OK, Honor Star, be honest. How do you really feel about being in an army that was basically founded by a British Siddhartha (George Washington was in the English Army for a while, you know).
I mean, I'm all for not lying, cheating, or stealing. Don't get me wrong about that.
I don't know who coined the term "American Dream", but I'm sure it was something to do with a revolutionary ideal of a free society. Actually, people like Israel Putnam and Ethan Allen were almost all largely self educated. People don't seem to respect that anymore, there's a notion that no one can think for himself, and that everyone has to go somewhere like Harvard to know anything for certain. Unpatriotic, don't you think?
What does the word "mercenary" really mean to you? Seriously. What does "fortune" mean? One interpretation of "mercenary" is that he's perfectly loyal to the banner, just not that the whole fight falls into the category "NO QUARTER!"
I see you're in Australia, which I realize had it's dog in Vietnam (just for example). Some people think everyone who fought in Vietnam was a French Foreign Legionary.
At the same time, if you look farther back into British or US history, people apply the term "mercenary" "solider of fortune", etc. equally to German troops in the New England Revolution as to, for example, Manfred von Stueben or Charles Lee, and at the end of the day it has to all depend on where you allegiance really rests.
Embracing the term "mercenary" after fighting in a war would be acknowledging that whatever you fought for was meaningless, would it not?
That's good, I think modern media really encourages us not to think of information as being of personal import. Really, even in the case of more academic stuff than religious writing, how involved are you going to be with an author you cant see and question? Teachers act like characters on TV (and aren't they all just highly paid entertainers anyway) and really reinforce that lack of connection to the meaning of history, for example.
Yeah, I guess they grow those over in Afghanistan, too. Almost seems like today people are dying so there won't be any poppies in some parts of the world.
Still, I went to a Memorial Day observance in Palm Springs one time during which the air museum flew a bomber over us and dropped poppies out the Bombay doors. It was nice.
I always wondered about that. I guess that Vietnam had just been taken back from the Japanese after world war two, and that it was returned to French control which only Diem and his circle approved of. Somehow, though, it just doesn't seem like a group of people lately enslaved by the perpetrators of the rape of Nanjing could do all that fighting, so they must have insurged from China. It's sad, really I sometimes wonder what really happened to the actual native Vietnamese.
That's deep. I don't know if I agree with the next to last line. Isn't a solider fighting for freedom to live in peace against people who attack his homeland doing the right thing? And really, doesn't it degrade him or her to have to think that he or she isn't qualified to know right from wrong? Most of the soldiers I've met have been pretty bright. Besides, since when do political leaders have a line straight to the Almighty? They know right from wrong?
Writingwise, however, I found it a really good piece.
That's great. When I was in college, free verse was definitely the vogue in creative writing class. I took music in my concentration courses, and I couldn't use the style at all if I wanted to put my words to anything musical. I still struggle with putting poetic thoughts into poetic form to this day.
Isn't "find you voice" a trip, though? People act like you have to be psychotic to write anything.
I thought it was well written, and I like the new take on the old theme "if I had that to do over again". Instead of getting it to do over again, your hero gets just five more minutes to continue his life. That's new and different, and it makes the story very interesting.
I'm trying to review this in such a way that you won't think I don't respect it. I've heard pretty much all the political descriptions of "limited warfare", so I can kind of see it. That the communists didn't really keep up on the "limited warfare" doctrine was probably one of their great attractions for the natives. I mean seriously, if the rubber trees were worth more than you, and you noticed it, don't you think they must have been worth a lot more than the ordinary (I mean if there were any ordinary people in that particular time around there) people of Vietnam?
The whole Vietnam war is kind of sad. I think America went through a sort of Chamberlin "Peace in our time" phase after it ended, where pretty much everyone wanted to enjoy postwar peace and prosperity and pretty much no one understood or wanted to understand the needs of a group of people who had been enslaved by the Axis down in the western part of the east.
That's awesome! The best thing about it is how loyal the narrator is to the government and the heroism of the tone. I like how he doesn't have any conflict in himself about the difference between the politics of Washington and his membership in the military. I also appreciate what I good attitude he has as he fits in to a new post, which I understand can be quite hard.
I really don't want to insult the memory of anyone who died so that Britons would never be slaves (as the song has it), but I sure hope that kid has good grammar school teachers who will tell him what it means.
I hear throw away Hollywood one liners like "Nothing much just part of a team" all the time, and it seems like people could be a little more open about what they fought for.
Seriously, I don't mean any disrespect by this, it's just my impression of the man. I understand that the woman is sad to have lost her husband and that he himself will never be able to explain or demonstrate what he believed in to the little girl.
What I like about this piece is that it expresses faith in the notion that men who fought in Vietnam were both brave and good. Without forgetting the tragedy of it, you defend your loyalty to the cause and reject the notion that you are are of life's losers.
Honestly, it's not you. The French stood loyally by us in the War of 1812, and we are still their friends even after Vietnam and even though they live over there in crowded Europe and get overrun every now and again.
Most people really don't realize what's going on in the world. In college I read every single thing by Marx (well it was required). The world is full of oppression, and there are always people in every country willing to align themselves with foreign agitators in order to advance. What became of the Soviet Union, which was founded by native Russians who were inspired by the German Marx and the British Engels?
People could be more loyal, you know.
As I recall, the US entered Vietnam over The Gulf of Tonkin incident, involving USS Maddox.
Stylewise, I found that a classic piece of American Literature. It had good cadence and grammar, and I found it easy to believe that you had done all the historical research you would have needed to describe the battle historically. The "why are we dying here?" conversation made political sense, and at the end what I had appreciated most was the historological distance you kept from the feelings of the combatants in combination with your linguistic descriptions of what the event was like for them.
I really appreciate that piece. I read too much dark side military writing, and maybe I write too much of it myself. I get extremely tired of unserious politicians and law enforcement people who write off war veterans as "disabled", simply because they don't fit in with unserious, ungrateful people whose freedom they fought to defend.
I found it fast paced and tightly written, and I was able to sympathize with both the narrator and the traitor. I think the piece clearly illustrates the conflict between desire to remain loyal to a treaty of friendship with a foreign ally and the need to defend ones own homeland.
I admire the way you combined military action with psychological realism.
Technically speaking, I think your writing is brilliant. The piece is clear, concise, and precise, the over all impression is that you are like the army: short and to the point.
Overall, as a reader, I find that I am drawn in to the action, and that the last three words have a rising tenor, asking a question more than making a statement. After all, wasn't something already wrong? Isn't that why you are at war?
In the end, Hitler was defeated, although it sometimes seems that his specter still haunts both Europe and North America. As Led Zeppelin commented in the song "Battle of Evermore", "The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath."
Your piece raises all kinds of questions about good and evil and death which I don't have the answers for.
Primarily, I see it as a short comment on the fact that for many, Pax NATO was a short living Hell.
I wish I "got" that one. What is it, like, being called a Nazi, which you aren't just because someone else made a mistake or sabotaged you at some point?
I couldn't agree with that more. Most Christians I meet don't seem to "get" this. I read the Bible just like a Stephen King book and related to the author just like I was wondering how and why and by what means and with what thoughts someone like Clancy of LeCarre would write a book. I works, too. Taking it all as a literary experience, I go farther than in topical studies with verses out of context.
I like it, I think it sums up how I think Zapruder was, I don't think that, regardless of media things happening later, that while he was filming the assassination he was thinking about himself but about the President and motorcade, which he was filming.
Good essay. I like how you merged the ontological argument with geography and man's upward mechanical progress. "Great Perspective Giver" sounds alright by me, actually. I mean, I need a perspective.
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