Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Supporting the Troops?

I was walking through the shopping district in my town and saw some anti-war protesters. There were only 4 or 5 of them out there with different signs and varying degrees of animosity. One of the signs said honk for peace; a couple of signs talked about pulling our troops out, impeaching our President, and no war in Iraq. There were two types of slogans missing from this montage of signs so I decided to go and ask the guy with the bullhorn a couple of questions assuming that he was running this show.
Some of the slogans that are missing from every anti-war rally/protest/demonstration/march, or whatever else you want to call these gatherings, “NO AL QUADA!!!” or “IMPEACH BIN LADAN”. To me this is very much the same as going to an anti-crime rally with signs that read “NO POLICE” or “INDICT THE MAYOR”. Why do we forget so easily that it was Al Quada and Bin Laden that declared war on us? Since September 11, 2001 there have been 10,113 terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists, are we expected to sit on our collective butts until the next Twin Towers attack? I expect not. The left has been stuck in their rage about President Bush winning the Presidential election in 2000 that they seem to have forgotten who our real enemies are. And they aren’t even correct in picking out the bad guys that voted for war in Iraq.
When I asked the gentleman that seemed to be running things the question about why there were no signs about Al Quada he said that he agreed with me, there should be more signs about Al Quada. Then one of the other protesters made sure that I was aware that Al Quada was not in Iraq before we invaded. So I asked her if we should continue to fight Al Quada anywhere and she started on a rant that I eventually stopped listening to, the short version of it is that she subscribes to Ron Paul’s views, it is all our fault that Al Quada wants to fight us.
The anti-war left attacks our President, Vice President, the present administration, any Republican, and Democrat Joe Lieberman. The only reason that these people are being attacked is that they had common sense and their eyes open to reality. Although they are not the only people responsible for making the decision to take military action in Iraq, hopefully setting the necessary precedent to go elsewhere when needed to secure our interests. Those politicians that held seats in the House and Senate when the vote was tallied in favor of giving President Bush the authority to take whatever action necessary to stymie Saddam’s support of terrorism, as well as the well known, and often wrongly given as the only reason, Weapons of Mass Destruction program that Iraq reported that they had. The 9/11 Commission did conclude that there was a definite connection between Saddam and terrorism.
The left and the main stream media also like to publicize and play up any tragedies to the Iraqi people that involve our military, be it personnel or equipment. We all remember Abu Grhab, Haditha, and GTMO. This to me seems backwards considering that the same people and organizations downplay or hide the atrocities of Al Quada and other terrorist groups. You really have to know where to look to find that information. How widely has it been reported by the MSM about the way that Al Quada was baking 10 and 11 year old Iraqi kids? How many reports of the rape and torture rooms run by Al Quada? How many of our Congressmen have come out and called Al Quada “cold blooded killers that made a bad decision because of the extreme stress that we put these people under?” Now ask these same questions about the press that our troops have gotten. How many stories have we seen about the latest Congressional Medal of Honor that was awarded? How many people on the left can name the man or the branch of service that he was in?
They also, by default, hide our successes through their nonreporting. The MSM would rather support the troops by throwing a microphone in front of a member of Congress that they know will give them a sound bite about what is not going right in Iraq. I guess it goes with the “if it bleeds it leads” theory of packaging the news. You don’t see many stories about the schools that are opening up, or the decline of deaths in the major cities. It just would not fit with the agenda of the left.
The biggest and most important sign that you will not see, or have not seen once, is a sign saying “SUPPORT OUR TROOPS”. I find it kind of odd that the people that claim to care more about the troops than those of us on the right cannot find the time to add this sign to their repertoire of signage, probably because they don’t support the troops. I asked the guy with the bull horn if he supported the troops. He could not give an answer to that question without qualifying his answer. He kept asking me what I meant by support. So I told him to forget about the war in Iraq, just take it off of the table. His four sentence answer started with how his uncle and grandfather both served, I stopped him and asked if he could give a simple yes or no answer. He told me he could not. When I asked him why he could not just give a simple yes or no answer to a simple question he told me that I sounded passionate about my stances on things and obviously supported the war which makes me complicit. Ok, I’m complicit. Hopefully this guy will come and thank those of us who have and continue to be complicit in protecting his right to protest and his way of life.
I don’t think that I will ever really understand how you can support something and work to see it lose. The Democrats in Washington D.C. have told the American people over and over that they support the troops. To me it is all just lip service. How can you support the troops and try to pull the funding needed for them to do their jobs? You cannot. With all of the Bills that have been floated on the floors of either the House or Senate you would think that at least a handful would be in support of our troops but I cannot think of more than one or two, and they were not even brought up for a vote because they were authored by Republicans. The only thing that I really remember the Democrats being pro-troops about was up armored Hummers.
I just hope that these same Democrats that have preached to us about how we are losing in Iraq, or how our troops are stupid, or cold blooded killers, or terrorist are remembered on Election Day. A vote against any of these politicians is a clear vote to support our troops.