Soldier's KIA Family by 1st Class Passengers

rolivi said:
Condone it? I guess so. Whenever I travel with them they "let" me make the arrangements so they will be sitting with me. Could even go so far as to say they enjoy it.
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And all of this is done so that they can enjoy watching you disrespect families of KIAs? how often are you a dick?
 
@MauleSkinner - That's twice. I let it go the first time since you are obviously impassioned about the family in this particular story.

We can disagree about appropriate times and places to honor service members and their families. We can also disagree about efficient transportation.

All your civility and respect for the group you support goes out the window when you are unable to make a point without name calling,
 
denverpilot said:
Referring to all of them. Congress hasn't voted to declare war, constitutionally, in many decades.
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Surprise, surprise, surprise, Nate is making a pedantic point that is completely irrelevant. The "cowards" in congress approved military action in both Iraq and Afghanistan. That they didn't use the phrase "declaration of war" in the title of the bill is irrelevant to everyone except him.
 
172andyou said:
Surprise, surprise, surprise, Nate is making a pedantic point that is completely irrelevant. The "cowards" in congress approved military action in both Iraq and Afghanistan. That they didn't use the phrase "declaration of war" in the title of the bill is irrelevant to everyone except him.
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Approved limited military action and haven't won in either theater yet. Like dad said, same **** different decade.
 
denverpilot said:
Approved limited military action and haven't won in either theater yet. Like dad said, same **** different decade.
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No foreign power has EVER been able to hold that land, the best bet was the English back when the had Gatling guns and the Mid East folks stil had zillion foot long muzzle loaders and swords, if they couldn't do it then, ain't going to happen now.

It's great for the millitary profiteers, it's really an un winnable war, they could keep our forces there for the next 100 years and it would still be the same, rich get richer at the cost of civilians lives over there, our boys sent over there, and our economy over here, but hey baby needs a new pair of...condos and private jets, and don't worry about your son who was blown to pieces invading another mans land, here's a gold star
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James331 said:
No foreign power has EVER been able to hold that land,
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Yes, technically "same ****, different century" but who's counting?

If one isn't a student of history, we watched the Russians operate there in the 80s, and go home defeated, in our lifetimes.

There isn't, and won't be, any workable plan to win there.
 
denverpilot said:
Yes, technically "same ****, different century" but who's counting?

If one isn't a student of history, we watched the Russians operate there in the 80s, and go home defeated, in our lifetimes.

There isn't, and won't be, any workable plan to win there.
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Our son's unit is looking at deployment in the next 24 months. We are hopeful that he isn't sent to the graveyard of empires.
 
denverpilot said:
Yes, technically "same ****, different century" but who's counting?

If one isn't a student of history, we watched the Russians operate there in the 80s, and go home defeated, in our lifetimes.

There isn't, and won't be, any workable plan to win there.
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Exactly.



Jay Honeck said:
Our son's unit is looking at deployment in the next 24 months. We are hopeful that he isn't sent to the graveyard of empires.
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:(
If I had my way, he'd stay stateside and actually be in a position to defend the country, maybe help fight Mother Nature this winter a little too and help his neighbors.
 
Put me in the category of people who had never heard of "Goldstar families". Until the summer with the Trump dustup with the family.

If I heard the term, I would've thought it was a frequent flyer affinity program being promoted by the airline.

Platinum, gold, elite, Million Mile, GoldStar, etc.....

You board an airline, they make a dozen announcements about which group gets better service than other groups.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
denverpilot said:
Approved limited military action and haven't won in either theater yet. Like dad said, same **** different decade.
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Yeah but Nate even if we declared war it's not like we'd just level the joint. Changes to The Hague Convention after WWII set the precedent. No more hitting civilian targets.

What is your definition of winning? I always ask this question to those who are confused to why we didn't "win" in OEF / OIF. Because if it's like traditional war mentality, where you still have an organized govt in place that can surrender, that would never have happened in either place.

