re: Most. Clueless. Post. Ever

Dear Pete. I read with rapt fascination your comments on the story that the Army is considering making a military theme park at Fort Belvior, Va. (I linked it, I know you're too busy to trouble with such frivolities). I walked away truly baffled. I guess we have different dictionaries with which to define the words we use when we write. Mine is written by Miriam Webster. You may have heard of him. Webster's defines "disgusting" as:

to provoke to loathing, repugnance, or aversion : be offensive to

Now, that may perfectly define some's opinion of military, but it by no means defines the professional military tradition of our defenses forces. In fact, the values instilled in young men and women in the military are precisely the values that families struggle to teach their kids every day.

Values like duty, honor, respect, sacrifice, courage, professionalism, mercy, integrity.

And as such, these family values should be celebrated, and even used as family entertainment. Americans should learn what it's like to be a military soldier. Understand the culture, the life they live, the sacrifices they are not only called upon to make but volunteer to do so.
And there's nothing wrong with understanding the equipment they use.

I do have some ideas of my own to add to the military theme park. In addition to learning what it's like to drive a tank or fire a B17 waist gun, perhaps the Army could add an exhibit where visitors and guests could walk down a mock airline terminal while theme park employees spit on them and call them "baby killers." Other guests would be encouraged to join in!

Then, perhaps guest can look out that same Walter Reed Hospital window facade to see people like you protesting them for their service to this great country.

Then they could roll those wheelchairs down the hospital corridors reading posted letters from the children of left leaning teachers accusing them of war crimes and with words of encouragement like "I hate you" and "only a few of you will come home alive."

Guests could then wander the streets of Baghdad wondering why some of the very Americans who claim to "support the troops" are doing everything in their power to give the enemy hope and courage to kill as many of them as they can in the hopes of cutting and running. Guests could also imagine what life was like in Baghdad under the previous management - being whisked away in the middle of the night, tossed in rape rooms and wood chippers while their family is forced to watch.

They could also discover a mock mass grave filled with Iraqi civilians who simply disappeared in the middle of the night, and have their children spend several days in a prison so they can know what it's like to experience a childhood as a prisoner because their parents dared to speak out against Saddaam Hussein.

Finally, guests could sit in a theater and see campaign commercial which shows flag draped coffins as a desparate attempt to curry political gain.

You are right, Pete, the possibilities are endless in learning what's like to be a soldier in America.