found the defining moral element civilian deaths have in war. People who have seen death up close do not
speak as you do, they do not talk about having a "great job",
"parties", trivialize or omit facets within the subject of war that
are all-important, all-defining.
Estimates of the number of Vietnamese...killed vary
from 800,000 to 3.1 million. Some
200,000–300,000 Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service
members also died in the conflict. --
from Wikipedia
It's for this reason that your piece is not only a
disservice to those you ostensibly seek to "honor", your words,
through your omission is a total moral failure.
The moral, strategic and political failure of
the US government's war in Vietnam should not be forgotten unless we wish to
repeat that failure. Those like yourself
who seek to gain a "following" by using war for social currency while
failing to pass along to others the reality of war are far worse than those
who, years earlier, made the mistake of going to war in Vietnam, because you
should know better, you should know impact of perpetuating falsehood.
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