| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Heavyrunner |
Posted - July 20 2005 : 7:39:38 PM
History tells us (actually, the Army tells us) that Custer's remains were recovered and reburied at West Point.
Do you believe this, or do you believe he's still on Last Stand Hill--and why?
My own feeling is that they had no idea, no proof of which remains they removed to West Point. On one of my visits to the battlefield, I brought this up to one of the park rangers. He told me flat out that Custer's remains were right there at LSH with the rest. |
| 25 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - January 01 2006 : 12:24:56 PM
It's something my geek did, and it has its own issues. But, you can save the page every time you exit, and if you save it under the same file name, it will update. In theory. It's computers. |
| AZ Ranger |
Posted - January 01 2006 : 01:18:41 AM
DC How did you auto-save? |
| Heavyrunner |
Posted - December 23 2005 : 1:57:50 PM
Crap...I lost about 500 words from my last response....which was in concert with your most recent, not the above...I see you've saved much of this, D.C. That makes you technologically superior to me. |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - December 23 2005 : 1:39:50 PM
So far......
Well, in Europe early on relatives were buried in graves or tombs till a few generations were gone and the tomb space needed and then the bones went to sleep with their fathers in ostuaries. Skulls here, femurs there, etc. People will their bodies to science, burn them, burials at sea, etc.
Many Indians left them on scaffolds for the wolfs, birds, bugs, anything, and desecrated each other's dead.
There is resistence to DNA studies, I read, because of that case where it was an older skeleton than Indians were thought to have been here, and that the dna wasn't Indian, and looked southeast Asian or Polynesian and here before the land bridge.
I think people are pretty much the same, and concerning anscestor worship, probably the percentages in all people break down about the same to where their feelings lie. What NA's are scared of is a theory that they are NOT the original inhabitants, and that they are, say, Babylonians and not Sumerians. They see that as a slippery slope and losing their claims. With reason.
I find it hard that people get sincerely worked up over burial of a thousand year old relative not a famous person, but maybe. I'd credit it to false sentiment.
But the skeletons of two hundred year old known people, and with relatives still living in museums (Osceola's head on a kid's bedpost....), and all that would upset anyone, and isn't that long ago. Bone near fossilized is different, I'd think.
Dark Cloud
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AZ Ranger
Sargent
USA
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Posted - Today : 09:39:02 AM Show Profile Reply with Quote
quote:There is resistence to DNA studies, I read, because of that case where it was an older skeleton than Indians were thought to have been here, and that the dna wasn't Indian, and looked southeast Asian or Polynesian and here before the land bridge....
What NA's are scared of is a theory that they are NOT the original inhabitants, and that they are, say, Babylonians and not Sumerians. They see that as a slippery slope and losing their claims. With reason.
I both agree and disagree with some of the premises for your statements. First the above quote I totally agree. If some others were here first, whomever and wherever, then the whole NA argument is less substantive. I have always wondered if the land bridge was the only way that people got here than why were South American structures so advanced. Also why wouldn't people who sailed such as the Phoenicians or Vikings have not ended up on this continent either.
Secondly the below quote. Giving your fine ability to phrase sentences in such a manner that makes it hard to argue such as "I find it hard" I will attempt to argue the postulate that people, in this case Indians, get worked up over the burial of a thousand year old relative. I believe they do. Though you state it is a false sentiment. Sentiment is not yours to define whether it true or false. Sentiment is a thought. For it to be false one have to pretend they had the thought. Currently in Arizona there is a lawsuit to prevent the use of reclaimed water to make snow on the San Francisco Peaks. There is a lot of sentiment about the Peaks being sacred and this would desecrate them. If the Navajo Nation prevails in the lawsuit they gain nothing financial but preserve their sacred mountain. The Peaks are a lot older than any bones being discussed here. My conclusion is although I may not understand it, sentiment is defined by individuals and groups of individuals in their own thought processes. Getting worked up about the burial of a thousand year old relative can be credited to sentiment. True or false is up to the individual.
quote:I find it hard that people get sincerely worked up over burial of a thousand year old relative not a famous person, but maybe. I'd credit it to false sentiment.
SEMPER FI
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
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Posted - Today : 12:38:07 PM Show Profile Visit Dark Cloud's Homepage Reply with Quote
I agree that it is presumptuous of me to judge others' feelings, but I cannot help myself being The World's Foremost Authority, and all. I'm just cynical. And apparently exhausted and incoherent when I wrote the post that last night given there's at least one sentence that makes no sense to me at all right now.
