{"id":29996,"date":"2012-05-17T10:06:46","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T14:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29996"},"modified":"2012-05-17T10:08:07","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T14:08:07","slug":"another-ivaw-to-toss-his-army-service-ribbon-at-nato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29996","title":{"rendered":"Another IVAW to toss his Army Service Ribbon at NATO"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Thanks to a link from Rurik, MSNBC introduces us to yet another member of the IVAW who wants to be public about reenacting the John Kerry Memorial Medal Toss this weekend. This one is Steven Acheson and here’s his profile at IVAW;<\/p>\n

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He says that Kris Goldsmith brought him into IVAW, but Kris left<\/a> when he realized that IVAW was more about the personalities and not the movement. <\/p>\n

By the end of my tour, I didn’t learn to hate the people of Iraq, I began to hate the powers in America that lied to us and put us there in the first place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I didn’t realize that hatred was necessary to be a soldier. In fact, I saw thousands of pictures of our troops in Iraq handing out candy and hugs to the Iraqi children.<\/p>\n

But Acheson explains why he’s going to toss his ribbon at NATO;<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like this is a really good way for me to kind of, not clear my conscience, but just make a step in the direction of healing and kind of reconciling with the Afghan people and the Iraq people,\u201d said Acheson, a 27-year-old college student from Wisconsin and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, which includes soldiers who served in any of the post- 9\/11 conflict zones, \u201c\u2026 and let them know that we\u2019re standing by their side and we\u2019re not standing with NATO anymore. We don\u2019t agree with the policies that are driving these wars.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, good step, wrong direction. Our buddy, Troy Steward of You Served<\/a> comments in the MSNBC article;<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re as much of a disgrace as the veterans back in the Vietnam days that did the same thing,\u201d said retired Army 1st Sgt. Troy Steward, of New York, who served 22 years and is now a military blogger. \u201cIf these veterans aren\u2019t proud of the service that they did \u2026 then they should never have accepted them (medals) in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steward, 43, who served in Afghanistan, said the action was \u201cdisgraceful and disrespectful\u201d to others who had served. While the veterans were welcome to express their opinions, he said, there were a lot of \u201cbetter ways to do it than essentially shaming your military service and your brethren.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, I don’t understand why these guys always say that they’re ashamed of their military service, yet they still wear their uniforms, or the remnants thereof. or why they still have their medals that they’re so eager to toss for a political statement. Seems to me that if they’re so ashamed they wouldn’t even have the stuff anymore. And I’m particularly disturbed that the media thinks they’re relevant at all to the discussion. Throwing their medals didn’t alter our course in Vietnam and it certainly won’t affect the policy in Afghanistan, which is geared towards withdrawal at this point anyway. It’s just so much mental masturbation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to a link from Rurik, MSNBC introduces us to yet another member of the IVAW … Another IVAW to toss his Army Service Ribbon at NATO<\/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":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ivaw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29996","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=29996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}