My father is a D-Day veteran. He and his men made it from the landing craft, past the tank entrapments, through the high-tide, chest-deep water, onto the beach, over the long sand stretch to the “Shingles” area (smooth stones collected against a low berm), and on through the marsh area to scale the cliff zone to the top where the Germans of the 352nd were in fortified bunkers, mowing down our brave men.

That area where my father took the high ground, off the beachhead, is now the famous cemetary, Collville Sur Mer (Normandy American Cemetery), and has 9,387 burials of US service men and women.

Sur we want to hear your words of wisdom. They are protected by the sacrifices of those who come before you.

I read both sides of the aisle on this one. You people remind me of a group that made a few thousand copies of an anti war commercial that was playing off the old “This is drugs, this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs” The commercial was sent by the thousand to the first gulf war, and in summary, compared a bungling non experienced American soldier tripping over himself and dropping his gear all over the place, to a “seasoned” combat veteran Iraqi soldier who was shooting moving and communicating. It ended with them zipping a body bag shut on the American Soldier and saying “Get the picture?”

Now, I am just another stupid knuckle dragging pointy ender, and of course know nothing about war, or how it’s end is achieved. So just for my own personal education, how many wars have been started, fought by a military, and then won by the civilians talking? Seriously, I am hoping you can name a few. Before you say “Korea” please remember that technically, that war has not ended, and a state of war still exists; American Soldiers and ROK soldiers have died by the dozens since the cessation of formal hostilities at the 38th parallel.

Stop lauding Ambassador Karl Eikenberry as some genious Military Officer. I served with him when he was a Major in the US Army in the late 80′s in Vicenza Italy. He was considered the worst officer in the entire Airborne Combat Team by every enlisted soldier there. Believe it or not, the enlisted opinion of it’s officers counts for a lot; He did not have anything to do with the soldiers while he was there, and was nothing but a politically minded career officer, only interested in assignments and positions that would advance his career. On deployments he never slept in the field with us, but instead opted to sleep in the officers quarters where is was warm and dry.

He is NOT an Afghanistan Expert, he is a CHINESE expert, and trust me, the Chinese are as different from the Afghanis as the Chinese are from the Russians.

I respect your goals, and they are applaudable when applied to a common civilization that has common goals, and only needs to work out a few differences here and there; Things that can be applied to a common interest and worked out over a table with the extensive boring repetitive talk that is called diplomacy. (Yes, I have attended a few of these talks, and it took all the military discipline I had to not fall asleep during the talks. The same thing said over and over and over to each other, neither side budging or changing anything but a word or two here and there for hours, days at a time.)

The problem is, when dealing with dictators and terrorists, talk is what they are going to use while they push further and further to accomplish their personal goals. I say personal, because dictators never work for or think of the people, but only themselves. How do you negotiate or compromise with that? The answer is, just as Major Brown said, with a 30k bomb that will threaten their power to control the masses.

By the way, dismissing terrifying historical references like Adolf Hitler with a comment like “As soon as you mention Hitler, you have lost the debate” is one: An easy way to cop out on a possible error in your strategy, and not something you want ot overlook if you want to win, and two: How things like what were done by Hitler get repeated.

Major Diggs Brown knows EXACTLY how to deal with the problems we are dealing with right now. I am sorry, but your ideas and strategies are not going to work when trying to deal with a group of people who hate you simply because you go to a different church, what you are missing between your legs, or what is not long enough on your face.

As debates go, you lost this one with Congressional Candidate Brown, not because you are stupid or wrong, but because in the end, you tried to argue against first hand experience with old world opinion or philosophy from those who only spoke from Theory.

Hello,

I could not disagree more with Mr. Brown’s condescending responses to this organizations questions.

This line in particular is so annoying and inaccurate:

“So let’s dispense with the usual political double-talk. I’m a Green Beret. You’re something called “Peace Action West”. This is not going to be pretty.”

My mom is currently a colonel in the Air Force and a Veteran of three wars (she is stationed at the Air Force Academy in the Springs) and she agrees with nuclear disarmament. I hate the argument that military folk can’t be a part of the peace movement. Brown is just plain wrong.

“Let’s be honest, have any of you have ever been to Afghanistan? Have any of you ever fired a weapon (or had one fired at you)? Have any of you have seen what the Taliban and Al Qaeda are doing to innocent civilians?”

Again: Yes, my mom has been to Iraq and is on her way to Afghanistan and she has seen how ineffective we really are there. She has explained to me that what we are doing in both Iraq and Afghanistan is in total opposition to what she learned in Air War college at the Academy. Why doesn’t Mr. Brown do a little research before he decides to speak for everyone in the military and the peace movement.

Thanks for enlightening us: No one in my family is voting for you.

Best,
Karen

My comment was not posted and yet many posts from people who agreed with Mr. Brown showed up after mine. And so, I posted this:

I see that if you agree with Mr. Brown your comment goes up right away and if you don’t agree, you’re supposedly left in limbo, better known as “your comment is awaiting moderation.” I thought Mr. Brown was a true American who believes in free speech and Democracy? I guess Mr. Brown doesn’t like to listen to his constituents let alone those from military families. That’s fine, If he doesn’t want to publish different points of view from his own then maybe someone else in the media would like to hear about the thoughts of military families and what they think of Mr. Brown.