The ironic truth of the Hofstra incident

The video below the jump is from Democracy Now!, one of those so-called independent news services who thinks that  independence means to just be contrary all of the time. The video is of the IVAW protest at Hofstra University nearly two weeks ago.

You don’t need to watch the whole thing, just from :10 – :15 when Mattis Chiroux says “…this government is not listening to or taking care of it’s veterans as it promised to do when we all enlisted….” First of all, I don’t remember the government ever promising to listen to me when I enlisted. Secondly, isn’t it a little odd that Matthis Chiroux is talking about enlistment promises when he claims he was recalled while still under contract to the Army and broke his promise to fullfil his obligations? Are we just supposed to expect promises to be kept just one way?

All of this blather about “fully funding the VA” is just that – blather. I watched VA improve exponentially in the last eight years. I’ve watched adjudication waiting lists shrink like never before. The Bush administration has doubled the budget of the VA and the rolls of eligible veterans has grown from among veterans of the Vietnam Era and forward. So please, if you want to lobby for more, go ahead, but don’t say that John McCain and President Bush haven’t done anything for veterans. Because that makes you a liar.

Now, if you want to see the horse stomping, it happens at about 4:26 into the video. It clearly shows the police asking protesters to disperse and when they don’t, the mounted police walk their horses into the crowd (not charged as it’s been alleged here). The crowd, instead of moving away from the horses, moved towards the horses, clearly antagonizing police who are only trying to restore order outside the building in which the future president of the United States was speaking at the time.

As I wrote earlier today, being a veteran doesn’t give you a license to act like a buffoon. Whether the police support veterans or not is irrelevant. They have a job to do – just like folks in the military have a job to do. I’m sure none of the veterans in that crowd who were in Iraq and Afghanistan ever thought once about telling the terrorists that they support their cause and laying down their weapons in the middle of a firefight. I wish some of them had, actually.

And yes, I take a certain measure of pleasure in the fact that Nick Morgan got stomped for not complying with the authorities. Maybe the next nimrod will think twice before defying the police (but I seriously doubt it). Maybe Nick getting injured will save a life.

And the yammering about how veterans should love each other is bullshit, too. I’ve already experienced what IVAW thinks of veterans who don’t think like them – I’ve experienced the threats of violence first hand both on the internet and in person. When the love goes both ways, tell me about it.

But, anyway, this isn’t the end of civilization as it’s being claimed by the intellectually stunted Left. It’s about time the police started enforcing the laws to protect those of us who’ve always been truly peaceful. That’s what I applaud – enforcing the law so peace returns.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Politics