Your WTF for Today

H/T to Blackfive and Big Peace for this one.

The city of Fayetteville, NC, which is the town next to Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base, is planning a big festival to celebrate veterans of the Vietnam war.  Admirable, if a bit late. The vets,who weren't exactly treated well when they came home, certainly deserve it.

Fort Bragg and Pope AFB, for those not familiar with them, are home to the 82nd Airborne Division, the XVIII Airborne Corps, and the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, as well as several other units.  These units, and Bragg itself, have a long history of being the first into the fire for our country.  Bragg has been 'home' to a lot of soldiers who have gone to fight our wars since the First World War, including Vietnam, so I can see why the town fathers would want to hold a celebration of the Vietnam vets.

The mayor of Fayetteville, however, seems to have forgotten to take his medicine lately.  He's inviting members of Quaker House, an organization that vigorously protested the Vietnam War, to participate in the festivities.  Quaker House, who I must point out had every right to protest the war itself, but seems to have chosen to include protesting the troops involved in the war, plans to not only attend, but also to show several anti-war films to the crowds.  Just what a group of aging veterans want to see and remember, films of Jane Fonda sitting on anti-aircraft guns that shoot at our planes and consorting with the soldiers that our troops were fighting.


Ahem....





Someone in Fayetteville needs to spend a little time with their mayor and remind him why his little city isn't even more of a jerkwater than it already is.   It's a craphole that was only saved from oblivion because Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt used placement of Army posts as a way to lift up depressed economic areas.  Read "We can't get anything useful out of this area, let's use it to train people to blow stuff up!".

The veterans he's dishonoring by inviting those who questioned their honor kept his little flyspeck of a cesspool from blowing away back in the day. Our currently serving troopers continue to support his little enclave of pawn shops, strip joints, and tattoo parlors by living in what amounts to off post housing and buying their groceries from the good citizens of Fayetteville.    Maybe he ought to show a little more respect and thankfulness to those who pay his salary and keep his children safe at night.



Deep breath.....  OK

If Quaker House has the bad taste to show up, then I hope that the gathered vets and their families give them the treatment the deserve:  a respectful view of their backs as they are completely ignored.  Don't give them even the satisfaction of acknowledging their existence.  And maybe that should go double for Mayor Chavonne.