Ignorance About the Military
One of the most striking things in my contacts with today’s college students is their lack of awareness of their age-group peers in the military. Today’s college students often know little more about the military than they could obtain from movies like Top Gun and Full Metal Jacket, both now over a generation obsolete even if they ever did reflect reality. And Hollywood today prioritizes dogmatic anti-war messages over anything even vaguely reflecting the actual lives of military people.
And now the purists of the anti-war left insist on making it worse (link is very slow — PowerLine has a good roundup of the coverage), doing everything they can to drive away recruiters and veterans alike from today’s youth, ensuring a continuing problem of alienation and misunderstanding. Continuing attacks on recruiting offices in Berkeley and elsewhere are matched by similar efforts to bar recruiters from even being allowed to speak openly on left-dominated college campuses. And while veterans are useful as abstract objects of pity (stories about the 4000th American death in Iraq are reported breathlessly and without troubling little things like historical comparisons that show the Iraq war to be remarkably low in its death toll), the anti-war left has little use for them speaking with their own voices about their own lives if doing so would depart from their mandatory anti-war drumbeat.
This is more than just a morally troubling issue, it has practical side effects as well. The more that the military is seen as something alien by today’s youth, the less likely they are to empathize or even understand military members’ lives and concerns. The results of this unawareness can be perverse, ranging from a easy willingness to see the military over-used (i.e. “who cares, they volunteered and I don’t know any anyway”) to a lack of willingness to fulfill society’s basic obligations to veterans (i.e. continuing budget cuts directed at the Veterans Administration in spite of massive increases in the number of disabled veterans it needs to treat while few in the public are even aware of the problem).
The anti-war left needs to outgrow its fixation with the anti-military memes of the 1960s and recognize that the personal lives and welfare of military members is separable from the controversies over the policies they are ordered to fulfill. Until the anti-war left can begin to explicitly and specifically make that distinction and overthrow the 1960s retreads that still dominate the leadership of their movement, criticisms that they are hostile to military members will legitimately remain a political albatross around their necks.
"…“who cares, they volunteered and I don’t know any anyway…” that’s pretty much what cheney said yesterday. except he added that bush is the one that really bears the burden. reality kinda blows a big hole in your argument.
Actually, the military has a very strong presence on my university campus in Texas, and from overhearing people talking with ROTC members and recruiters it is quite easy to get information about the military if they want it. As a veteran myself I have been very impressed with the overall positive image and increased social standing of the military compared to the Clinton years.
Overall, the military is a very insular organization. College kids aren’t going to know a heck of a lot about it in any period until they express some interest, and that’s probably for the best. Even in the years when I joined, the military was not anywhere near as accessible as it is now, but everyone knew it was an option.
In regards to your statement that a lack of information about military life leads to apathy about the plight of soldiers, that my very well be so, but that is I think is a larger societal problem and not an issue of a disconnect between college kids and soldiers in the same age group. If anything, I see much more interest and participation than I ever did in college before I joined, not to mention half my classes have a veteran in them now, which was unthinkable 10 years ago. Maybe you should consider the role of returning veterans in the classroom before you worry too much about recruiters not having access to kids. I personally feel like the information you get from veterans is a lot more helpful than information you get from recruiters, but that’s just my perspective.
I work at a large university as well, amnfinch. Many active duty and retired members of the military attend. Everyone gets along very well.
Ignorance of the military, huh? Hmmmm. How about this:
The military is the last great welfare system in America. It is filled (littered, actually) with all types of cowboy wannabes (like their CIC). They are mostly poor, uneducated, prone to violence, outcasts who believe they have received a calling. A call to kill innocent victims, a call to rape and injure innocents, a call to destroy everything in their way (dogs included), a call to fight the greatest fight. The military is filled with losers who probably had a choice given them by a judge: Jail or the Army? Which will it be, son? And after 4-6 years of sucking at the government trough, they can get out with no skills, no jobs, no education, nothing but a robotic tendancy to hate themselves, their families, their country.
Bush did a great job, no?
The anti-war left needs to outgrow its fixation with the anti-military memes of the 1960s and recognize that the personal lives and welfare of military members is separable from the controversies over the policies they are ordered to fulfill.
