CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Oh, Won't Anyone PLEASE Think of the Troops??!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

this entry brought to you by probot, "shake your blood"


One of the most annoying things you can possibly be spammed with, whether in your personal inbox, your Myspace mail, or perhaps your Myspace Bulletin, is annoying patriotic claptrap that reads something like the following:

"You stay up until 3 o'clock and sleep in all day. He's up for days on end. You listen to your Ipod and surf the Internet with your brand new Iphone. He hears bombs exploding all day. You chug beers whenever you want. He hasn't had a drink of water in weeks. You watch awesome summer blockbusters and play your 'video games'. When he closes his eyes, he hears the screams of human beings and sees their bodies explode in a thick mist of crimson over and over until he eventually comes home too traumatized to continue living a normal, productive life. You say whatever your opinions are about the war. He continues to fight for your right to say those opinions." Then the post says to repost the chain letter, because if you don't, you're a horrible person, and the terrorists have won. And the title of the post is always something like "Think about the troops."

Listen. There is no single human being in the country above the age of 14 that isn't thinking about the troops. No one needs to be reminded to think about the troops. It's on the front page of every major media site. It's on TV. It's in all of the magazines. It's in the movies. It's on fucking bumper stickers and billboards. The war is everywhere. Furthermore, there isn't a single American who isn't one of the following: a) In the war in Iraq, b) Home from the war in Iraq, c) Related to someone who is either in Iraq or home from Iraq, d) Knows someone close that is currently in Iraq, or e) Knows someone who is either related or has a close friend in Iraq. I don't need to be reminded about the troops, and I don't think anybody needs to be reminded about the troops. It is inevitable, and the only person who can escape it is too young or too ignorant to really be aware of any pressing issue.

Secondly, don't try to make me feel guilty about my freedoms as a person compared to a soldier in Iraq. I'm not trying to take anything away from them, their courage, or whatever it is that motivates them to do what they do. And while an average of 8 troops die per day, the life of someone in the military is long stretches of absolutely nothing happening, punctuated by random bursts of pure horror. This is not to say that these bursts cannot last for a long time, but to imply that the troops in Iraq don't have down time is nonsense. They listen to Ipods just like you and I, and I don't exactly know how they do it, but they watch movies too, and they read magazines, and they play video games. I'm not trying to say that being in Iraq is in any way "fun", or that what they're doing isn't harrowing and horrific, and I'm not saying I could possibly live the life they live. But it does say something that they chose to live that life-- not that anybody had any idea how FUBAR the situation really was over there before getting there-- but they enlisted, they were trained, they weren't just random civilians dropped there with no protection, no strategies, and nothing to do. That would be a sad situation. But these are trained professionals who chose to be trained professionals, and nobody got there by accident. If you want to be sorry for anyone, feel sorry for the thousands of volunteers who headed over there with no weapons and no training and are essentially naked and susceptible to attack at any point in time without the ability to fight back.

Thirdly, I don't understand what in the hell anything going on in Iraq has anything to do with my personal freedom. It has been established that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction and had no links to Al Qaeda. Military personnel in Iraq fighting day in and day out and not ever knowing if five minutes from now will be the end of their lives has absolutely nothing to do with my ability to say that this war is bullshit. It has absolutely nothing to do with the freedoms of me or any other Americans, and to say otherwise is to pointlessly whip up patriotic fervor and to make a bigger divide between an already recklessly divided country. The actions or inactions of the military do not personally affect me. It's not that they cannot affect me-- there have been wars and there will be wars on my personal freedom, but this isn't one of them. If you wanted to argue that our soldiers are fighting for the personal freedoms of the citizens of Iraq, then we'd be having a completely different conversation.

And lastly, as I've said a dozen times before, I don't know how posting senseless patriotism that goes nowhere and does nothing but pander is in any way supporting the troops. How exactly is your spam mail improving anybody's situation, and how is reposting it supporting anyone? The best way to support your troops is to make sure that in the upcoming elections, no slithering politician allows himself to be installed and to drag this thing out any longer.

There isn't a single rational person in America who doesn't wish the troops well, and there isn't a single reason to force-feed people crap to make them think about them even more. This isn't to say that I'm blaming anyone who forwarded these patriotic messages to all their friends. People are confused and scared about the war, and these messages guilt them into thinking that if they don't repost the message, they're unpatriotic and not supporting the troops. I think the reason anyone participates in any kind of chain mail is that they don't want to seem like the one unsupportive person who doesn't play along like everybody else. I'm really aiming this at the people who start these things to begin with. If you know someone in Iraq or from Iraq with a story to tell, share it. I'd love to hear what they have to say, what they've been through. We would all benefit from hearing about their perspective on what's going on, regardless of how that perspective may differ from our own. Spread that around, and I'll forward it a hundred times. But needlessly patriotic shouts of "Support the troops!" do no good for anyone, and worse, they actually damage the troops: Broad statements demanding that you "Support the troops!" takes away any individuality a soldier may have, and devalues him to mere sloganeering. If you really want to support a soldier, let him or her have a voice.
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with love from CRS @ 8:48 AM 

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