Remember the Troops? Is That All We Should Be Doing?

I recently received one of those emails encouraging me to view a YouTube video with lots of photos of our courageous men and women in uniform.

Here is how I replied to that message and video.

Remember them? That’s it. Just remember them. For how long? Just long enough to watch a youtube video?

Remember them? Have we lost them? Are they missing? No, but they are in harm’s way! These American warriors are in the middle of a civil war in a part of the world where they aren’t wanted by most locals. They are risking their lives while we continue to shop, eat whatever we want, drive our SUVs out to end of the driveway to get the mail or wait for the school bus, watch TV in our plush recliners, spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need, play pretend war games on the internet, go to jobs that are far less stressful and harmful to our future and sleep soundly with both eyes closed in our air conditioned homes!

We have a lot of nerve asking our troops to make the ultimate sacrifice when most of us are sacrificing absolutely nothing? We aren’t even paying to support our troops – we are borrowing from the Chinese and Japanese to pay for this occupation of Iraq. Our unrecognized selfishness is disgusting.

Our troops are living in miserable conditions and still being killed, and all we can come up with is remember them?

How about we bring them home so their parents can hug them and they can enjoy what we are enjoying? How about we give them the medical care they need after surviving Iraq? How about we give them a GI bill like the one that was provided to The Greatest Generation? How about we pay our debt to our troops?

Why aren’t we buying ‘GI Recovery Bonds?’