This argument would make more sense to me if counter-recruitment organizations were also present to educate high school students about the realities of military life that recruiters and war boosters are not likely to tell them, or explain to them in a fair or accurate way even if asked. Many counter-recruitment activists are former military members, and thus come by their viewpoints through direct experience.
As it is, I think the argument that high school students will get a better idea of what military life is like by listening only to people who are committed to promoting the military is a bit disingenuous — because there ARE two sides to this story.
#4, that is about the most anti-military, anti-American thing I have ever seen written. Most liberal people I know have a better respect for the military than that.
You can disagree with the war (heck, I’d back you all the way on that), but you do not disrespect the troops.
And in any case, your statements of a load of bull. It’s true that it may be attractive to some poorer people, especially if they’re looking for a way to pay for college, but I disagree with your description of the type of people in the military. Most people I know, who are in the military, are quite intelligent, and not prone to violence.
#6….
while i agree #4 is way over the top…there is no denying that the recruitment standards have been lowered to such an extreme level and todays military is not the same as the one that chased the taliban from afghanistan, or even the one that first occupied iraq.
Maybe the voice of many anti-war aprents put an end to the VFF presentation. That is the impression I get from the Tribune article. What would happen if a wacko Liberal scheduled a Code Pink talk in Texas and parents objected? Would Jason have a problem with parental concern over what their children hear in school?
Tom’s blast of bigotry is an even clearer example of anti-military leftists (a influential subset of anti-war leftists that seem to remain immune to being called out by their less radical comrades even after lots of promises) who don’t have the slightest clue what they are talking about. (P.S. Tom, you should update your pre-written anti-military script — the alternative-to-jail version of recruitment was banned by the military during the early 1980s and empirical research has found that U.S. military compliance with non-combatant immunity is HIGHER now than in previous times).
BTW, the repeated attempts by BDSers to hijack this thread should stop now.
Kathy, like most of the predictable and scripted talking points in your comments, your description of counter-recruiters as objective sources of information is laughably false. Counter-recruiters are generally college kids who have never been in the military, never met an actual military person, and have just attended a weekend indoctrination course from one of the rabidly anti-military groups that features completely false information like Tom spewed above. If there are any people with significant military experience among them, they have not been among those I have encountered first-hand. I do know of several cases where counter-recruiters and other anti-military activists falsely claimed to be ex-military (yet another subject upon which your side goes mysteriously silent whenever it comes up).
And why is it that you anti-war lefties refuse to follow through on your repeated promises to condemn outright anti-military people like Tom when they show up?
“doing everything they can to drive away recruiters and veterans alike from today’s youth,”
Good. As everyone who has ever been recruited into any branch of the service will tell you, military recruiters are, to a man, bullsh*t artists who should never be allowed anywhere near young, gullable highschool or college age people. I suspect that that has been the case since about 15 minutes after they stopped using press gangs.
I am myself a veteran of 12 years in the Marine Corps. I got to Lebannon in ‘82 and the first gulf war. I was in for 3 months and just about finished with basic training before I found out that every one of the “gaurantees” my recruiter had given me were null and void. I make a practice of talking any young person I meet out of joining up. Largely because it isn’t the “anti-war left” that doesn’t care about military or veterans, it’s pretty much the whole country. And the worst offenders are those who are the quickest to misuse us (and the most likely to offer that very insincere “thank you for your service” to salve their own conciences for not serving). Primarily the the Republican party. None of whose the current crop of “leaders” bothered to serve and most of whom actively avoided service. And before you start whining about McCains service record remember that until be became the Republican frontrunner for president and for as long as I’ve been reading blogs he was routinely vilified on every rightwing blog in the country for things like campaign finance reform and sticking to the Geniva Convention on how to treat POWs.
I have not read your link to Powerline. I don’t even know what Powerline is. But where I live, the peace movement has been scruplous about NOT blaming the military for the idiocy of the government. We don’t blame the victims. Most of us have been those victims at one time or another. If you need to find a figleaf for your party’s disgraceful mistreatment of present and former military, find someone else.
Military recruiters are known to lie to teenagers in order to get them to enroll.
Tom, I just read you post. Are you really that stupid? I’m working as an electrical test engineer without ever having setting foot in a college classroom. I know more about test and measurement than most people with advanced degrees in electronics. And I learned most of it in the Marines.
The average IQ of the 11 marines in my shop when I got out was 138. I know that becasue all of us tested for Mensa the year before and 7 of us got in.
