This was written for a board where not everyone may be a liberal/progressive, so I had to do what for us is re-stating the obvious.
Recently, I got a message that set me to thinking. Actually, I've gotten it about a half-dozen times in the past week and a half, through e-mail, broadcasts, and other means. I'm sure most of you have seen it too.
It's a very stirring message that usually comes under the title of "We Miss You!", and it compares our relatively easy lives stateside with what our brave brothers and sisters are going through in Iraq. It starts out with extremely captivating imagery:
"You stay up for 16 hours...He stays up for days on end." "You take a warm shower to help you wake up...He goes days or weeks without running water."
And so on. Reading this piece, I started thinking about what it really means to support the troops...and what reprehensible things some will do to take advantage of them.
But first, a little about my background. I became politically aware during the 80's, and that era left me with both an aversion to war and a distrust of politicians. Both, I think, are healthy. After all, war means that good people die, and we should only take that risk when absolutely nessisary. Besides, during the 80's the cold war was still going on, and wars, even small ones, always carried the risk of going out of control. I remember having nightmares about nuclear war, and living my teenage years knowing that a push of "the button" would distroy everything and everyone I knew.
And, politicians, well...I doubt any here would disagree that they often are willing to put their own agendas ahead of the good of the country. Diplomacy is hard, and far too many are willing to take shortcuts if they think it will win an election for them.
I remember when the issue of serving in the military became more humanized for me. It was after High School, when I heard stories about people I knew and had gone to school with entering the service. Then, when I saw a picture of a soldier on the evening news, I looked closer, just to see if I knew them. I never saw someone I knew, but that close attention made me appreciate that soldiers are people just like me, doing a job that I know that I could never, not in a million years, actually do. They were willing to put their butts on the line so that I didn't have to.
I remember seeing video of a marine helping to build up a levy to protect a small town, of seeing a small child come up to him and give him a bottle of water, and of him picking her up so she could see over the manmade damn. I remember me, Mr. Hard-Left Radical, getting a little choked up over the image.
That person is still inside me, and which is why I will not mock or speak ill of anyone who is willing to choose military service. Everyone in the service, no matter how "mundane" their jobs may be, contributes to the enormous task of keeping our country safe. And any may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice.
I support the troops. I think they should be well paid. I believe that they should be well-equipped. I believe that they should have free healthcare. I believe that their spouses and children should be taken care of. We owe them nothing less. I support their choice, and feel a sense of gratitude that they will the job that I cannot do. They do freely that which I cannot ask of them.
Which is why I find myself so saddened and angry these days.
You see, there are some who will always say that they support the troops, but then let them down when it matters most. There are some who claim to honour their courage, but show cowardace when the time comes to back them up. There are those who claim to embrace their patriotism, while callously manipulating our feelings for them for personal gain.
These people are the politicians.
There's been a lot of posing and posturing going on in Washington about "supporting the troops". Everyone "supports the troops". Nobody wants to be seen as "not supporting the troops". They know we feel love, honour, respect, and reverance towards them, and know that these strong feelings will rebound very harshly on those who don't support our women and men in uniform. So everyone pays lip-service to "supporting the troops". But when it comes down to brass tacks, far too much of that "support" ebbs away.
When it comes time to properly supply the troops, with things like body armour that could have prevented 25% (that's 1 in 4) of the deaths suffered by our soldiers, then the politicans' support is curiously lacking. Some soldiers have had to beg their families back home to buy and send them body armour, so that they might live to see those families again.
Or when it comes down to supplying the troops with clean drinking water, the politicians are more worried about giving their buddies in big business a fat government contract than giving the job to someone who will get it done right. It was recently shown that Haliburton, working under the terms of a no-bid contract (meaning that they were going to get the job, no matter what), knowingly gave our brave fighting men and women contaminated water. That meant that our soldiers had to fight heat, exhaustion, and possible death, all while suffering through abdominal cramping and diarheia.
Oh, and Haliburton? They got to keep the contract.
When it comes time to pay these soldiers, who could pay us with their lives any minute, the politicians again came up short. Combat soldiers' pay was actually cut during the first three years of the Iraq war, and many of their families back home lost their medical insurance. So soldiers had less money to send home, and had to worry about their children getting sick without being able to go to a doctor back home. All while fighting a war.
And the politicians? They gave their millionaire friends tax cuts at the same time. And when the new congress tried to raise soldiers' pay by 5% last month, President Bush threatened to veto the legislation.
War, as General Sherman once said, is hell. It puts people through a physical, mental, and emotional meat-grinder, and can leave them with emotional scars that they will carry with them for a lifetime. Some, who have seen horrors that we don't want to imagine, come back with such severe PTSD (post-traumatic-stress-disorder) that they're suicidal. We owe them the best medicine and mental health help that we as a nation have to offer them.
The politicians, however, think differently. They've slashed the VA Hospital systems' budgets so badly that a suicidal veteran now has to wait up to a year to get any help. A year. For someone suicidal. Unfortunately, some don't make it.
And then there are the physically wounded. These are people who have recieved horrible injuries in the prime of their youth, all in the service of their country. Some have given limbs, their sight, their hearing, and more. Others have bodies so wrecked that they couldn't even wear body armour to save their own lives...it hurts too much. These people, however, are being classified "fit for battle" so that they can be shipped back to Iraq.
Of course the politicians aren't worried about people too wounded to wear body armour...they wern't going to give it to them anyway.
