The
off-handed way Trump talks about military deaths enrages me. Trump cares more about oil futures than the
death of military members.
This is the
same guy who, in his first term, hid in the safe room of the white house when
demonstrators were outside; the same guy who freaked out when all the lights in
Air Force One were shut down on the approach into Iraq when he visited the
troops; the draft dodger who avoided Vietnam service claiming bone spurs.
This fucking
bellicose coward doesn’t know or give a fuck about the military “suckers and
losers”.
I’m a
Vietnam vet. Fifty-eight thousand men
lost their lives in Vietnam for absolutely nothing.
But war is
not only about death.
I was in the
Portsmouth Naval Hospital when a 19-year-old Marine was brought in. He had taken three rounds across his stomach,
and a large portion of his intestines had been removed. He was told he would have to wear a
colostomy bag for the rest of his life.
He was engaged to a young girl, and they were supposed to be married
after his deployment. I would hear him
crying at night, because what young girl would want to spend her life with a
man with a shit bag hanging from his stomach.
He kept saying he wished he had died.
I rode with
a group in Florida. One of my buddies in
his early twenties, had been in the infantry.
We called him Choo Choo. His patrol had been ambushed and all killed
except him. He was seriously wounded. He survived by playing dead while the VC
looted his body. An army unit came in
and rescued him and collected the dead.
He was placed on the fender of a tank.
At some point on the trip out, he fell off the fender and was left in a
ditch. A patrol came back and found him
and transported him to the field hospital.
Choo Choo
would have seizures, usually after drinking.
During those seizures his
breathing would get short, and he would make that noise: chu chu chu… with each
breath. I told him he sounded like an
old steam train. He said that sometimes
he heard himself, and it scared him, because he always thought of the thump of helicopter
blades.
This is the
cannon-fodder, these are the expendables, these are the “suckers and losers” of
war that Donald Trump doesn’t give a fuck about. These are the “more troops will likely die”
that Trump speaks about with less passion than he does about his new ballroom.
War, what is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
the Ol'Buzzard