Until the current mess that Bush and company got us into none of the services was taking anybody with more than a parking ticket and the average recruit in 2000 had over a year of college.
It’s idiots like you who give idiots like Jason a license to badmouth the antiwar movement. Stop it.
Thanks for the kind words….I am glad a very few of you actually did something towards becoming better citizens. I think that is great. Some of you are engineers (choo-choo), others are PhD’s. Wow, excellent. Most though, are not. Most are what I described. Most are biding their time for less than patriotic reasons. The era of the Audee Murphy or John Wayne is over. Todays troops are doing the work of a criminal administration. As they rape, kill, and injure other humans, they get paid for it - and they get recognized by the deviant MSM for it. An honorable man or wonam would simply say "No, I won’t shoot that innocent Iraqi" or "No, you can’t stop loss me, I am going home". That is what an honorable person would do. Less than honorable persons continue to shame God by participating in this debacle of unending waste. And before anyone thinks I am not supporting the troops, let me ask you a question or two:
Did I provide them with the improper battle plan with woefully inadequate resources? No. It was your idiot in chief who *cough, supports the troops.
Did I send them into a hellhole without proper armor or proper bullet proof jackets? No, again your idiot in chief did that - but I am the one who doesn’t support the troops.
If you simply turned your anger and frustration to where it is deserved, you would be shouting at your CongressCritters to end the illegal invasion your idiot in chief started. You cannot support the troops by yelling at me. You cannot support the troops by turning your anger toward me. You CAN support the troops by asking your boy king to please provide those brave souls with the proper protection they deserve and a war plan which allows for victory, but also brings them home.
Why do you allow Cheney to be the face of your group? Does 5 deferrment Cheney make you proud? Does AWOL Bush make you proud? They shouldn’t.
The anti-war and anti-military fanatics may tend to congregate around (as in, in the physical vicinity of) universities. But I think that the picture of the universities as uniformly hostile is way overdone. Which isn’t new, of course.
I remember hearing how anti-war and anti-military my university was in the late 1960s where I was there. But somehow, in 4 years in ROTC and wearing my uniform around campus every drill day, I never once got any flack from anybody. And that, mind you, was at the University of California, Berkeley — which had something of a reputation for wild-eyed leftism at the time.
My suspicion is that the reality is more that the university communities tolerate what they mostly see as free speech by lunatics. And, as a result, are deemed guilty by association by those who don’t spend any time in the vicinity. Not, it occurs to me, unlike the distorted view of the military held by those on the other side who don’t know anything about it first (or even second) hand.
Colleges can freely debate whether recruitment activities can exist on their campuses for they are funded from out-of-pocket payments. Those institutions are not free and those dollars have influence. But that’s where capitalism can now be inconvenient, I guess.
There must be no place to these days to go for young young Americans to shed their "lack of awareness of their age-group peers in the military"…
What’s that? ROTC? Where? They have places called Military Acadamies? Nooooo! Do they really play college sports too? Really?
Y’know the war on terror might end sooner if some would end the war on straw….
Anyway..
An American high school, (which is the same kind of place where the PowerTools are getting their stateside-deferred panties in a bunch over) more than likely has a job/career-counseling office stocked with recruiting brochures from every branch of the military. In fact, any high school that receives federal tax money must also allow military recruiters the same unobstructed access to students as they do college or job recruiters.
In other words, the military already has a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign that’s readily available in high schools –along with television and print advertising, websites and web advertising, video games and a few NASCAR teams to boot. That’s a luxury that those dirty hippie anti-war advocacy groups do not have.
Yet an advocacy group is what the PowerTools want on a high school campus, as long as it’s their message.
You want to fill the ranks faster? Re-instate the draft.
Jason (and others) - I make statements about pro or anti war speakers in schools, I was addressing the point that "some parents" objected to the group coming to the school.
My comment was about letting parents decide what a local (single) school is allowed to do for a special presentation. In the same vain, should parental objections be ignored if a cult figure wanted to speak to minors, not adult college students. I would say the same thing if only Code Pink was invited, allow an opposing view point or cancel the individual group. My comment had nothing to do with BDS.
Rudi, I can’t speak for Jason, but I felt like his point wasn’t that the parents shouldn’t be the arbiters, but just that he really thinks those parents are whacked if they think that an average veterans group is equivalent to a pro-war propaganda group.
