BOB HERBERT writes in the New York Times:
"The air is filled with obsessive self-satisfied rhetoric about supporting the troops, giving them everything they need and not letting them down. But that rhetoric is as hollow as a jazzman’s drum because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire at all to share in the sacrifices that the service members and their families are making. Most Americans do not want to serve in the wars, do not want to give up their precious time to do volunteer work that would aid the nation’s warriors and their families, do not even want to fork over the taxes that are needed to pay for the wars.
To say that this is a national disgrace is to wallow in the shallowest understatement. The nation will always give lip-service to support for the troops, but for the most part Americans do not really care about the men and women we so blithely ship off to war, and the families they leave behind."
I seriously suggest you pass the link to the article around and join the conversation. My contribution is a simple observation - that when war becomes a cynical tool of partisan ambition, when it's an economic activity rather than an issue of common security, when the human costs here and now are justified in terms of supposed ideological threats in a future that is accessed by some mythical slippery slope greased with "tolerance" and "compassion," well. That's a problem. Because it means that in the process of trying to "win," you have lost far more than could ever have been taken from you.
Yellow Elephant, where were you? - Civilian by webcarve
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