In full cynic mode, I suspect that the sacred mountain debate isn't about religion or sentiment but housed in that old legal warhorse "stare decisis," precident rules. They want to establish they can tell the feds/state to go stick it based on religious claims for land now theirs. Or, maybe it's a trade with the Sioux.
Because the Sioux would love the Black Hills back. They run aground when they claim 'ours forever given to us by the Great Spirit,' because archaeology (which they buy totally, to their credit) suggests the Hills belonged to many people before the Chippewa's drop kicked the Sioux out of Minnesota and suddenly 'forever' began a week previous.
If you have not, read '1491' by Thomas Mann. It covers all the new theories about the pre-Columbian world. In short, everything - every thing - I was taught through college about The New World was, in large part, wrong.
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
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Edited by - Dark Cloud on Today 12:38:46 PM
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Heavyrunner
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USA
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Posted - Today : 1:18:39 PM Show Profile Reply with Quote
Here in the Northwest, we experience numerous times the uncovering of Indian graves--very commonly along lakes, rivers, canyons---graves with a view,if you will. Platform burials were/are never as custom in these parts, at least not to my knowledge. As you all know, Kennewick Man caused quite a stir, including claims from Ufologists that he was from another planet. Sigh....
Funerals (I've been, sadly, to many) and burials are both Christian and traditionally tribal, surprisingly, perhaps, without confusion or conflict of religion or culture. The only difference in a reburial is that it is done, as best it can be, in same traditions and rituals as existed in the time of the deceased. As I wrote, these events are every bit as emotional as for the recently deceased and the tears, including my own, are genuine offerings.
As for the land bridge...what a bunch of malarky. People can't seem to credit American Indians with the ability to develop on their own. I'll laugh in the face of some archeologist/anthropologist who tells me that 60 million people from Alaska to the Bahamas trooped over from Siberia. That's even before a discussion about Central and South America... Land bridge? Right. And it had a sign on it--"One Way," going east...
Bob Bostwick
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
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Posted - Today : 2:05:58 PM Show Profile Visit Dark Cloud's Homepage Reply with Quote
I do not see a conflict or relationship between the land bridge - which did exist in some form - and development. Scientists sort of cheerfully currently admit that the Folsom template is wrong, and pretty clearly people came here from Africa and Polynesia and probably sailed from Asia. That the Apache and MesoAmericans and Inuits are probably the earliest known descendents, by DNA (they look alike), and there were later migrations of which Europe was the last.
The big discovery involves the effect, range, speed, and utter catastrophe of the pandemics. There is reason to believe that 95% of the New World population died out due to their extensive trading routes after Columbus got here long before Europeans knew of the existence of these peoples. It is a sad story.
I just cannot get choked up about someone who lived for 109 summers and has been dead for 10k years being found and buried again. Not even if in direct bloodline to myself. I do not think he would choke up about me, either. There is genuine emotion based on personal experience or shared times and experiences none of which would exist. I remain suspicious.
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
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Heavyrunner
Lieutenant
USA
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Posted - Today : 2:21:02 PM Show Profile Reply with Quote
D.C.,
Your sympathies are your own and I have no argument with them. Indians have deep-seated reasons for their own sympathies, worthy of respect, if not agreement.
As for the land bridge, who says it was one way? Who says boats could sail in only one direction? Civilizations on this continent, lacking horses, were technologically superior to our own European ancestors at the time of contact. No gun powder, either, which might be a signal that civilization developed sans contact or trade.
The land bridge was, in reality, a glacier. As an explanation for the existence of tens of millions of people with vastly disparate cultures, traditions and civilizations, I find it a very cheap cop out.
Bob Bostwick
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
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Posted - Today : 3:40:20 PM Show Profile Visit Dark Cloud's Homepage Reply with Quote
Depends when you're talking. It was there a long time. The new studies, for what they're worth, have pretty good indications of all land into Canada for some stretches, but a glacier works too. The point being they could do it without a boat or losing luggage at Atlanta. I don't think anyone has ever said it was one way, but there is no real evidence of backtracking, but I don't know who'd be shocked or insulted if it were proven true.
I'm unaware in what way Indians were technologically superior to Europeans. Some of them were certainly superior in urban management and farming, and they'd apparently eaten all the horses and mammoths. The pyramid terraces were lovely and all, but there's no St. Peters or art of the European level, by which no representational still life type stuff, and not because they didn't like it, they hadn't learned to do it yet.
Mass slavery like the AMericas had is usually a sign of technological deficiency. The Confederacy is a great example, by the way.