IOW, I think he’s disagreeing with the parents, not trying to take away their right to express opinions that he thinks are really stupid.
Rudi, I can’t speak for Jason, but I felt like his point wasn’t that the parents shouldn’t be the arbiters, but just that he really thinks those parents are whacked if they think that an average veterans group is equivalent to a pro-war propaganda group.
What is an ‘average veterans group’? However that’s defined, and whether the National Heroes Tour is officially "pro-war in Iraq and Afghanistan" or not, the group’s purpose IS to promote the military and present the military experience in such a way that the teenagers sitting in those classrooms will want to enlist. There actually are parents, believe it or not, who do not want their minor children encouraged to enlist. And the National Heroes Tour is *not* going to tell those 14- and 15- and 16-year-olds that once you sign up, the military owns you for life. Those veterans are not going to tell the teenagers they talk to about stop-loss, or about how the military treats those who find that they cannot participate in war, or about what military service does to marriages and family life, or about the shamefully inadequate services for former soldiers, or about how the military tries to force back into combat even those who are suffering severe depression — even those who are suicidal.
The military is not like any other job in the world. You cannot quit if you find that it doesn’t suit you. You cannot leave it and find another line of work if you find that you hate what you’re doing. There is no other career, job, or profession in the entire world in which you are expected to know and understand exactly what you’re in for, what it’s going to be like, and how you’re going to feel about it, *before* you enlist and *before* you start the job. No other employer in the world tries to lure potential employees by hiding the worst parts of the job and dissembling about the reality of the job.
Think about it. When it comes to any other type of career in the world, you are interviewed and vetted and investigated by the potential employer so that employer can be certain you will fit in to the company’s culture, that you are qualified physically and emotionally to carry out the requirements of the job, that you have the right credentials. In any other field, the employer’s goal is to *narrow down* the pool of applicants to just the right one. In the military, the goal is to *broaden* the pool of applicants to get anyone they can convince to join.
That’s why you need another group there to present those realities that a group like National Heroes Tour will not present.
See comment on my blog, The Steiger Counter
Tom, while I regret giving you the attention you want, I have a question for you: what makes you so qualified to judget people in the military? For what it’s worth, I am a former infantryman with a graduate education. My experience showed that to be a not uncommon combination. What’s yours?
More completely ignorant falsehoods from Kathy.
I spent 15 years in the military, yet somehow I am free of them now. How can that BE, Kathy?
LOL. The rest of your comments are similarly inaccurate. But at least you can rest assured that you and the "counter-recruiters" are reading from the same script.
BTW, Kathy, when you sign the enlistment contract, they are VERY specific about the time requirements and they are required by law to explain stop-loss. I don’t like the way stop-loss has been used any more than you do, but your allegations about how veterans will talk about the military are COMPLETELY unsupported by evidence and appear to be based in nothing more than just yet another list of mindless regurgitated far-left talking points from your thick book of them.
revelation.
The purported author of PoliGazette left this comment on my blog:
"I am the author of the post you are attacking.
I teach at a small private college in the midwest, not Berkeley.
This college has an active ROTC chapter and a nearby military base.
None of those conditions alleviate the still-shocking lack of awareness among most students about military culture.
I will refrain from describing your post as "junk" in spite of your unfounded projections about who I was, where I was, and what I did or didn’t know before writing my post."
Wow, you teach at the college level? I used your post as an example of a common claim about college campuses. the only school you mention is Berkeley. In my comment, I also noted, that it depends on where you are, that the students class background is going to matter here. A small private college in the midwest, is going to have a student body that is going to be far different than my regional state university campus, for example. My students can’t afford to attend a small private college anywhere, and many of them choose the more affordable state school BECAUSE they are paying for their education with money from their military service.
In short, the anti-military stand you claim is as much one about the class backgrounds of the students than it is anything about the culture of academia.
