Supporting The Troops

I was taking a summer EMT course last year when I overheard an exchange between two of the students in the course. One was about as liberal as you could get. She was a tattooed art school graduate with profane, anti-Bush stickers plastered across her fuel-efficient car- she was almost cartoonish. The other one was an enlisted guy in the Air Force who'd overheard her talking about how she was against the war in Iraq.

He ambled over. "So you're one of the ones who spits on our guys when they get home from Iraq, huh?" he asked. He wasn't being sarcastic, either. He was legitimately curious.

She shook her head. "Oh, no, I don't have any problem with military personnel. I just don't support Bush or the war."

He nodded. "So you support the troops, though?"

"Yeah," she responded, "of course I do."

What does this mean? "Support the troops." The most common expression of this sentiment is to put one of those yellow ribbons on the back of your car, which don't exactly seem designed for longevity (they're all magnetic.) Even people who are against the war, support the troops. Huh?

In 2005, we take our all-volunteer military for granted. A lot of us don't see the military as a particularly attractive option, especially the more privileged among us. And everyone in the military has their own reason for joining; some needed college money, others wanted to see the world, some wanted better opportunities, and others just wanted to serve their country.

The fact is that, regardless of why they're doing it, military personnel are serving the country's best interests, even if they're doing something that a lot of us- including me- don't support. Having an established corps of professional, well-trained warriors is not something that a lot of other countries can pull off- most major European nations still have a draft between high school and college. We have enough courageous people who, for many different reasons, are willing to serve without being required to.

And they get ordered into some things- like Iraq- that many of us don't believe in. But nobody is disputing that the job they're doing is honorable, and they deserve to be supported by the people they serve. So it seems like a lot of anti-war folks say they "support the troops," but really just mean that they don't bear them any ill will.

I think it's fair to say that most military personnel would choose to be deployed to Iraq about as quickly as most liberals would choose to send them there. It's a miserable place, and 1,700 of them have gotten killed there, and counting. Not to mention all the servicemembers who lost limbs or eyesight or hearing in combat. We claim to support them, but many of us just don't pay them much attention.

And the body of evidence, from recent polls, shows that blue America believes in what the military is doing there now. There aren’t many liberals who would agree with the decision to go to war in the first place, but the majority would agree that since we did, we’re obligated to clean up the mess in Iraq before we head home. We broke it, so to say, and we bought it. Even if there is widespread dissatisfaction with how things are going, it’s safe to say that Americans believe in bringing peace to Iraq after we brought war.

So we all support the troops and the mission of rebuilding Iraq, but the liberal establishment hasn’t exactly been printing up “Hug A Soldier” bumper stickers. I’m not saying that MoveOn.org ought to start selling camo. I do think that, since blue America supports the troops, too, we ought to do something about it. If I had my way, the College Democrats would start sending care packages overseas.

That might be tough, so I decided to start doing it myself. There are a lot of Americans getting shot at, in the middle of a godforsaken desert, who are in need of stuff like air freshener and a couple DVDs. I don’t make a lot of specific appeals, but please check out www.anysoldier.com, browse through the profiles of the personnel deployed overseas, and do what you can. If you support the troops, do something about it.