Dark Cloud
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Heavyrunner
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Posted - Today : 5:09:31 PM Show Profile Reply with Quote
The advanced civilizations I'm referring to are Aztec, Maya, Inca, Miztec, Toltec, ect.. Yes, I know about the slavery and the human sacrifice, but that was nothing new to the world...Compared to European societies not yet emerged from the Dark Ages, they looked pretty sophisticated..
As for North American tribes, I think I might prefer their social structure to that of medieval Europe--no pogroms, no inquisitions, no black death, no absolute rulers....no crowd pleasers like burning at the stake, drawing and quartering, ect., ect.
I don't think horses existed on this continent except, maybe, in miniature..and prehistorically.
As for art...I disagree. There was plenty in Central and
South America. Most was, unfortunately, destroyed or melted down by the Spanish...Now, that was a civilized bunch.
The land bridge might explain some things regarding the Inuit, Eskimos and even the Salishan tribes on the coasts of the U.S. and Canada...but it might also explain some things regarding tribes on the other side--all the way to China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia.
As for Seminoles and Penobscots, Viking and Phoenician "sea bridges" make more sense in terms of contact and/or trade.
Bob Bostwick
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
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Posted - Today : 6:23:32 PM Show Profile Visit Dark Cloud's Homepage Reply with Quote
Heavyrunner,
By paragraph.
1. But we're not talking superior civilizations. You said: "Civilizations on this continent, lacking horses, were technologically superior to our own European ancestors at the time of contact." I don't see it. Sophisticated in many ways, and healthy, but not, I don't think, technologically superior.
2. Well, we don't actually know that. No writing. No record keeping, and any revolutionaries would have become compost. So we don't know. However, public execution and torture was common here as everywhere. THAT made it on to the stone tablets.
3. Well, we're talking the land bridge, so we're talking prehistorically. There were horses and camels and all sorts of pachaderms and man apparently killed them off. No biggee. They hadn't trained the dog either, and it was kept as a food animal.
4. Well, I wasn't talking about art in general. I was talking about representational art like you find in Italian painting, Greek statuary. Perspective and representational three dimensional flat surface art was little further advanced in the New World than to Egyptians, but the sculpture and paintings they did were impressive, but 'primitive.' It's one thing to be able to do it but choose not to, but they couldn't do it.
5. Like what? They've done the DNA and found no clear sign of regurgitation back.
6. There's no mutual exclusives. I have zero problem with water traffic, and would find it ridiculous to claim that didn't happen a lot along our cooasts. It's what, ironically, makes Columbus look good. He was able to return to the same places and return to Spain often, and showed everyone else how to do it. Whatever contact by ocean there was previously to Africa and China, wherever, it seems to have been by storm, luck, or damnation, because there are no records anywhere of routine traffic till the big CC. Whatever else, Columbus was one hell of a sailor and navigator. It's a bit much to think that because his first return to Europe has proven the fastest route by current and wind that it was coincidence, since he repeated it and others had to learn. He was too good not to know early on that he'd found something new, but I suspect he feared letting that info out till he'd gotten his. Credit where due.
If we're going to chat about this we should have a separate thread.
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
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Edited by - Dark Cloud on Today 6:33:30 PM
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Heavyrunner
Lieutenant
USA
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Posted - Today : 7:19:27 PM Show Profile Reply with Quote
D.C.,
1, My problem(s) with European civilization is that it was hardly civilized, having considerably stagnated, if not regressed, since the fall of Rome. The Dark Ages were called that for a good many good reasons.. Technologically superior? I may be broad brushing, but at least they understood that the earth wasn't flat and that it revolved around the sun, rather than vice versa.
2, North American tribes were, in my opinion, the first democratic societies on earth. Socialist, probably, but democratically so.
3, I reckon there are plenty of reasons given for the end of the wooly mammoth. I don't recall "we ate 'em" as one of those reasons, although it sounds reasonable enough. I think the only camels Indians ever saw came in packages--cheaper by the carton. Horses, the ancestors of the modern animal, were a foot tall. Dogs served many purposes, including their place in a stew in times of need--still do.
There was magnificent art on both sides of the Atlantic. Like you, I prefer DaVinci, in or out of excommunication.
Like what? Looks, mostly. They're fisherman, just like the folks on the Siberian, or any, coast.
Columbus? We agree. He didn't just do it, he publicized it.
Yes, this thread has gone 'round the world from where it began. Great discussion, though.