And I sign my posts….tom steiger
I spent 15 years in the military, yet somehow I am free of them now. How can that BE, Kathy? Well, Jason, I don’t know that you are free of them. Here is an article based on a 60 Minutes segment from 2004. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/03/60minutes/main658994.shtml You will note that the former military members interviewed for this piece, although shocked to receive these orders, were willing to obey them. However, the simple fact is that they WERE called back long after their legal obligations had ended. … when you sign the enlistment contract, they are VERY specific about the time requirements and they are required by law to explain stop-loss. … Just because recruiters are required by law to explain stop-loss does not mean they all do. Some don’t, and military policy actually encourages recruiters to lie either directly or by omission, as this former military guy states. It may not be the majority of recruiters doing this, but it IS a problem, and it’s growing as the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan drag on and the military is stretched thinner and thinner. Also, the time requirements are not as simple as eight years and you’re out. The enlistment contract makes it clear that you can be forced back into active duty at any time, even if you have completed your eight-year commitment. That’s stop-loss (although they don’t call it that in the contract), and as you imply, it’s been misused. Although, in a literal sense, stop-loss cannot be misused, because by definition the military can invoke it at any time for any enlistee in either active duty or the reserves. Furthermore, the contract also makes clear that any of the provisions in the contract can be changed at any time with no notice to the enlistee and without the enlistee’s consent. Essentially, the contract is meaningless. Nothing in it is a guarantee even of what is clearly stated in black and white.
Wrong again, Kathy. You are a veritable fountain of grossly wrong information. The "legal obligation" of an enlistment contract (spelled out in boldface in the contract itself) comes in two parts: First, there is the active duty commitment (usually 4 years). Then there is the inactive reserve commitment (where they can call you back in, usually 4 additional years). Any additional reserve commitment involves another contract, with the years again in bold face.
After those are complete, they cannot call you back in. Those who are subject to stop-loss orders or activation from the inactive reserve are still within their "legal obligations". Stop-loss happens when you are approaching the end of your active commitment and they extend it involuntarily. It is listed and explained within the contract. Inactive reserve activation happens afterward, but only for the specified number of years. It is NOT for life. The U.S. military does not conscript nor impress people.
You’re simply wrong on the facts in this area as with so many, many others.
Those who are subject to stop-loss orders or activation from the inactive reserve are still within their "legal obligations". Stop-loss happens when you are approaching the end of your active commitment and they extend it involuntarily.
And in time of war, they can extend that commitment until six months after the war ends. And since the "war" we are in now will never end, that means the commitment can be extended forever.
If someone is near the end of their 8-year commitment, and the millitary extends their commitment with stop-loss, that extension can be renewed again and again, for as long as the military wants. You may say they wouldn’t do that, but legally they can.
Also, I see you did not comment on the cbs article about the former service members who had completed their legal obligation years previously and were pressed back into service; or the language in the enlistment contract that says anything in it can be changed without notice to or consent of the enlistee.
I am a parent with a high schooler, and I don’t want recruiters talking to my kid. I don’t want them coming to my house or calling my house. But as part of the No Child Left Behind, all high schools have to supply the recruiters with complete information about every kid in the school, including home address, and phone numbers. If you as a parent don’t want this, you have to opt out. They don’t mail the form to you , or tell you about it — you have to go out of your way to request it. Most parents don’t know about this until recruiters start showing up and calling. Parents now volunteer at the start of the school year, to stand off campus and pass out the opt out forms.
What I love about Republicans, its all about the kids when it is sex ed, and the school’s have to send home permissions slips to the parents — but a military recruiter, hey its ok, to send a database of all the kids their classes, grades, home address, phone number to the military so they can start aggressively going after kids, and they don’t take no for an answer and they keep coming back, and they do undermine the parents, hoping the kids will see it as some kind of rebellion.
Republicans are for state’s rights as long as its issues they care about, but the moment its not, they are against them.. They are all for parents rights, until it comes to military recruitment on high school campus. Oh, and if your school doesn’t cooperate — they lose their funding, so much for local control. To hell with what the local parents want.
They don’t mail the form to you , or tell you about it — you have to go out of your way to request it.
Then they are in violation of the law. NCLB provides that parents MUST be informed of the opt-out option. In addition, parents can pick and choose which specific information can be released, and to whom (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act ). You can indeed choose to have such info released to colleges but not recruiters, and the school is required by NCLB to iform you of that, and your options. Your gripe there is with your own school and school board, not the military or NCLB.
But I suspect the facts of the law won’t make much impression on you.
But as part of the No Child Left Behind, all high schools have to supply the recruiters with complete information about every kid in the school, including home address, and phone numbers. If you as a parent don’t want this, you have to opt out. They don’t mail the form to you , or tell you about it — you have to go out of your way to request it. Most parents don’t know about this until recruiters start showing up and calling.
