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A Soldier's Story: powerful stuff

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by JackS, Jan 4, 2007.

  1. JackS

    JackS Member

    http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061211/soldiers_story
     
  2. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Thanks for posting that, Jack.

    The part where he talks about blaming neither the Iraqis nor the American soldiers was heartbreaking.
     
  3. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    He lost me right here:

    I've never understood the fashion of Americans bashing Americans, but even by that low standard, this is absurd. Has anyone on this board ever heard an American say something like that?

    But of course, to most Nation readers, it's something that just MUST be true. All those ignorant rednecks out in flyover country, y'know.
     
  4. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    M_W --

    Did you have any thoughts on the rest of the piece? Or were you content to attack one statement of opinion and the source?
     
  5. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    Regardless of anyone's politics, I thought this was a really nice piece in the Times last week, about a father's journal to his newborn son, which his furiously finished before he was killed in Iraq. The story was written by his wife, a Times editor.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/us/01charles.html
     
  6. Jones

    Jones Active Member

    That's one of those stories that has so much good in it and so much bad in it, at the end you're just like, Oh, hell.
     
  7. Ashy Larry

    Ashy Larry Active Member

    I've heard or witnessed some Americans speak about vacationing abroad and complain that the citizens of the country they visited didn't speak english, or make any effort to speak english.
     
  8. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    Complaining that the people in a foreign country don't speak English is a long way from assuming those people are idiots or mentally handicapped.

    And Zeke, when I wrote "he lost me," I meant I immediately closed my Mozilla tab. I don't have any respect for someone who could write something like that, regardless of how beautiful and moving the rest of it may be.
     
  9. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    The subject matter? Or the construction of the story? Just curious.
     
  10. Jones

    Jones Active Member

    Oh, yeah, kind of confusing... I meant the subject matter. (I thought the story was really nicely written.) I mean, here you have an obviously good man, doing this wonderful thing for his baby, and you have that moment in Central Park, the no charge moment, and you think, People are capable of such good. And then you remember that the story exists only because this guy has been killed in a country where a lot of people are being killed. It's not a political thing. It's just a sadness thing.

    Dads with babies, especially, will be hit pretty hard by the story.
     
  11. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Lots of people think that way -- especially the Americans who have no interest in learning any other language themselves.
     
  12. audreyld

    audreyld Guest

    There are a good many in said flyover states -- and I'm proud to hail from one of those states -- who DO believe just that. They also believe, and I've heard it voiced, that people should speak English without an accent. Nevermind that that accent means the person speaking speaks at least one more language than you do.

    Finish the piece. It's a worthwhile read.
     
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