Quote:
Originally posted by KSigkid
This is a slight hijack/off the topic post, but something I've noticed with mothers of Vietnam vets is there was an assumption by many that their sons wouldn't come back. My father, father-in-law and many of my father's friends went to Vietnam, and in almost of all cases their parents sold many of their belongings. The assumption was that there was a good chance their sons wouldn't be returning.
This is purely an observation, so I'm not sure how credible my small sample size is, but I thought it was interesting.
You're right, Mrs. Sheehan is absolutely not the only one - all one need do is go to an anti-war protest anywhere in the country, and you're likely to run into someone who feels the same way that she does.
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I never thought about it like that, but you're on to something. I think that most of today's young servicemen enlisted before 9/11, so they and their families had no idea that war was even a possibility. It's weird--one of our family friends lost her son in Iraq, and now she's on a mission (I kid you not) to get him canonized (!), and lo and behold, there is a group of mothers out there trying to do the same thing. My hometown is in a military area, so it's not as if these are a bunch of wacky liberals.
I asked my parents if they knew anyone who reacted like this when they lost someone in Vietnam, and it just seemed like everyone was more prepared for what could happen.