Corinthia is absolutely right — and unless we are in the midst of a most amazing coincidence, her child’s high school is not the same high school my child went to. Yet at my child’s high school (former high school; my daughter is in college now), most parents *also* were not aware of the opt-out feature. That’s changed now, because a group of students at the school started a campaign to change OPT-OUT to OPT-IN. Now every parent gets a form at the beginning of the school year asking them to check a box if they want their child’s personal information to be given to military recruiters. No checked box, that personal info stays right where it is.
The way parents at Corinthia’s child’s school handled the situation would work, too. It’s a little more labor-intensive for the parents, but it gets the job done.
Tully — the only sections on parent notification in NCLB is 3302 — parents of non-English speaking kids, are notified of assistance under the act. And section 4153 — were parents can send in written request to exempt their kids from any part of the act.
So no schools don’t have to do opt-in legally or notifications of turning over records to the military, and since you are arguing with actual parents dealing with how the act works in the real world (and how this admin really wants it to work) not how you think it should work — well sometimes the real world doesn’t follow the rules - and parents do the best they can — in this case against their own government.
Im former active duty and very much against this war of aggression. Right now half of one percent of America is in uniform serving our county. The true cost of this war is being born by far, far too few. The quickest way to end this war is to draft every single 18 year old American for no less then two years. Then people would care about the war.
By the way the most common discussion when you are standing by to do what ever, in the military, is to compare who’s recruiter lied bigger, I always felt left out because I was dumb and went open contract, and passed all the bonus others got for doing the same job I got.
I was bothered by marine recruiters for a good two years after high school. Not just them - I was called by the Navy, the Army and the Air Force. Luckily enough for me, I had caller ID…but on a rare occasion, they’d use a cell phone.
Being the typically nice, inviting individual I am, I’d allow them to say what they wanted to say. But recruiters have too much to say. They talk, and talk - they want to get to know you. They act like they are your best friend, even if it is the first conversation you ever had with them. They are trained to utilize certain techniques which are beneficial to their goal - reaching their quota, and almost assuredly getting a bonus for going over that quote.
The fact of the matter is, I don’t want to listen to individuals talk to me about something that has interested me for years when they likely went on to wikipedia the night before to study up. I was a Liberal Arts/Humanities major at a local community college (soon to enter a real university with a cheap degree in hand) concentrated in Philosophy. Oddly enough, one of the recruiters in the "chamber" decided to bring up the subject. He asked me who my favorite philosophy was - I said Kant. He thought that was interesting because of the Categorical Imperative. If you don’t see the absolute hilarity of a soldier bringing up the categorical imperative, I’m sorry - but it’s not worth explaining in depth.
In the end, you have to be a certain type of person to even want to join the Military. They bother you and bother you until you either agree or tell them to shut the frag up. In my case, I gave them a Zen koan and drew a line between self defense and murder.
"There once was a Zen master, who lived in a small, quaint little village. On one particularly unremarkable day, it just so happened that a band of ronin samurai attacked said village. They slew every single person within it - leaving only the Zen master alive. The apparent leader of these ronin strode up to him, brandishing his katana, and spoke, "I could cut your head off without batting an eye." To which the Zen master replied, "I could let you cut my head off without batting an eye.""
Take your military drek elsewhere. All killing is murder, regardless of circumstances. This isn’t Vietnam when men were forced into situations where it was killed or be killed. This is a modern age, currently without drafting - and every single person who tries to claim that what they do is for "good" is sorely mistaken. Every American soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan, by proxy or not, willingly put themselves within the range of explosives and the sights of a hostile enemy. There is no justification for any act they commit within these wars, beyond cold blooded murder and ignorance. But, the great Buddha did say, all suffering stems from it.
Hello Tom, I separated from the military service a little bit over a year ago, and I’m currently a student in one of the most competitive business school in the nation. At the age of 24, I’m very proud of my military service, and I’m also proud of all of the amazing friends I have made during my time in the military. The majority of people who I have worked with in the military were quite intelligent, but of course there were a few who were not (just as it is in the civilian world). It is very unfortunate that you have so much hate in your heart. Hopefully one day you will appreciate the young men and women who are protecting your freedom to express yourself in such a repugnant manner.