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February 13, 2010

A horrible army wife's post

There are some things you read that just anger you, even if they don't personally affect you.  I'm a big supporter of our men and women in uniform, and I have the honour of being proud of two countries' militaries and the sacrifice they make.  I also happen to know a few spouses of military folk, and they should also be honoured for what they have to endure.  It can't be easy being essentially a single parent while your spouse is off to war.  Even if you don't have kids, your loved one is still thousands of miles away, constantly in danger of losing his/her life.  Our soldiers are heroes, but their spouses and family are too.  For enduring this kind of hardship, I salute you all.

So what's got me so pissed off?  Cassy Fiano brings it to the forefront.  In a blog post entitled "How to Destroy a Soldier's Life," she responds to, and totally destroys, an article written by Courtney Cook on Salon.com.  (I'm not going to link to it, but you can find the link in Cassy's response).  In her article, Cook basically recommends that military wives leave their husbands via the "Dear John" letter, also getting the soldier to explain it to the kids in a letter!  She doesn't mention husbands of soldiers, so I'm not sure what her feelings are on that.


Here's the beginning of her article:

"You'd be surprised how easy it is to leave a soldier on deployment. You can do it with a letter. (He can't argue with you. He doesn't have a phone.) If you lay the groundwork early, saying to the soldier before he leaves, "This will be the end of us, we might as well admit it," it's that much easier. The letter won't even come as a shock.

And if you have children with that soldier? You can handle all that with a letter, too. He'll write it -- because he cares about the kids, because he wants to work with you to do what's best for them even though you're leaving him -- and you'll give it to them. Here again, you will avoid a nasty confrontation. Who will they cry to? You? You're just the teary-eyed bearer of the letter. Him? The one who's sweating it out in the desert?

There will be no moving truck, no boxes, no house torn asunder. The soldier is peeing in a bucket as you pack. He doesn't care who gets the couch."

Can you believe this shit?  She not only didn't have the courage to confront her own husband with her inability to deal with being an army wife, but she's recommending that others take the same cowardly actions that she did!  I understand that dealing with the stress and hardships of being an military wife are hard, and it's no crime to say "I can't do this anymore."  But to do this to a soldier who's currently out in the field, whose lifeline is that connection to home that soldiers can get nowadays, through online chat, Skype, etc, is just cruel and cowardly on the wife's part.

Cassy, who is the wife of a Marine, does an excellent job eviscerating Cook:

"It isn’t enough for her to be this callous, shallow, superficial, and selfish. She’s recommending other women do the same thing, too. One of the worst parts about this is that she feels like it was a good thing to tell him while he’s away at war that she’s leaving him. She presumably doesn’t care about the effect this has on soldiers while they’re deployed. They’re over there fighting for their lives, and she thinks it’s a smart move to saddle them with this while they’re in the middle of that? You’ve got to be a pretty damn low person to not care about the extra stress you’re putting on someone that’s fighting a war and risking their life, all because you don’t want to deal with telling them face-to-face that your marriage is over. Soldiers fighting a war don’t need the added stress of knowing that the person who they think is waiting for them has abandoned them. She abandoned him for a Marxist, and then abandoned her son when he didn’t conform to the life she wanted. Her husband sounded consistent in his morals and values throughout the duration of their marriage. She, on the other hand, seemed to grow to hate the military to the point where she couldn’t even support her own son because he decided to join."

Oh yeah, I forgot that part.  Not only did Cook go on to marry a Marxist anti-war protester, but she couldn't bear to be there when her son went into the Army.  His dad was the only parent there.  That's just sickening.

I encourage you to go read Cassy's whole post.  It's long, but it's worth it.

And to you military spouses out there, both women and men, I salute you again.  Unless you're like this woman.  Then I don't even have the time of day for you.

12 comments:

  1. As one of those intrepid Army wives, I thank you for your post, Dave. My position has allowed me to see some spouses really treat their deployed servicemembers like crap. When I lived on an Army post, I regularly saw a few obviously married women hooking up in the Officer's Club while their husbands were out defending God and country. Thankfully, the vast majority of military spouses aren't like this at all.