Oh, and for those suffering permanent disability because of injuries suffered while defending our country? Well, the politicians have slashed budgets so badly that very few soldiers are being classified as "permanently disabled" these days...so the government doesn't have to pay them disability benefits.
None of this is because people oppose the war. None of this is because people back home don't care. This is all because there are politicians who want to use "the troops" as props...props to make them look good, look "tough", look "strong on defense". But when "the troops"...who aren't some mythical entity like "Uncle Sam", but real American heroes...need them, they look the other way. And give tax cuts to their friends.
We've gotten rid of some of these sleazy, slimy politicians responsible for these things in the last elections, and we'll get rid of more of them in the next. But some of these politicians, fighting for their political lives, are seeking to weasel their way out of taking responsibility for their actions by playing on our deep feelings towards our brothers and sisters in uniform. These politicians have backed this war, which began with lies and has been bungled by the politicians every step of the way, and know that they could never come out against the war now without destroying their chances at keeping their jobs. So they try to manipulate our feelings about the soldiers into de-facto support of the entire war, knowing that's their only chance.
Let's be realistic...people can support the troops and oppose the war. War is created and ended by politicians. It is fought by the troops. And the armed services have done their jobs very well. I have no doubts that a lesser fighting force would have lost many more thousands of dead and wounded than our forces have. They're the best, and we can be proud
of what they've been able to do.
It's the politicians who have failed them, and us. The politicians went to war with no plan for winning the peace, didn't send enough troops to do the job right, and have so mis-managed the post-Saddam restructuring of Iraq that they have made that country a much more dangerous place for our armed forces. It's the politicians who have failed to provide us with a clear idea of just what we are doing there, and who are allowing their buddies in big business plunder the country, piss off the populace, and leave our soldiers to clean up the mess.
Politicians concocted this war (they started in the 90's), they (badly) planned this war (pushing aside experienced military planners who had differing ideas), and they lied to the people, both civilian and military, to start this war. They then proceeded to stab the very people fighting this war in the back.
I oppose the war. I support the troops. Both should be now obvious.
Which brings me back to the e-mail floating around under the header "We miss you". It's a powerful piece. Unfortuantely, it's also an example as to how we can be manipulated into spreading messages we might disagree with by manipulating how we feel about the troops in Iraq. I don't know if it started out like this, or was altered later by someone with an agenda, but there are a few lines that try to equate support for the war with support for the troops. Implying, of course, that if you don't support the war, you're not supporting the troops.
Line #1: "You put on your anti war/don't support the troops shirt, and go meet up with your friends...He still fights for your right to wear that shirt."
This is bald-faced, this one. See how they equate supporting the war with supporting the troops? "You put on your anti war/don't support the troops shirt..." Now, let me ask you, has anyone seen a shirt that says "I don't support the troops", or "To hell with the troops"? Of course not...they'd get shit in every direction, even from me. But to the person who wrote that line, being against the war is somehow being against the troops. And if you're for the troops, you must be for the war (isn't dualistic thinking sickening?).
Line #2: "You criticize your government, and say that war never solves anything...He sees the innocent tortured and killed by their own people and remembers why he is fighting."
This one is particularly dishonest, because a: it mischaracterizes the anti-war movement, and b: unlike other lines in the piece ("You complain about how hot it is...He wears his heavy gear, not daring to take off his helmet to wipe his brow.") these two things really don't go together.
A: It tries to paint everyone in the anti-Iraq war camp as being against every possible kind of war. This simply isn't true. Many of us supported going into Afghanistan, because the Taliban was sheltering Al Queda, who was responsible for 9/11. We felt is was justified, and we would have gone all the way. Oh, and by the way, the reason why we
didn't go "all the way" in Afghanistan, or capture Bin Laden, or stabilize the country wasn't because of anti-war protests, it was because the politicians wanted to save most of the armed forces for an attack on Iraq, who had nothing to do with 9/11.
B: It puts criticizing the government as being the opposite of a soldier doing their job. In fact, they're the same thing. A soldier's job is to complete their mission to the best of their ability. A citizen's job is to watch the government like a hawk, and to protest vehemently when it screws up. Both are patriotic duties.
But the politicians who have tied their fortunes to the Iraq war don't want you to think like that. They want you to think that being against the war, or criticizing the government, is somehow betraying the troops. They want to equate devotion to the brave men and women in uniform with devotion to their policies. They want to equate love of the nation with blind obediance towards themselves. Towards politicians.
Politicians who are more than willing to start wars, but have never fought in war. Politicians who are williang to sacrifice those heroes in uniform to score points with special interest groups at home. Politicians who wish to co-opt sacrifices made for our nation, and transform them into blind loyalty towards themselves. Politicians, people without honour trying to steal the glory due to our brave bretheren serving in the armed forces for themselves.
They're like cult leaders who equate belief in God with belief in their dogmas. And they're wrong.
If you get this message ("We Miss You"), and feel like passing along the good bits, go right ahead. But trim out the propaganda first. Or, if you really want to stick it to the politicians, why not replace them with things like:
"Politicians have bodyguards to go meet with supporters...He has to charge into a darkened room alone"
"We think we're supporting the troops with a bumper sticker...He has to support his wounded buddy on his back until they can get to a medic."
Or perhaps:
"We think our taxes are too high...He may not live to see another paycheck."
Support the troops...*bring them home!*
Blessed Be,
Taliesin Athor Govannon