Bob Bostwick
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
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Posted - Today : 8:52:58 PM Show Profile Visit Dark Cloud's Homepage Reply with Quote
1. Lots of inferiorities to European civilization, but I don't think you can claim technology as one. By the time of Columbus, hardly anyone, anywhere thought the earth was flat. European contact wasn't in the Dark Ages. Technology isn't that, anyway.
2. Mexico is North America, don't forget. Tribes here as anywhere tended to be be warrior oligarchies. Virtually all tribes had war slaves. Democracy? Socialism? I don't see it, but who knows.
3. Well, the first people here were Indians OR their ancestors according to current claims, so whoever slung the spear into the mammoths and camels and horses were, ergo, Indian. There are no concrete, for sure reasons for extinctions, but we know they were hunted first to last.
4. There was lots of representational art before Leonardo, whom I don't actually prefer, but he had the chops to do anything he chose. I don't think the sculptor of the Mayan temples could produce a David, but Michelangelo could have done those Mayan reliefs without much sweat because they were stylized and easy to copy for an artist.
5. Looks? Don't forget, the two peoples most different by DNA in the world are central Africans and Australian aborigines. And they look, to my caucasian eye, well nigh alike in many ways. In any case, I fail to see how being fisherman on an Asian sea coast suggests Indian Right of Return.
6. Well, yeah, but he could repeat it ad infinatum. That's the secret. Anybody can bungle their way somewhere once. He brought disease and vicious Christians and stole and plundered. But he had his good points. Any Indian tribe that produced him would have worshipped him for the gold and slaves he brought home. Indians fell over themselves to sell each other out to the Europeans. They felt no national or racial or regional unity with each other. Their civilizations were, ipso facto, inferior, and they were doomed. Just like, as I've pointed out, my blood brethren the Scots, and even the Southern States during the CW refused each other help out of jealousy and pettiness and, well, letter sweater stupidity. Inferior civilizations, each.
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
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Edited by - Dark Cloud on Today 8:54:25 PM |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - December 23 2005 : 12:36:42 PM
I guess. I'll see if autosave worked and repost as I did on the other thread. |
| Heavyrunner |
Posted - December 23 2005 : 12:22:28 PM
Admin, D.C., anyone?
Did our discussion disappear due to the Thursday site crash? |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - December 19 2005 : 4:53:16 PM
The problem is, as in that Washington case a decade ago, that ALL old bones may not be Indian. We can't tell unless we do dna tests. Indians - and whites - were thrown for a loop when it looked as if some old bones AREN'T Indian. But Indians, or at least some of their reps, insist anything pre-1492 is theirs.
And closure is an expression regarding emotional ending: knowledge your loved one is dead, and his remains, if any, are here, and you can face his shade and say in good conscience you did what you could to lay him at peace. With no or notional emotional knowledge of the individual, I don't see why it's closure or anything. |
| AZ Ranger |
Posted - December 19 2005 : 3:41:10 PM
I would suggest we need to agree on our definitions of closure. I work with both Hopi and Navajo officers and we have talked about this issue. They want the return of any human remains and won't quit pursuing the issue unto they are returned. To me, they will have closure when the remains are returned. If it also takes a changing in whites attitude regarding respect then it may never be reached. |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - December 19 2005 : 11:41:08 AM
I doubt any of them requested closure. I think they, not surprisingly, have resented being displayed as animals and subhumans and not being given the respect they feel the whites owe.
Also, it's a legal issue and political, Indian bones are considered 'their' property, and like Israel trying to find archaeological proof of their presence in Israel as a people eons ago, Indians want any evidence that their land was stolen in their hands. At one time, let's not forget, blacks were displayed in NORTHERN zoos in exhibits exactly as IF they were animals, and Indians were led in chains as war prisoners in parades. This can rankle in theory and fact, even if Indians did the same thing. |
| AZ Ranger |
Posted - December 19 2005 : 09:15:21 AM
quote:
Are the descendents of soldiers killed by Americans during our Revolution still seeking closure in England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany and demanding the dust be returned?
There is certainly many Indian tribes requesting the return of bones from museum collections. One would believe that they are seeking closure. |
| wILD I |
Posted - July 27 2005 : 1:47:50 PM
THE THIRD GENERATION????? You're morbid and bonkers. If they don't know the dead, they have no hurt to close.
Well thank you DC for that piece of intellectual guano.
Why do you assume that the only emotion envolved is grief?Why do you assume that closure only envolves the next of kin?What has time got to do with it? If they don't know the dead, they have no hurt to close.The next time you are in Arlington pay a visit to the tomb of the unknown soldier.Pause awhile maybe the inscription says " When you go home tell them of us and say - for your tomorrow we gave our today." It might just bring closure to your cynicism.
