Former President Ford Dead at 93 . . .

[NickDG 23]

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/27/D8M8VTG80.html

NickD
BASE 194

[skydemon2 0]

Wow he was still alive???

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone!

I like to start my day off with a little Ray of Soulshine™!!

[NWFlyer 2]

Quote

Wow he was still alive???

Yeah, he just recently became the oldest living President, surpassing Reagan's record.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[skydemon2 0]

A short run as the champ!

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone!

I like to start my day off with a little Ray of Soulshine™!!

[sdctlc 0]

Very sad loss but not unexpected as he has been out of the news other then reports of poor health. His much hated/disputed/critized pardon of Nixon is now looked at as one of the best things he did to help the country move on after the watergate and Nixon fiasco. Though he was the butt of SNL jokes and may not have been the most eloquient President it is safe to say he was probably the best choice for the position he found himself in.

Scott C.

"He who Hesitates Shall Inherit the Earth!"

[SpeedRacer 1]

Here's one good quote by Ford:

"A govnerment that's big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have."

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[NickDG 23]

I'm a bit surprised the death of a U.S. President garnered so little comment . . . especially this President. But I suppose the age demographic here makes him seem more like an historical figure rather than a contemporary one.

In 1974, when he became President, I was in my last year in the Marine Corps and the military draft had just ended the year before. In those days people in the military were not shy at all about voicing their opinions. A conscript service is never as compliant as an all volunteer force and we were anything but submissive.

My generation was fed the same line as the current one. We are there (enter "there" here) to liberate a people from their oppressors. However we soon realized the folly in that as freedom cannot be bestowed upon a people and cannot be paid for with the blood of others (ours). It was a political and strategic mistake and we knew it. The death toll for Marines in Vietnam was horrendous – We lost twice as many Brothers there as we did in Korea.

Many Marines I served with actually saw President Nixon as more of an enemy than China's Chairman Mao and for saying so we paid the price militarily in terms of advancement and promotion. But it didn’t matter to us. The word "wasted" was being used then, and it wasn't so much slang for being killed in combat, it was exactly what it sounded like, another American boy's life was being "wasted" for no good reason.

Anyway, too us, and no matter what type of man Ford really was, he wasn't Nixon and that was good enough for us. Ford seemed like the "everyman" that all Presidents pretend to be. Educated on a football scholarship, he became Speaker of the House when the resignation of Vice President Agnew (tax evasion) and later the resignation of President Nixon (Watergate) thrust him into the Oval Office. And Ford was the one who first said, "Our long national nightmare is over."

In those days, at least among us, it was a simpler time. There were no Democrats or Republicans, no Liberals or Conservatives, it was only the younger (us) against the older (them), and you were either idealistic or you were the Man. And I really thought (I was way too optimistic) that what happened then would prevent us from ever making the same mistake again. I never thought in just a scant 30 years we'd go from "Good Morning Vietnam" to Good Morning Iraq. Some joked at the time that we needed a Lincoln and we got a Ford, but that Ford ran just fine and when the Vietnam war finally ended in 1975 I thought we were on the road to being a truly enlightened people. But history will show we just waited a generation and found another hole to fall into . . .

In 1971-72 I'm a Marine photographer working for the military press and often went to Nixon's Western White House, which was a beach complex in San Clemente, California. I was sent there to take pictures of various occasions and events. I saw President Nixon many times over those two years and I saw him very drunk on numerous occasions. He was a gruff man behind closed doors and after I got over the fact he was the President and started looking at him as a man, the more I started to despise him. This is during a time Marines are fighting and dying for this guy's fantasies and it's what drove me over the line as far as being quite went.

Being all-volunteer the current forces probably feel limited in what they can say or do, and I applaud them for that. It's like you made your own bed, so you might as well stretch out and get comfortable. But, what does amaze me is that the "people" haven't risen up to stop this current nonsense. But the military won't be silent forever, over the next ten years or so, as they leave the service, the books and narratives will come. It will be after the fact, but it will come. It's just too bad we forgot the lessons of the Indochina war (1955 -1975) so soon and once again wasted so many American boys . . .

NickD BASE 194

[NWFlyer 2]

Quote

I'm a bit surprised the death of a U.S. President garnered so little comment . . . especially this President. But I suppose the age demographic here makes him seem more like an historical figure rather than a contemporary one.

True enough - I had just turned 6 when Ford left office, so much (if not all) of what I know of him, I learned in school or on Saturday Night Live reruns. It seems in his retirement, his wife has been the one more in the spotlight for all the great work she's done for addiction recovery programs.

Thanks for the story, though - it reminded me of the absolutely amazing Vietnam War seminar I was fortunate to be able to take in college, taught by a guy who (IIRC) was a military journalist at the time. I have no actual memories of Vietnam, but I got an interesting, and balanced, perspective on it in that class.

Quote

But history will show we just waited a generation and found another hole to fall into . . .

Quote

But, what does amaze me is that the "people" haven't risen up to stop this current nonsense. But the military won't be silent forever, over the next ten years or so, as they leave the service, the books and narratives will come. It will be after the fact, but it will come.

Perhaps one of the lessons we *did* learn from Vietnam (protest the war, not the soldier) has kept a lot of people more quiet than they might ordinarily be. The commendable goal of supporting our troops has, perhaps, taken a back seat to protesting the political decisions that got them there in the first place.

The other thing to remember, though, is that it took quite a while of being mired in Vietnam before "the people" really started to speak up as a collective whole. I think we're getting there now - the midterm elections *should* be a wake-up call, though I haven't seen much other than arrogant and stubborn clinging to the status quo from the administration so far.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke