From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 10:16:33 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Clinton Sells Arlington Burials (fwd)
Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19971123020247.006c67e8@pop.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Jim Choate chided Dimitri:

>You moron, it has *NOTHING* to do with the military. IT HAS to do with
>citizens who died in the service of their country. The not so surprising
>fact is that the vast majority of those eligible are soldiers. The cemetary
>recognizes their INDIVIDUAL sacrifice and NOT anything to do with the US
>Government per se. Selling burial plots at Arlington should involve
>impeachment.

I agree with Jim's acknowledement of citizen sacrifice. However, Arlington,
like all military cemetaries, is maintained by DoD for its own purposes
beyond recognition of the citizen-soldier. You bet it sells plots to sell plots.

Some citizen-soliders, I'm one, wish to have no association with military 
monuments due to inside knowledge of what the military and its advocates
are up to. Better to be buried unmarked in potter's field than near the
grotesque themepark of The Unknown Soldier and its strutting guards.

I wonder if any of the dead, if they had a say, would wish to be 
used for that purpose, or if its only the families and patriotic hustlers
who have a stake in prettifying the horrible truth: that giving one's life, 
a leg, an arm, a belief in valor and sacrifice, for a treacherous, militaristic 
nation and economy is a nasty deal, no matter how it's monumentalized 
with zillions of white headstones arrayed in sylvan vales like gullible 
soldiers going to kill and die in bloody ignorance.

Even morons grasp that these dishonorable plots are recruiting scams 
cooked up by the living up to no good.

Excuse me for losing it, don't want a war over honor, some pissed vet
to gore me with his pegleg badge of valor, some chickenshit reservist 
to earn a stripe.