{"id":915,"date":"2009-05-28T23:17:32","date_gmt":"2009-05-28T23:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=352"},"modified":"2009-05-28T23:17:32","modified_gmt":"2009-05-28T23:17:32","slug":"memorial-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=915","title":{"rendered":"Memorial Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Memorial Day I talked with a Vietnam veteran at length. \u00a0 He did two tours of duty. \u00a0 On the second tour, he was out in the field with his platoon. \u00a0 A 10-year-old North Vietnamese girl approached. \u00a0 He said he sensed danger, but “gave her the benefit of the doubt.” \u00a0 She pulled out a pistol and shot him in the head. \u00a0 She died seconds later in a hail of gun fire. \u00a0 He was in a coma for five weeks, came out of it and eventually recuperated. \u00a0 He said of the girl that he could understand. \u00a0 That is, they were an “occupying” force and there was a good possibility she had watched her parents, brothers, sisters, relatives… killed. \u00a0 “She was probably numb to life at that point,” he said. \u00a0 This man came back to the states and for 10 years lived under a bridge in Cleveland, year round. \u00a0 He had developed an extreme case of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. \u00a0 Like the girl, he had become numb to life. \u00a0 When they say: “War is Hell,” it is. \u00a0 And that we’re not doing more to stop it through way<\/em> more sacrifice and tremendously increased worldwide humanitarian aid is, well, a monumental social justice tragedy each of us will have to account for some day. \u00a0 (Read: at Judgement). \u00a0 Meanwhile many of us head off to the next Memorial Day picnic with the hot dogs, the frisbees and hardly a second thought about what the day is really<\/em> about. \u00a0 Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 We are trying to raise donations for our next tour: Schriner Presidential Election Committee, 2100 W. 38th St., Cleveland, Ohio 44113.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Memorial Day I talked with a Vietnam veteran at length. \u00a0 He did two tours of duty. \u00a0 On the second tour, he was out in the field with his platoon. \u00a0 A 10-year-old North Vietnamese girl approached. \u00a0 …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}