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HEROES

Terry Gray

American Prisoner’s of War since WWI have totaled 142,233 military personnel.  This count doesn’t include “Operation Iraqi Freedom”.  The biggest number was in WWII with a whopping 130,000 yet WWII only produced 97 decorated heroes.  I guess that being a hero then meant more than being captured.

The total number of decorated American Heroes since and including WWI is 463.  This number does not include the 92,000 soldiers missing in action.

Vietnam, with only 745 P.O.W.’s produced 219 decorated heroes.  I wonder how many of those heroes came home to America and were spit upon?

Being a prisoner of war or being brave does not make a hero.  Up through Vietnam, heroes did things like storm machine gun nests, threw themselves on grenades, went on suicide missions, and otherwise risked their lives directly in order to save a fellow soldier or soldiers.  They faced enemy fire, were outnumbered and outgunned, hungry, cold, hot, thirsty, wounded, and demoralized but still pulled themselves up in the face of great danger to do more than those around them.  They counted themselves second to their brothers in arms.  They gave above the call of duty at the risk of their own lives.  They were heroes.

I take nothing away from the soldiers in Iraq.  I’m sure that for the most part they are brave.  I know that they are doing their jobs.  I know that they are proud.  Soldiers losing their convoy, making a wrong turn in a desert, and being captured somehow doesn’t conjure up the notion of heroic to me.  It’s propaganda put out by the Bush regime.

Let’s save the hero status for the true heroes.  I’m sure that the American soldiers captured in Iraq feel far from heroic.  I’m also sure that the unneeded and unwarranted burden that we are tagging them with will haunt them.  Stop it!

Now, for the Bush idolizers, don’t ban me from the Baseball Hall of Fame, Please!  I don’t know how I could go on living.  I’m only speaking my mind, the very right that the “heroes” in Iraq are fighting to protect.

The first step towards corruption
is the power to deny us
our Freedom of Speech.
When you start to lose
this freedom, by unforeseen powers,
then beware, for ABSOLUTE POWER
is just around the corner!

 

TERRY GRAY

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