Last rites are given to the dying. It is not synonomous with burial.
On the contrary burial is a rite.
Contributed in Brazilian butterfly mode, yes.
And
It's a reference you didn't get any more than La Warlord.Oh I got it alright DC.Your problem is that in your use of language you sacrifice clarity for impact and slickness both characteristics of guano.
|
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - July 25 2005 : 2:03:01 PM
1. No, Wild. The hoopla of you and La Warlord and others is abhorrent to me. The ritual of military burial - I may have attended far more than you - is not.
2. Last rites are given to the dying. It is not synonomous with burial.
3. In the days under discussion - before the modern navy with helicopters and air transport - after the battle the morgue ship would return home with the others. Why would that be bad for morale, if you claim it as so important? Wouldn't that put everyone at peace? No more grotesque than the activity that put people on it.
4. THE THIRD GENERATION????? You're morbid and bonkers. If they don't know the dead, they have no hurt to close. The future grandchildren of people in their mostly twenties? That's grotesque, and exactly the nauseating sort of hoopla that sets me off. That is the very definition of emotional extortion. "You have to feel genuine emotion for people you never knew from Adam or you're a bad person.....and you must reward me for wearing the same uniform, or one like it, even though I never was in danger whatever."
5. That isn't even clever by Irish standards. It's a reference you didn't get any more than La Warlord. |
| wILD I |
Posted - July 25 2005 : 12:53:10 PM
All the hoopla about treating military dead with respect is a form of emotional extortion - not without reason or justice - inflicted on the nation.
You stated that treating military dead with respect was emotional extortion inflicted on the nation.
See the difference? It's the hoopla, the sentence subject, that is emotional extortion.
Of course and what does hoopla refer to?Treating the military dead with respect and if you had read my post you would have seen that I made this clear----It is plain that the ritual of respect rendered to a soldier who has given his life in the service of his country is abhorrent to you.
No, Wild, burial is not always a last rite, given many religions grant it to the temporarily living. And I do not refer to it as hoopla.
We are all temporarily living DC and I know of no religion who bury their followers alive.
Oh course, that's correct. But if people were so concerned, bodies could have been transferred for a sail home in preservative. They weren't because it wasn't expected, gross, and stupid. Only money prevented it, though.
Not good for morale to have a floating morgue trailing the fleet around.
Are the descendents of soldiers killed by Americans during our Revolution still seeking closure in England, Ireland, Scotland,
I would say the cut off point for emotional closure probably occurs around about the third generation.But then I read of cases of Australian aborigines requesting the British museum for the return of long departed ancestors who had been shiped to England and put on display.
Contributed in Brazilian butterfly mode, yes.
Well if you equate the impact of the deaths of 50000 young Americans to that of the Brazilian butterfly then I 'll take your word for it .You being American and everything.
|
| joseph wiggs |
Posted - July 24 2005 : 9:56:30 PM
Originally I truly planed to ignore D.c.'s response to his thread on U.S. policies to "soothe" plant life as I had a premonition (based on past antics) how it would turn out. Having experienced first hand his "smoking mirror" responses followed by his insatiable need to get in the last word (as witnessed by the exceeding complex exchanges between he and Wild) I was pleasantly unsurprised. A debate with this character is an exercise in futility with perpetual "Zero Returns."
When faced with accountability for the posting of some of the most bizarre threads on this forum he will do one of two things, ignore you or resort to unsubstantiated allegations of moral turpitude. I've also noticed that many members choose to ignore D.c. for the most part. Almost as if they have grown "accustomed to his face." In other words, you can not win with this guy. While others throw up their hands in utter frustration, after a merry-go-round with him, he coils in his dark cave and giggles with sheer delight. You see, D.c. is the essence of negativity. He is negativity incarnate, he thrives upon it. He finds no joy in intellectual conversation unless it is augmented by controversy which he finds exhilarating.
In reality, this forum is a magical talisman of power that affords him in audience to make him feel "good" about himself, only God knows why. How else can you account for the rubbish he comes up with?
For example, D.c., please list the U.S. policies that are designed to "soothe" plant life. Then elaborate upon the scientific study, upon which, you ascertained that plant life requires soothing. D.c.,s response to this question will fall into one, or all three of the following:
A. Wiggs, you are a liar, do you know that.(or a similar comment)
B. Wiggs, if you could read, obviously you can not, you would know that I didn't say that.(or a similar comment)
c. Not respond.
