TheWiseOldFart

Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart Born in July of 1946, it is obvious that I am an original baby boomer. My father was discharged from the United States Navy in Seattle Washington in 1945. He met my mother, who had been working for Boeing during the war. They married in July, and less than a year later I took my first breaths. I was too young to know much about the Korean Conflict. Most of what I learned about it came from the popular television show, “MASH.” The first war I remember was Vietnam. I graduated from high school in 1964 and enlisted in the USAF. I couldn’t afford college, and the recruiter promised me that the Air Force would train me well. He lied. However, I feel a small amount of gratitude. After I was out of tech school in Mississippi, the war in Vietnam rapidly escalated. I might have died for nothing on a battlefield halfway around the world. I was medically discharged in 1965. I watched the news as the body bags began to arrive from Southeast Asia. I learned that some of the ...

The illegal and immoral wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, waged by George W. Bush, forced many of our nation’s bravest and best young men and women to return to war zones a number of times. The human brain lacks the ability to survive this type of torture. Fact: Bush’s lies and incompetence, which placed our nation in two unwinnable and costly wars, are unforgivable sins for which he was never prosecuted or punished in any way. More than 4,500 American military lives were lost in Iraq. More than 2,400 were killed in Afghanistan. Add to this the thousands who suffered serious injuries and committed suicide, and the number rises to more than 12,000 injured or killed in wars we lost. However, one number no one has ever reported, another failure by the mainstream media, is the number of Americans who were seriously damaged by PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. These mostly men and a considerable number of women lost their ability to live a normal life after returning from multiple deploymen...

Our nation’s leadership at all levels is dominated by hypocrisy. One issue I have addressed multiple times involves our nation’s military who serve in war zones at the will of Congress and the Pentagon. It’s been the same old story all of my life, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon tells Congress that they need more troops to win the war, and they say how many. With each increase in the number of soldiers ready to give their lives for who knows what, the number of body bags is doubled. The fat asses who sit in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill will not be risking their lives or the lives of their children in battle. The irony is that our military leaders have lost every illegal and immoral war since WWII. The sad truth is that none of the young men I knew who were forced to fight in Vietnam knew what they were fighting for. I make an admission here about my negative personal feelings for the military. However, it has no influence in this story. In the mid 1960’s the war ...

  Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart   In my youth I was taught one lesson above all others, to respect authority. In the 1950s this included my priest, the nuns, my mother, our nation’s leaders, the military, law enforcement, and virtually anyone older than I was. This may have been a reality in my youth, I’m not sure. However today, at age 77, I know I was taught some lessons which were not entirely accurate. First and foremost respect cannot be given freely, it must be earned. The 21 st century is the communication age, where information is instant, thanks to an array of communication satellites circling the earth, the truth is exposed, and cannot always be hidden as it was in the past. Therefore, nearly every individual or group on my previous list no longer has my respect. By the time I reached my junior year in high school I no longer believed in religion. I learned that every faith-based organization is founded on fairy tales, and religions were not founded by gods, but...