Supporting our troops
Working as I now do, as a consultant to a congregation literally next door to Fort Bliss, from where so many soldiers have been deployed to our two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to where so many bodies have returned, what I now say may sound trite, banal, a truism ... but at least it is based on experience.
Namely, those who truly support our troops are those who want them home. The very idea that to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and wish to design a timeframe for ending this idiocy somehow does not support our troops is a joke - not just verbally - but look at the evidence.
The self-declared patriots fly flags on their cars and, driving by, shout abuse at the war protestors. It's those who oppose the war who actually run the GI help agency, providing support to GIs and their families as they struggle with the economic, emotional, and other stresses brought on by repeated, lengthened tours of duty in war zones. The self-declared patriots turn up with a band for those who return on their feet. It's those who oppose the war who are busy volunteering their help to GIs with broken bodies, and minds, who can hardly get help otherwise. And who sew the quilts with which they stay warm even in the disaster that is Walter Reed.
I can't speak for everywhere. But when a loyal GI, just going or just returning in whatever shape, wants help in my neck of the desert, it's those who oppose the war who reach out most with their love, their hands, their funds, their help.
For me, that's one trite saying that has become profoundly real. Those who oppose the war are the ones who really support our troops.
3 comments:
Amen, Juffie.
My problem with the war protestors is the they think withdrawing from Iraq (they don't say much about Afganistan) will bring Peace.
It won't. There is a civil war going on in Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world and the US has a stake in its outcome.
Support the troops means support the budget for equipment and pay.
That's what support means.
Ah. I would be with you but for the fact that, alas, there will not be peace if we stay either. We made central, disastrous decisions immediately upon the fall of Saddam, from which there is, all these years later, alas no going back. Decisions that have allowed the outbreak of a civil war that can not be ended while we are there (especially in light of a substantial majority of Iraqis wanting us to leave), nor will it end upon our departure. A fiasco.
And would that this government would have supplied the equipment needed in the first place...let alone the strategy.
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