Last night, in a diary about 9/11, I went off on a poster who has a strong tendency to denigrate and sometimes cheer the deaths of our soldiers. Some people were obviously offended by that because it was hidden and I lost T/U. Personally, I could care less about the loss because I am sick to death of tolerating the hatred some people have toward our troops.
There are people on these boards who have family and friends over in Iraq right now. These people go to bed every night praying that they don't lose that loved one. Every morning they wake up and worry about that loved one for the rest of the day. There are others on these boards who are veterans themselves. Some of them fought in wars and others served in peace time. The owner of these boards, Markos, is a veteran himself. When you call soldiers "baby killers" and "murderers," you are lumping in people who are good honest people that fight the good fight by our sides.
Are there soldiers that should not be allowed in our armed forces? Absolutely. But they are a miniscule proportion of the 140,000+ people we have over there. Draw a circle around your community of that number and you will find plenty of people who would disgust most other rational people in that group. We don't, nor should we, denigrate the whole community because of the few unless we subscribe to the Michael Savage perspective.
I know many veterans and they are some of he best souls I have ever met. I would put my and my loved ones lives in their hands with the knowledge that they will do their damndest to protect them. As a matter of fact we all have done so because they were there to protect us when they served. It may be a cliche, but these people put their lives on the line every day so that we could enjoy the freedoms some of us take for granted. And yet they are subjected to labels that are both disgusting and untrue.
Steve Gillard had a post last week about the soldiers being better than the people that send them off to fight. He said he posted it to see the reaction of people who hate the millitary. He was not disapointed. He had some lovely posts cheering every death that happens. These people are disgusting and it embarrasses me that they are on my side of the political fence. Cheering anyones death is contemptable but cheering for the deaths of people who put their lives on the line for us crosses into the realm of pure evil.
Soldiers go where their leaders tell them. They do the best job they can and deserve respect for that. It is not their fault if the people sending them are the moral equivalent of hyenas. Save your hatred for the people who put them in harms way when other options were open.