Gathering of Eagles September 15, 2007

Americans?...
or America Haters?

Why will I be in Washington DC next weekend? Because I refuse to allow the troops of today, to be treated as the fine people who fought in Vietnam.

It's already happening again...but I hear the voices that speak softly from the dark granite of The Wall..."never again".

Just because I wasn't there, doesn't mean I don't care.

Whatever your position on this war...we are THERE...NOW. To abandon the mission is to disrespect all those who have died for it.

Just look at the groups that are protesting next weekend...A.N.S.W.E.R., BlackBloc, Code-Pinko, etc, etc... They're NOT "for" America...they're NOT "for" "the troops". No matter how much you may want to believe that they are. Their core beliefs and principles are FOR the defeat of America, and the defeat of our military...and an END to both. One doesn't "support the troops" by desecrating their memorials, by burning them in effigy, by marching against their commander and their mission, by shiite-ing on their flag!

Look at the pictures above and you tell me...which group is really on the side of freedom?

Victory. Victory. NOTHING LESS THAN VICTORY.

How can you be "for" America and the troops, and want anything else?

The following is written by a Vietnam vet...and a proud member of The Gathering of Eagles...it's not too late for YOU to make a difference...this guy says it all...

Robert Cody said:

Vietnam Vets, Who We Are

Vietnam veterans are men and women.

We are dead or alive, whole or maimed, sane or haunted.
We grew from our experiences or we were destroyed by them and we struggled to find some place in between.

We lived through the hell of Vietnam and we had a pleasant, if scary, adventure.
We were Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Red Cross and civilians of all sorts. Some of us enlisted to fight for God and Country, and some were drafted.
Some were gung-ho, and some went kicking and screaming.

Like veterans of all wars, we lived a tad bit–or a great bit–closer to death than most people like to think about. If Vietnam vets differ from others, perhaps it is primarily in the fact that many of us never saw the enemy or recognized him or her. We heard gunfire and mortar fire but rarely looked into enemy eyes.
Those who did, like folks who encounter close combat anywhere and anytime, are often haunted for life by those eyes, those sounds, those electric fears that ran between ourselves, our enemies and the likelihood of death for each of us…
or we got hard, calloused, and tough. All in a day's work.

Life's a bitch then you die.
Most of us remember and get twitchy, worried, sad or filled with fear.
We are crazies dressed in cammies or jungle fatigues, wide-eyed, wary, homeless, and drunk.
We are Brooks Brother’s suit wearers, doing deals downtown. We are housewives, and grandparents and even church deacons. We are college professors engaged in the rational pursuit of the truth about the history of politics or culture of the Vietnam experience.

And we are sleepless…often sleepless. We pushed paper; we pushed shovels. We drove jeeps, operated bulldozers, built bridges; we toted machine guns through dense brush, deep paddy, and thorn scrub. We lived on buffalo milk, fish heads and Rice, C-rations or steaks and Budweiser. We did our time in high mountains drenched by endless monsoon rains or on the dry plains or on muddy rivers or at the most beautiful beaches in the world. We wore berets, bandanas, flop hats, and steel pots. Flak jackets, canvas, rash and rot. We ate quinine and got malaria anyway. We got shots constantly but have diseases nobody can diagnose. We spent our nights on cots or shivering in foxholes filled with waist high water or lying still on cold wet ground, our eyes imagining Charlie behind every bamboo blade. We slept in hotel beds in Saigon or barracks in Thailand or in cramped ships' berths at sea.

We feared we would die or we feared we would kill. We simply feared, and often we still do. We hated the war or believe it was the best thing that ever happened to
us. We blame Uncle Sam or Uncle Ho and their minions and secretaries and apologists for every wart or cough or tic of an eye. We wonder if Agent Orange got us. Mostly–and this I believe with all my heart–mostly, we wish we had not been so alone.
Some of us went with units; but many, probably most of us, were civilians one day, jerked up out of "the world," shaved, barked at, insulted, humiliated, de-agonized and taught to kill, to fix radios, to drive trucks. We went, put in our time, and were equally ungraciously plucked out of the morass and placed back in the real world of our own nation where we were more hated than by the enemy we fought

Now and then we smoked dope, shot dope, or drank heavily. Our Wives, husbands or friends seemed distant and strange and still do at many times. Our family lives have been shattered and this still happen because of the difficulty to understand the emotions of the Vietnam veteran and their war.
Our friends wanted to know if we shot anybody. And life went on, had been going on, as if we hadn't been there, as if Vietnam was a topic of political conversation or college protest or news copy, not a matter of life and death for the tens of thousands.

Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country, proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently. What makes us different–what makes us Vietnam vets–is something we understand, but we are afraid nobody else will. But we
appreciate your asking. Vietnam veterans are white, black, beige and shades of gray. Our ancestors came from Africa, from Europe, and China. Or they crossed the Bering Sea Land Bridge in the last Ice Age and formed the nations of American Indians, built pyramids in Mexico, or farmed acres of corn on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. We had names like Rodriguez, Stein, Smith and Kowalski. We were Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Koreans; but most Vietnam veterans are Vietnamese. We were farmers, students, mechanics, steelworkers, nurses, and priests when the call came that changed us all forever. We had dreams and plans, and they all had to change…or wait. We were daughters and sons, lovers and poets, beatniks and philosophers, convicts and lawyers. We were rich and poor. We were educated or not. We grew up in slums, in hacks, in duplexes, bungalows and houseboats, hooches and ranches. We were cowards and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the next. Many of us have never seen Vietnam before. We waited at home for those we loved. And for some of us, our worst fears were realized. For others, our loved ones came back but never would be the same. We came home as some marched in protest. And others in veteran’s parades, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear. Or we sat alone in small rooms, in VA, Naval, and Army hospital wards, in places where only the crazy ever go. We are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Confucians, Buddhists and Atheists though as usually is the case, even the atheists among us sometimes prayed to get out of there alive.
We are hungry, and we are sated, full of life or clinging to death. We are injured, and we are curers, despairing and hopeful, loved or lost. We got too old too quickly, but some of us have never grown up. We want, desperately, to go back, to heal wounds, revisit the sites of our horror, or we want never to see that place again, to bury it, its memories, it’s meaning.

We want to forget and yet we wish we could remember. Despite our differences, we have so much in common. There are few of us who don't know how to cry, though we often do it alone when nobody will ask "what's wrong?" We're afraid we might have to answer.

I'm a Vietnam Veteran; and, after 40 years, and after the First Gathering in Washington DC at the Vietnam Memorial Wall on March 17, 2007 I finally understood what that means.

And now as we again Gather this Sept 15th we shall stand as a family, as one in honor as we make it known and clear that we will not allow anyone nor any group to do to these men and women of honor who now fight or who have returned home to do what they then did to us those many years ago.

God Bless Our Military
God Bless The American Patriots
And May God Protect and Bless Us On Our Mission this September 15th, 2007

Robert Cody Griffith “The Grunt”

Wounded in action 17 Aug. 1967
B.Co. 3rd Blt. 3rd Marines
Quang Tri Providence, Vietnam

A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America," for an amount of "up to and including my life."
That is honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.

- Author unknown