Last, but certainly not least, are you aware that your last two statements "Don't make us laugh. Or Cry" require editing? Your first statement fails to inform the reader of who or what makes us laugh about, what?
The second statement omits the subject,also where is the alternative to "cry" which is indicated by your use of "or?"
You see D.c., I realize and accept my numerous misuse of words, mis-spellings, and other errors because I am human and prone to mistakes. What I resent is you sanctimonious assumption that you do not live in a glass house, you really do.
P.S., Shockingly, I believe that this forum needs a D.c. or someone similar to him. His sheer nastiness promotes others to excel in their threads as they know that they can count on him to attempt to embarrass and harass every accidental and inconsequential error they may make.
|
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - July 24 2005 : 4:30:18 PM
1. No, Wild, I did not. What I said was "All the hoopla about treating military dead with respect is a form of emotional extortion - not without reason or justice - inflicted on the nation." See the difference? It's the hoopla, the sentence subject, that is emotional extortion. It's a major and obvious falsehood to say what you have. Nowhere have I ever said or thought "treating military dead with respect was emotional extortion."
2. No, Wild, burial is not always a last rite, given many religions grant it to the temporarily living. And I do not refer to it as hoopla.
3. Yes, they sometimes use artificial music and an artificial horn when they cannot get a real trumpeter, and someone pretends to play it.
4. Oh course, that's correct. But if people were so concerned, bodies could have been transferred for a sail home in preservative. They weren't because it wasn't expected, gross, and stupid. Only money prevented it, though.
5. "Closure is a consequence of a decent burial not the reason for it." That doesn't even rise to the level of New Age Claptrap. Are the descendents of soldiers killed by Americans during our Revolution still seeking closure in England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany and demanding the dust be returned? (Some have, I know....) You have a respectful service. You say goodbye. You honor the memory. Death is often quite sufficient closure. Most who died in Europe and the Pacific in WWII are still there, albeit many were brought to Hawaii. Yes, for the third or fourth time, funerals are different than finding the bodies and don't actually require them. They said a service at the Mary Rose, and nobody demanded they dive and bring up each and every body till Henry VIII was broke.
6. Contributed in Brazilian butterfly mode, yes. What closed the Vietnam War was the fact that after it became our longest, nobody could postulate a military goal, nobody could fathom why we were there, anymore, and nobody saw any reason to continue to prop up South Vietnamese governments by turn venal and incompetent and roundly unloved. To this day, nobody can give a good explanation for it. I understand we were there because the French wouldn't allow the rearmament of Germany unless we bailed them out of SE Asia. But I don't understand why it was excalated to no clear end, and why Presidents lied and blustered to wage a war they didn't want to fight to no clear end.
I'll never understand why McNamara and Westmoreland and those guys - upon whose lies (what Gulf of Tonkin incident??) and idiocies (let's build a jungle fort every night) many were killed to no constructive point - escaped the anger and condemnation that an idiot actress receives. |
| wILD I |
Posted - July 24 2005 : 05:41:42 AM
DC
You stated that treating military dead with respect was emotional extortion inflicted on the nation.Then you use a the term " funeral games".It is plain that the ritual of respect rendered to a soldier who has given his life in the service of his country is abhorrent to you.
So don't pretend I'm advocating no respect for the dead.Well what form of emotionless funerial would not be an infliction on your ever so grateful state?
Who is trivializing their last rites, which is a specific religious act requiring the body, or confusing it with a funeral?A burial is the last rite and you refer to it as hoopla.
Rote ritual and Taps played by artificial device screams respect to you?
"Rote ritual"is there any other sort?You're not suggesting that the US military use a gramophone?
The sea is neutral? Huh. Also? It's cheap. No need for a specific vessel to carry the dead home. If the Navy really cared, they'd have had ships for it pre-helicopter.
A ship could be in action for a month.It would not be good for morale or conditions on the ship to delay funerials.
"And it does bring closure and peace even to the generations who were born after the war." How can that be, since they suffered no hurt to close? How many generations should this go on, do you think, since you're advocating those unborn at the tragedy need closure?
Closure is a consequence of a decent burial not the reason for it.
That country who walloped us without even trying gave a naval funerial with full honours to a crew member of the Mary Rose 400 years after the ship went down with all hands.
That strikes me as a healthy and realistic way to look at the god awful results of war.
Was it not the news coverage of military funerials that contributed to the withdrawal of the US from Vietnam?