After the first few months, we had removed any formal govt and in both regions and were now fighting insurgents. Doesn't matter how many of those insurgents we killed, no way any of them were going to do a formal surrender.

My Combat Aviation Brigade had approx 2,500 kills in OEF without a single KIA of our own. That's just one brigade. Despite all these depressing reports of American losses you all heard back here, we were visiting it back on them many times over. We met the objectives given of destroying insurgents and returning power to the people. That last part was / is the major problem in both theaters. You can't have a poor, weak, populace with a corrupt govt and expect "bullies" not to fill the void.

The problem in both wars wasn't a military failure but a cultural misunderstanding and a political planning failure of post war. Not the common Soldier, Sailor, Airmen or Marine's fault. We met the objectives.
 
Velocity173 said:
What is your definition of winning?
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That's supposed to be defined before congress declares war, or unconstitutionally goes to war without said required declaration.

You're correct. We weren't going to ever flatten the place so we should have determined what we wanted and then held it.

But as James points out, anyone with two peas to rub together inside their brain cavity, knows that's never going to happen there.

The rest of your stats are just the normal rationalization of "limited warfare". If there's no goal going in, there will always be cool stats of how many more kills one side has over the other when folks start asking, "What exactly are we getting for all of this?"

When the only good news is that we're better at killing than the other side, that's not much good news.

I suspect the anti-war lefties will start crawling out of the hole they've hid in for nearly a decade soon, once they're bored of protesting the election. Going to be some ugly protests once they start up again.

James' message isn't popular but it's accurate. Marketing keeps the war machines fed. It's totally expected and normal -- we wash, rinse, and repeat this pattern and expect different results.
 
Jay Honeck said:
Our son's unit is looking at deployment in the next 24 months. We are hopeful that he isn't sent to the graveyard of empires.
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We've got kids in our family headed that way again, too. I hope for all our sakes they protect each other like family. It's way too late at their funerals to ask why our foreign policy is so daft.

People are just used to it being utterly retarded now, and the press is banned from showing caskets at Dover which helps that ineptitude and gross negligence along.

At least I know the nephew knows how to shoot. He handles a right handed rifle as good or better than any other southpaw I've seen. We're all just praying he doesn't have to have that skill tested to the extreme.

He ain't no Senator's son, as the song says...
 
rolivi said:
@MauleSkinner - That's twice. I let it go the first time since you are obviously impassioned about the family in this particular story.

We can disagree about appropriate times and places to honor service members and their families. We can also disagree about efficient transportation.

All your civility and respect for the group you support goes out the window when you are unable to make a point without name calling,
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If you'd answer the question rather than tap-dancing around it, the second time wouldn't be necessary.
 
Just for you I'll fill up my kitchen from these guys. Or would that be stolen valor?
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paflyer said:
You should get out more often.
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I have 100k's of miles in multiple frequent flier accounts. I get out plenty. Can't even remember what levels I am. I may be platinum, may be gold, may be star, etc..... I get out plenty.

And, people of my generation didn't grow up with a lot of military casualties, so no reason to have heard the term.

Not sure if the term was used nightly by Walter Cronkite on the nightly news, but that was before my time.

My "time" was the occasional barracks bombing by bad guys, and our periodic invasions of Banana Republics with next to nothing for casualties. I knew nobody involved in those small incidents.

To this date, I only know one guy in the military (20+ year officer in the Air Force) and 1 "kid" who served in Iraq, and has long separated from the Marines.

I am guessing I am not the only person who doesn't have a military connection that would keep me up on terms.


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According to Snopes, the announcement did not mention "gold star family". To me this is important because in spite of what a bunch of holier-than-thou, smarter-than-the-rest-of-us egotistical types think, most people don't know what a "gold star family" is. The term only came into existence about 10 or 11 years ago.

http://www.snopes.com/2016/11/20/gold-star-family-booed-on-flight/

But if they said "a special military family", then I have no excuses for the people that booed. To me, a "special military family" would have significance (and respect) regardless of the exact circumstances. Maybe not everyone feels that way, but I do.
 
