Stenberg Acknowledges POW/MIA hit sour note with Veterans

[travisab1]

I thought you'd want to know;

From: ColonelDan ColonelDan@worldnet.att.net


Subject: Stenberg Acknowledges POW/MIA hit sour note with Veterans

target=_blank eudora="autourl">http://www.suntimes.com/output/stein...s-stein11.html

TO Mr. Alan Steinberg, Chicago Suntimes nsteinberg@suntimes.com
From: Dan Cedusky, Champaign IL
target=_blank eudora="autourl">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VeteranIssues/

Thank you for today's article, acknowledging how your previous article about
the POW/MIA Flag "ended up hitting a lot of proud soldiers and grieving
relatives," and also thanks to the thousands of veterans who wrote to the
Suntimes... some of which were very offensive.. as I received hundred's CC's
of them... for those I apologize.

As you can tell you touched a sour note with many veterans... who perceived
it just as your called it " built up through loss and suffering and acts of
heroism met by a shrugging public", and I might add a shrugging Congress,
DOD, and White House. Veterans and Military Retiree's have fought for years
for the "few bones" thrown to them, to appease them, usually just prior to
election.

Many times just to get a city or other agency to fly the POW/MIA flag has
taken years of fighting & lobbying, let alone to pay any benefits to those
fortunate to come home. We are very sensitive... go back and re-read your
previous article.. from our perspective.. and you can better understand our
anger. I want to personally apologize for any letters sent to you that
might have been offensive & out of line... just as you have & we respect,
your freedom of speech, we always reserve our right of free speech to let
you know when we think you have erred.

Again thank you for your past support of Veterans
Dan Cedusky, Col, USAR, Ret
Veteran advocate
Champaign IL

********
target=_blank eudora="autourl">http://www.suntimes.com/output/stein...s-stein11.html

February 11, 2004

BY NEIL STEINBERG SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Collateral damage

It has been a disturbing week, for me. In fact, in my 20 years of
newspapering in Chicago, I can't recall anything more disturbing. Last week,
I wrote about the black POW/MIA flag. I thought -- as with the Bush
button -- I was directing my fire at a slur against the government. But
whatever I thought I was shooting at, I ended up hitting a lot of proud
soldiers and grieving relatives, and I'm sorry for that.

I got 500, maybe 1,000 e-mails -- I lost count. Many took my opinion --
those flags seem to say something negative -- and twisted it into the most
extreme, treacherous, anti-vet attitude they could imagine, a blanket
damnation of history, heroism and the country itself. Their replies couldn't
have been stronger had I suggested we dig up Arlington Cemetery and build a
theme park. Full-bore outrage mixed with the harshest personal attack. Lots
of name-calling. Lots of out-of-the-blue anti-Semitism. More death threats
than the typical column generates.

Which puzzled me. Because, if I came across someone who I thought was
completely wrong about something, and I wanted them to understand why they
are wrong, I don't think I would begin my argument by telling them what a
loathsome moron they are and how I'm going to kill them.

But that is a logical argument, and as I read through the responses -- and I
must have read hundreds -- I quickly understood that this is not an area of
cool logic, but of hot passion, of raw, hard emotion, built up through loss
and suffering and acts of heroism met by a shrugging public, a shrugging
public that I had volunteered to become the poster boy for. My opinion was a
stick I had shoved into an open wound.

That's what bothered me most of all. It wasn't being called names -- I get
called names every day. I am a Jew, so the intended insult doesn't sting. It
was who was doing the calling and why they were flinging those terms. Being
accused by vets of being anti-vet hurt because I'm not ignorant of
history -- though I did not realize that the black flag isn't a relic, but
means something vital to all sorts of people today, people who don't think
that the government is a spider's nest of treachery.

I'm not the guy those vets were attacking. I'm the guy who trots his kids
onto the front porch on Veterans Day and has them say the pledge with their
hands over their hearts and then tells them about how the Rangers went up
those cliffs at Normandy into the teeth of the Nazi machine guns, and that's
why we get to loaf around all day.

For those who managed to write civilly, despite their feelings, thank you,
it was an education. And for those who heard a twig snap and began firing
into the darkness of cyberspace, you may not know it and certainly won't
accept it, but you hit a friend.


Related to you, hope this helps.

Travis