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| joseph wiggs |
Posted - July 23 2005 : 9:47:06 PM
[quote]Originally posted by Dark Cloud
Let's be honest. All the hoopla about treating military dead with respect is a form of emotional extortion - not without reason or justice - inflicted on the nation. Understandable, but we sometimes seem to spend more time and money retrieving body parts than we spend on preventing the need either by better diplomacy or better military application of force. And that's VERY Uncle Sam.
Warlord's dissection of the inexplicable logic that produced this bizarre train of thought is extremely apropos and need not be further substantiated by anything I could add. I am, however, awaiting a response to the extremely credible questions/explanation requested by Paul. It should be interesting. Having said that, I am compelled to make comment on the last paragraph of this remarkable perspective.
Death has always been viewed by mankind as the ultimate mystery. Death is feared by all who live. No matter how strong,rich,or powerful one becomes, he or she must, eventually,die. Thus, death has become respected as the great equalizer by all of us.
Death by combat is especially cruel because it strikes down the creme of society. The vibrant youth of a group. It is the bane of mothers who lose their sons all too soon. Death by combat deprives a great society of it's vast potential. While sometimes necessary, combat is the only act committed by society that is unanimously dreaded by every participant. To infer that the U.S. military, which is comprised and led by the best men and women this Country has to offer, is engaged in "hoopla" every time it attempts to retrieve the men and women who have fallen upon the Field of Honor is beyond the pale. As Wild stated, since time memorial, ancient man treated their dead with respect. I don't know what efforts were taken by the military to recover and honor the remains of those who feel upon the Custer/Indian battlefield. Certainly efforts were hampered by the realities of the situation of that era, but just as certainly the efforts were not a part of a military conspiracy to dupe the public.
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| Dark Cloud |
Posted - July 23 2005 : 9:35:28 PM
1. You do this a lot. Here I'm talking about, since you were, a policy of the US, not the funeral games. Services are given and respect shown without the body as well as with. The presence or not of the body makes it no less meaningful, does it? So don't pretend I'm advocating no respect for the dead.
2. Who is trivializing their last rites, which is a specific religious act requiring the body, or confusing it with a funeral? Rote ritual and Taps played by artificial device screams respect to you?
3. The sea is neutral? Huh. Also? It's cheap. No need for a specific vessel to carry the dead home. If the Navy really cared, they'd have had ships for it pre-helicopter. After all: why do they carry them home now if mere money wasn't the issue before? Nelson went home in a cask of Madeira. Some soldiers, at least one at the LBH, are proud to be buried where they fell, according to their family. Some aren't. Sometimes the effort to bring them home is more of a demonstration of family clout, like the size of the daughter's wedding.
4. "And it does bring closure and peace even to the generations who were born after the war." How can that be, since they suffered no hurt to close? How many generations should this go on, do you think, since you're advocating those unborn at the tragedy need closure?
This is a subject that brings out the servile in those whose self image is dependent upon being thought a soldier. I would agree, all reasonable efforts should be made to retrieve the dead, but not at the risk of more dead, or of the mission. And frankly? I'd rather every dime spent retrieving those bodies had gone into the Vet hospitals and dealt with the living. I don't know why a grave in Vietnam is worse than one in France. It's a spot forever American in a foreign land. You know: Rupert Brooke from that country that walloped Ireland year after year without respite or much energy.
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.
There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
That strikes me as a healthy and realistic way to look at the god awful results of war. |
| wILD I |
Posted - July 23 2005 : 3:06:39 PM
Let's be honest. All the hoopla about treating military dead with respect is a form of emotional extortion - not without reason or justice - inflicted on the nation.
Even the most primitive of societies treat their dead with respect.Families and communities will go through a particular funereal ritual depending on religious belief.Look at the hoopla for departed heads of state or religious leaders.The military don't hold a monopoly on pomp and circumstance.The "infliction "of a military funeral on society seem a very small price to pay for a man's life given in the service of that society.
the rest being rah-rah rhetoric to soothe the plantlife. Don't make us laugh. Or cry.
I think the US has lost 1700 young men and women in Iraq ,it is rather sad to think that there are some who would trivialize their last rites as rah-rah rhetoric.
Why decomposing in Vietnam is somehow more degrading than the ocean isn't addressed
I don't believe that where a soldier lies degrades him but to have him returned to his family can bring some small consolation.
As for burial at sea ,well the sea is neutral.
Or how the formal burial of substance no more than a finger provides "closure" or "peace" to family thirty years down the pike.
