Wear a red shirt Friday and support our troops. It’s a sign an email says that you love this country, appreciate what the military is doing to protect your way of life, are one of the majority of Americans. Oh, and believe in God.
The people who don’t wear red shirts? Well, they don’t support the troops–or didn’t get the email–or forgot. Maybe they thought that one could support the troops even better by voting for better health care for vets or against revolving door deployments.
Here’s my problem: I do support the troops. I admire men and women willing to risk their lives and grieve for the loss when their sacrifice is total. I know that most believe–naively in most cases–that the United States is always God’s country so what it sends them to do is God’s work. In some cases, I can even conceive (concede?) that wars have been necessary or at least in the last event unavoidable (World War 2 comes to mind, possibly the Civil War? Argue with me peaceniks: I want to be convinced they’re all wrong!)
But I can’t subscribe to the sub-text of this email–that the troops currently deployed are fighting necessary wars to protect the United States of America. And those who disagree by extension repudiate God, country and, of course, troops.
In fact, I am (almost) completely convinced that the war in Afghanistan was unnecessary, justifiable vengeful though we may have been post 9/11. And the argument for Saddam’s demise was trumped up so that I can hardly believe anyone still argues its justification.
The only service troops in Iraq are performing regarding the safety of American’s way of life is in service of our bottomless thirst for oil, our persistent illusion that we are “better,” “stronger,” and more important than other nations and should, therefore, have veto power over their choices of government and friends. In the case of Iraq, we want oil–and “democracy,” if that means we have control. There is no nobility in either the duplicity of those who convinced us to proffer our half-hearted support or in the
So, OK. That’s my point of view and most everyone has heard it before. If you listen to Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, you’ve somehow convinced yourself that I’m a soldier-hating nincompoop who has no comprehension of the dangers imposed by . . . well whatever it is you think the dangers were in Iraq. Or, you draw yourself up straight and declare that I don’t care about the thousands of Iraqi’s who died at Saddam’s hands–while conveniently neglecting to mention those now dead who wouldn’t be if we hadn’t invaded and managing to blame the deaths of the American troops on Al Qaeda or that Baathists.
I may just wear a red shirt this Friday–mostly to make the point that I CAN support military families and enlisted folks without supporting the entire military bureaucracy and aparatus which chews them up and spits them out with too little healthcare.
The email (representative of our entire culture) links support of the troops to a plethora of reliable touch points: patriotism, might equals right, religion. If they really wanted people to support the troops, it would just be about that. Because the fact is that just about everyone does.
And the question then should be what do the troops need and how often should we put these brave, willing, patriotic fellow citizens in harm’s way just to serve our rampant gluttonies?
