Where are my beads?

So can you tell which of our presidential candidates might have said the following?

“I do not want -- as I believe most Americans do not want -- to sell out American interests, to simply withdraw, to raise the white flag of surrender. That would be unacceptable to us as a country and as a people. But I am concerned -- as I believe most Americans are concerned -- that the course we are following at the present time is deeply wrong. I am concerned -- as I believe most Americans are concerned -- that we are acting as if no other nations existed, against the judgment and desires of neutrals and our historic allies alike. I am concerned -- as I believe most Americans are concerned -- that our present course will not bring victory; will not bring peace; will not stop the bloodshed; and will not advance the interests of the United States or the cause of peace in the world.”

“I am concerned that, at the end of it all, there will only be more Americans killed; more of our treasure spilled out; and because of the bitterness and hatred on every side of this war, more hundreds of thousands of … slaughtered; so that they may say, as Tacitus said of Rome: "’They made a desert, and called it peace.’"

“We are entitled to ask -- we are required to ask -- how many more men, how many more lives, how much more destruction will be asked, to provide the military victory that is always just around the corner, to pour into this bottomless pit of our dreams?

“But this question the Administration does not and cannot answer. It has no answer -- none but the ever-expanding use of military force and the lives of our brave soldiers, in a conflict where military force has failed to solve anything in the past…Instead, the war will go on, year after terrible year -- until those who sit in the seats of high policy are men who seek another path. And that must be done this year.”

“For it is long past time to ask: what is this war doing to us? Of course it is costing us money … but that is the smallest price we pay. The cost is in our young men, the … thousands of their lives cut off forever. The cost is in our world position -- in neutrals and allies alike, every day more baffled by and estranged from a policy they cannot understand.”

Fooled ya. The above excerpts are from a speech made by Bobby Kennedy almost 40 years ago at Kansas State University. The war he was talking about was Viet Nam. We just don't seem to learn, do we?

(At the end of the movie Bobby, I cried my eyes out listening to his City Club of Cleveland speech on violence, given the day after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, while reconstructed scenes of the aftermath of RFK's own assassination flashed on the screen.)

A Mother's Love

I should be paying my bills. Instead, I'm blogging. I don't write for weeks and then I go hog wild. Go figure.

I don't know how to embed this video from the New York Times, so just click on the link and watch, ok?

It Just Blows My Mind

Here I sit, eating my breakfast and surfing through my favorite blogs. I really should run upstairs and get my shower, given that I need to be at work in an hour, but I've just read a blog post that I must respond to right now or it will torment me all day.

I'm proud to say that Janet Lee is an RN in the Nursery of the hospital where I work. She's a very articulate writer whose blog I enjoy so much. Her cat photos provide a lighter side to her more serious posts, many of which poke at politicians and our crazy society. Don't think I've read one that I've disagreed with. This morning's was no different.

In "Counting Coupe" (and BTW, Janet, that's "coup"!), Janet expresses her concern about her one and only child, a son who is on a Navy ship in the Persian Gulf, in a post about our fearless leader's preference for military measures over diplomacy. I love her phrase, "if Bush hadn't squandered all our good will in the world" - it's so accurate.

So what's upsetting me is the reply of her first commenter, a blogger with whom I'm not familiar. Having no children herself, Marcheline has written on her own blog a post to Janet about how her husband, a former Army Ranger, is a wonderful and fun-loving man as a result of his military experience: "I don't know another man on earth who is as tender and compassionate as he is, and yet I pity the person who would raise a hand to harm me or anyone he cares about."

Again - I know next to nothing about Marcheline so I hope she won't mind my picking on her. Since she's a blogger, she must be wonderful :) and a thinker, and yet I'm wondering how she's missed the fact that many of our Vietnam vets and many of the kids coming home nowadays from Iraq are absolutely haunted by PTSD.

I had several Ranger and Special Forces friends when I was in the military and yes, they were a wild and fun bunch of kids. The emotional damage they suffer now, though, breaks my heart. Remember John? He's a loving, compassionate family man and a brilliant writer - a friend whom I would also trust with my life. Some evenings now, though, he "patrols the perimeter" of his home, continually on the lookout for invading VC.

How can we continue to send our kids into these senseless wars, knowing how scarred they can be when they return? And why do we women still allow it? (I'm obviously including myself here.)

It just blows my mind.