    Cook sounds like a first class asshole. I like to think the karma bus eventually catches up with people like her.

    The military lifestyle isn't always easy, but it does have its rewards. I'm pretty proud to be an Army wife.

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  2. You're very welcome, Jenny (hey, I can stop calling you "knothead" LOL!)

    You were one of the people I was thinking of when I wrote this post. And you (and others like you) were who I sympathized with when I got angry over this woman's article.

    And thank you very much for being one of the stand-up spouses out there.

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  3. I read Cook's article. It sounds like the husband she dumped is a very classy guy. He lives in Stuttgart, Germany right now... we just left there a few months ago. Maybe my husband knows him!

    Anyway, as Army wives go, I've so far been pretty lucky. I've only suffered through one deployment and it was a short one. Bill will probably retire in a couple of years. I really admire the spouses (like my mom) who hang in there deployment after deployment, especially when kids are involved. They really are heroes.

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  4. Wow, she sounds like an astonishingly narcissistic, stupid bitch. (Okay, starting with my unladylike language here!)

    I have no quarrel with people breaking up for any reason, but that's some horrible, nasty advice she's dispensing.

    Obviously, I think most military wives (and, presumably, husbands) would dismiss this "advice" with what it deserves: scorn.

    I don't have the privilege of knowing a lot of military families, but the one family I know is unbelievably awesome. My friend, Jean, graduated from nursing school with me in December. Her husband, a National Guardsman, deployed to Afghanistan in August. They have three kids, including son Jacob, born in June. Jean also lived an hour away from where our school was. She was like Super-Military-Wife-Student-Nurse. I can only imagine what she would say if I mentioned this article to her.

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  5. You know people like that would have been the same people who after my husband was diagnosed with cancer did the same thing...and since it did happen to him (he was diagnosed before we were together) I think there should be a special hot rock in hell for that kind of callous disregard for another human beings life.

    I satisfy this feeling by asking God to bless her according to her actions, and remind myself that she aint dead yet. She may have some war to go to, and the person she counted on to be there waiting for her to ditch her like hot poop on a summers day.

    *cough* ok, end rant! I am a proud supporter of our men and women in uniform, my uncle was a medic in nam...and while might not agree with the wars, we must always remember that it is our flesh and blood that is cut and spilled.

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  6. PS. I wont soil my eyes with the rest of that rubbish...why give her a reader count. Xp

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  7. Ugh! I feel almost physically ill after reading that egotistical, callous, caniving bitch's "advice".

    As for the retort?...LOVED IT!

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  8. Thank you for the comments, ladies!

    Widow: I would certainly suggest going to read the article I linked to, though. It's much more complete than what I said, and it's told from the point of view of one who knows.

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  9. My goodness! I almost don't have the words to convey the amount of absolute disgust that makes me feel (okay, I do - but if I shared, you'd probably have to delete my entire comment) LoL

    I agree, and would certainly hope that other military spouses would feel just as disgusted and not take any of her comments to heart. To be so cruel when his life is being risked for her safety and freedom is inexcusable.

    I agree, the brave men & women in our military are true heroes, but their spouses and families are also for the sacrifices that they have to make - and are so little acknowledged.

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  10. You have to wonder what the heck is wrong with some people. Thank you for this post, Dave. Like the other lady, I won't be clicking over to the original.

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  11. Thanks, Pam! But you *should* click over to the one I linked to. Just don't click over to the Salon article itself.

    The link I provided is an even better take-down of this woman than I provided. Because it comes from the heart.

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  12. It's truly a shame that she felt compelled to write this blog. She must have been in a lot of pain but to suggest that this should become a normal way of getting rid of a person from your life is a nasty thing to do no matter how much pain you're feeling.

    There's nothing easy about being stuck at home trying to figure out how to get everything done all by yourself but there are groups that will help & we can all step up to help out the people left behind!! They need our help to get them through the time of deployment & don't forget the soldiers when they return....that's a very difficult time as well.

    Spread love & help those you can.

    Hugs,

    Bill

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