My take is that any announcement asking pax to let a family exit first doesn't need an explanation and isn't boo worthy. I'm sure the family, especially with a "special military family" announcement, didn't want the eyes of everyone else on them while they were heading down the aisle. A simple common courtesy from first class would do.
 
Matthew said:
My take is that any announcement asking pax to let a family exit first doesn't need an explanation and isn't boo worthy. I'm sure the family, especially with a "special military family" announcement, didn't want the eyes of everyone else on them while they were heading down the aisle. A simple common courtesy from first class would do.
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I agree. But if the announcement said "Gold Star Family" and people don't know what a Gold star family is, then I can see them booing. Shoot! I'm a platinum family and I don't get special perks like that.
 
jordane93 said:
I guess saying "military family" would have cleared all ambiguity.
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Maybe, but if there were multiple "military families" on the plane, I could see all of them jumping up and heading out.
 
Maybe they flash one of these:
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Of course I carry this one:
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Matthew said:
My take is that any announcement asking pax to let a family exit first doesn't need an explanation and isn't boo worthy.
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That cuts through the BS to make a very good point. Basic civility is enough to say "don't boo".
 
JOhnH said:
I agree. But if the announcement said "Gold Star Family" and people don't know what a Gold star family is, then I can see them booing. Shoot! I'm a platinum family and I don't get special perks like that.
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I don't immediately "boo" everything I don't understand. I guess that's your SOP.

The only time I can see "booing" being appropriate is when the refs don't let the hockey players fight it out.
 
JOhnH said:
According to Snopes, the announcement did not mention "gold star family". To me this is important because in spite of what a bunch of holier-than-thou, smarter-than-the-rest-of-us egotistical types think, most people don't know what a "gold star family" is. The term only came into existence about 10 or 11 years ago.
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The star in the window thing has been around much longer than 10 or 11 years as other folks have previously noted. Maybe it's not so popular in some parts of the country but it was in the Great Plains. I'd rather acknowledge that a family has a member serving or deceased than remain ignorant of the fact. One poster called it marketing. I think of it more as a somber reminder.
 
Cpt_Kirk said:
I don't immediately "boo" everything I don't understand. I guess that's your SOP.

The only time I can see "booing" being appropriate is when the refs don't let the hockey players fight it out.
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No, that's not my SOP, but I guess I deserve that negative personal attack after my "holier-than-thou" remark. :oops:

But I would like to look at this thread from a slightly different angle. My point is not so much to defend those that booed. Obviously, that is rude.

But my point is that the media took the situation completely out of context. They purposely tried to make it sound like this was an attempt by a group of people to denigrate a military family that lost a relative. They did that to sensationalize it and to get readers to look at something that by itself, was not newsworthy. Would this have had near the impact if the headlines said "passengers boo additional delays on already late flight"?

If, in this thread I have said anything to anger veterans, or the families of veterans, then I apologize. My target was originally and completely against a media that purposely distorted the tone of the incident in an effort to increase readership. And their tactics worked well.
 
As I mentioned earlier, I never used Gold Star when I made my announcement. I used plain understandable language, of course in my best Capt. Clarence Oveur voice. :D
 
JOhnH said:
No, that's not my SOP, but I guess I deserve that negative personal attack after my "holier-than-thou" remark. :oops:

But I would like to look at this thread from a slightly different angle. My point is not so much to defend those that booed. Obviously, that is rude.

But my point is that the media took the situation completely out of context. They purposely tried to make it sound like this was an attempt by a group of people to denigrate a military family that lost a relative. They did that to sensationalize it and to get readers to look at something that by itself, was not newsworthy. Would this have had near the impact if the headlines said "passengers boo additional delays on already late flight"?

If, in this thread I have said anything to anger veterans, or the families of veterans, then I apologize. My target was originally and completely against a media that purposely distorted the tone of the incident in an effort to increase readership. And their tactics worked well.
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Welcome to the world of mainstream media.
 
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