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Tribute to a Fallen Soldier

  • Posted on October 15, 2010 at 8:01 pm

Sgt. Amanda "Mandy" Sheldon

Last night I was watching the news and learned about the suicide of Sgt. Amanda Sheldon, a young female soldier from Michigan.  Her devastated mother was interviewed about her daughter.  Her mother truly wanted to let soldiers that are having a hard time dealing with depression to know that it is okay to seek help.  What happened to Amanda is a tragedy and I was touched by her mother as any mother would be.  I felt a need to share this young woman’s plight with other people in the hope that more can be done for these soldiers.

At some time during her military career Amanda was given a date rape drug and raped by a superior.  (I want to add here that I was watching “Oprah” tonight as she had a show about homeless female veterans and Tammy Duckworth said that one in three female soldiers are assaulted in the military.)  The suspect was discharged from the Army and was convicted but Amanda’s problems didn’t stop there.  She did seek counseling.  Later when she was up for a promotion, military personnel wanted to know why she needed counseling.  This must have made Amanda feel that the military deemed that a “weakness”.  She never went in for counseling again and she suffered dearly for it.

Her mother said that Amanda was planning on leaving the military and starting a new life attending college.  She had one more deployment with her unit to Afghanistan to do.  Her mom said that to deploy she would have to sign up for two more years.  She didn’t really want to do that.  Her mom also said that she had fallen in love and was very torn between going with her unit to Afghanistan and leaving the military as either choice would eventually “let someone down”.  Amanda evidently couldn’t take it and instead of going in for counseling, she took her own life.

The full story about Amanda can be read here:

http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/local/kent_county/Soldiers-mom-speaks-out-on-suicide

Amanda’s obituary is here:

http://www.sentinel-standard.com/newsnow/x1389358997/Obituary-Amanda-Mandy-Ann-Sheldon-24-of-North-Carolina-formerly-of-Belding

Something needs to be done to protect these women from being assaulted.  I remember reading a few years back about young women in the military dying of dehydration in the desert when they were deployed in Iraq because they feared going to the bathroom in the night.  There were many female soldiers being assaulted.  Many would not drink fluids that they needed to stay healthy in the desert because of this fear of having to go to the latrine late at night.  http://www.alternet.org/world/31584/

A female soldier is tough but sexual abuse can take every ounce of toughness out of anyone.  It can destroy lives just as it seems to have destroyed the life of this beautiful, young soldier named Amanda or “Mandy” by her friends.  We all know life isn’t fair but our country owes our young people a debt  of gratitude for their service and a sense of honor that allows them to be safe from predators when they are serving their country.  We should all be outraged because Amanda isn’t just the child of her own parents.  She is your child and my child.  Mandy’s death should not be in vain.  We should all be contacting our representatives and pushing for more to be done so other soldiers don’t follow Mandy and take their own life because they see no other option.

I wrote my representative about this.  I hope you will be moved to do the same so that something more can be done to protect these young female soldiers from sexual predators.  Here is the link:  https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

You can also contact your senators here:  http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Please do something.  I have written both of my senators and my representative.  If we want our daughters protected from sexual predators in the military, let’s stand up and do something about it.  Mandy could be my daughter and she could be your daughter.  She deserved better and we as a nation should have protected her better.

The War within the War

  • Posted on July 31, 2010 at 10:37 am

The picture of the young Afghan woman on the cover of Time magazine is very troubling.  I, as a woman and human being, am terribly troubled by policies that continue to confine women into the rolls of pre-civilization.  However, I don’t believe that picture alone, or the others that it links to, should determine our policy in the Afghanistan war.  The two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, we are currently fighting are a continuation of the “Bush Doctrine”.  Personally, I’ve never been fully persuaded that we needed to fight either war, even if President Obama maintains that the Afghanistan war is the “good” war.  Really, can war ever be good?  President Bush kept reminding us that we are fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here.  I don’t think he cared about this young woman’s face as he took the war to her backyard.  So, I want to know when is enough, truly enough?  When will this war of nine years be over?  What does winning really look like?  Some think we are already there.  So, what I want to ask Time Magazine is which pictures of American soldiers does it want to put on the cover of its magazine next?

American soldiers have given enough for these wars!

Inspiring Woman Soldier

Life Goes On
How much more do our soldiers need to sacrifice for these wars?
Do they want to include our war torn soldiers or maybe the coffins being transported home.  Yes, I know war is hell and that may very well be what they are trying to show us.  However, if the picture is to continue to manipulate us into staying in a war that has totally busted our economy and looks like the definition of insanity, you know doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then I question its purpose.  Now if it is just to show us war is hell and to get us talking about the war so we can get the hell out, then I’m all for it.

Many people proclaim their love for our troops.  They exclaim how wonderful it is that these young people fight for “our” freedoms.  They safely wear their little flag pins to show us all how patriotic they are while those of us that don’t think war is the answer for everything do all the hard work of questioning the authority of our government. When our soldiers sacrifice so much and sometimes give the ultimate sacrifice these same people proclaim how proud they are to be Americans and to be represented by such brave, young soldiers.  Many of these same people don’t even put any thought into these two wars and the impact on our troops and whether we should actually be fighting these wars.  I don’t know if it is because they are removed from the death and destruction of war that they don’t seemingly notice or care about the real “war within the war or not.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/us/30suicide.html?src=mv

Now I come to Bradley Manning, Bradass87, and I am wondering what will happen to this young man.  http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/07/25/bradley-mannings-gift/

I actually think he did a great service because the war that nobody notices has actually got some people talking about it.  It’s interesting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Pakistan with our financial aid to them only to find out that Pakistan has been supposedly fueling the fires with the Taliban.  The President and his staff has tried to get us off the subject of this war but it is time that we have a frank discussion about whether we should continue on the path that we have been taking.  President Obama has continued so many of the policies of President Bush that I can hardly tell the two apart.  I had hoped that with a new president we would have a change in our Middle East policies.

Osama Bin Laden wanted to destroy our country and he knew the only way to do it was to take out our money system.  As far as I am concerned, it looks like he has won whether he is dead or alive.  Our economy is a disaster; life as most of us lived it is pretty much over.  No one can tell us what the economy will be like tomorrow except for more gloom and doom.  We are involved in two wars that continue to cost us in broken lives, broken bodies and broken banks yet we continue on this path of insanity.  Our children will be going to crowded schools in the fall because there is no money, homeowners have to watch their own homes and hope no one breaks in as a lot of police officers are also laid off.   Government services are getting less and less with less open hours to get anything done.  Our infrastructure is falling apart and we don’t have the money to repair it.  The only thing we are sure to do is to send more money for war.  “We can’t take care of things over here because we must do it over there.”  I guess that’s the new motto!