Even to this day they are still recovering crashed aircraft from the second world war and in many cases the remains of the crew.And it does bring closure and peace even to the generations who were born after the war.
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| Dark Cloud |
Posted - July 23 2005 : 11:54:14 AM
Uncle Sam has many policies, among which are some he actually believes in and acts on, the rest being rah-rah rhetoric to soothe the plantlife. Don't make us laugh. Or cry.
There's a dif between a prisoner and a corpse. We and everyone else have been nudging bodies into the ocean for centuries, so the fascination with this is highly subjective and not to be taken seriously absent immediate family.
The interest in the very small body parts retrieved in Vietnam is mostly due to politicos trying to keep anger about the war alive beyond the now muted grief of actual family, angry at the Army, government, and the Vietnamese. Why decomposing in Vietnam is somehow more degrading than the ocean isn't addressed. Or how the formal burial of substance no more than a finger provides "closure" or "peace" to family thirty years down the pike. Safe bet the dead don't care. That they did not die in vain, and that memories of them are happy would be a show of more respect, I'd think.
Let's be honest. All the hoopla about treating military dead with respect is a form of emotional extortion - not without reason or justice - inflicted on the nation. Understandable, but we sometimes seem to spend more time and money retrieving body parts than we spend on preventing the need either by better diplomacy or better military application of force. And that's VERY Uncle Sam.
It's possible even Ireland has noted this tendency in its own government? |
| wILD I |
Posted - July 22 2005 : 3:58:31 PM
What difference does it make?
I believe that Uncle Sam has a policy of leaving no soldier behind.Even today the search goes on for fallen comrades in Vietnam.It would take a man better versed in letters than I to explain the difference but it is important. |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - July 21 2005 : 9:26:19 PM
The Custers were, supposedly, buried together, but if that were so and they were uncovered as such it isn't clear from the reburial stories, is it?
We know that people like Godfrey lied outright after the battle over this sort of trivia. He started out saying there were some mutilated bodies, but some were not. Then, decades later, he started saying all of them except Custer were mutilated. This is highly unlikely, of course, but he's fibbing somewhere in there, bless his heart. He lied, and I have no trouble thinking others did as well, be they Ryan or Bradley, who was killed before he got to the LBH in his writings, leaving only his notes, with whatever cues he made. No harm was meant, and none done, actually.
If Terry and Gibbon told their guys to do the best they could burying the revolting corpses in a day and not to agonize about it, I could understand that. I'm sure they said no such thing, but I do think that was understood, however.
I don't know, nobody knows, but we can reference more modern mass internments and it's not promising that much was done whatever three days after the battle, and being the case, the detailed descriptions and satellite precision is pretty pointless but satisfies the general fussy mentality of those who confuse accumulated detail as fact. And really? What difference does it make? |
| movingrobewoman |
Posted - July 21 2005 : 6:03:59 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Heavyrunner
History tells us (actually, the Army tells us) that Custer's remains were recovered and reburied at West Point.
Do you believe this, or do you believe he's still on Last Stand Hill--and why?
My own feeling is that they had no idea, no proof of which remains they removed to West Point. On one of my visits to the battlefield, I brought this up to one of the park rangers. He told me flat out that Custer's remains were right there at LSH with the rest.
On this, I'd have to agree with Dark Cloud--that the majority of GAC (as well as the others)'s remains fell into the food chain. However, I seem to recall that Tom and Armstrong were buried together--at least initially. Or am I completely errant?
Hoka hey! |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - July 21 2005 : 3:14:00 PM
It's worth reflecting upon this. The two Custers were given the best burials with the most protection. Even so, whatever Custer got only left very little of him a year later. That can only mean his body was dug up and chomped, most likely but not necessarily by animals, and dragged about and away. After all, look at the efforts made to cover graves at other battles to prevent desecration by Sioux warriors, like at the Rosebud. It takes a believing mind to think that Sioux or Cheyenne puttering by this handy playground for desecrating enemies would let it pass unmolested. I'm looking at you, Wooden Leg. I suspect entire modern theories about firing lines are based upon these festivities.
And if that happened to those buried safest, what would that mean about the others? It must have been a gruesome sight in 1877.
In any event, it's quite possible most of Custer isn't either under the monument OR at West Point, but being passed down in a family of coyete. |
| Heavyrunner |
Posted - July 21 2005 : 2:55:27 PM
Thanks for making the discussion more interesting, fellas..
I've read some of the same reports, accounts, ect., but it was years ago and I don't have citations. So, it's helpful when those of you with research at hand can share some specifics. Thanks, again. |
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