{"id":28607,"date":"2012-02-04T14:44:24","date_gmt":"2012-02-04T18:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=28607"},"modified":"2012-02-04T15:23:21","modified_gmt":"2012-02-04T19:23:21","slug":"the-parade-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=28607","title":{"rendered":"The parade train"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Associated Press<\/a> reports that organizers of the Saint Louis “welcome home” parade for Iraq veterans are getting inquiries from other cities to have their own parades;<\/p>\n

Organizers of the parade that drew an estimated 100,000 observers and 20,000 participants in St. Louis on Jan. 28 said Friday that they have been approached by people from Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Tucson, Ariz., Nashville, Tenn., Greensboro, N.C., and Clinton, Iowa.<\/p>\n

“The revolution for America to rally in support of our troops has just begun,” said Tom Appelbaum, who along with his friend, Craig Schneider, came up with the idea for the St. Louis parade and pulled it off within a month.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Paul Rieckhof of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America wrote in the Huffington Post<\/a> yesterday that if New York City and Boston can afford parades for their Super Bowl champions, they can afford parades for the Iraq champions;<\/p>\n

Getting Super Bowl-champ football players a parade in their hometowns is never an issue. But Iraq War veterans? They deserve a little praise, too. They answered our country’s call, and in the least, they survived. But for some reason, they’re running into all kinds of resistance. Last week, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg said that a parade “would be premature while so many troops are still in harm’s way around the world.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I appreciate the sentiment, I’d rather see the effort to have a parade that would bring those Americans who haven’t been so connected to the events that were perpetrated in our name feel like they did something go towards making veterans feel at home with efforts to help them get back into society. The unemployment rate of veterans, the suicide rates of recent veterans, the erosion of our health benefits all show how thin the appreciation for the job that Iraq veterans really is.<\/p>\n

I get the impression that some people, like Rieckhof, think that parades and organizing for parades will somehow cleanse them of their bad behavior that extended these wars. Remember how we wrote about IAVA and the way they spend their money<\/a>, and how IAVA only had one paid veteran on their masthead – that veteran was Rieckhof. And how Rieckhof started OpTruth<\/a> to undermine the war effort in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Now he want to shame American cities into having parades…nothing more than symbols. No one wants the troops to be honored more than me, that’s what this blog has always been about. But I, and I suspect you, want more than pretty words and fluttering banners behind martial music. I want actions that speak louder than words. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Associated Press reports that organizers of the Saint Louis “welcome home” parade for Iraq veterans … The parade train<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iava","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}