Support / Don't support the troops

Dear Editor:

OK, if no one else will say it, I'll say it: "I do not support the troops."

The morons who say they do are uttering a phony, politically correct sentence or have it stuck on the back of their cars are actually saying, "Don't bother me with that war thing. I don't care that Bush and his cronies have attacked a pile of sand with oil underneath it and flesh and blood people above it. Let our troops kill everyone they want and if they get killed or get an arm or leg blown off it's their own fault for getting caught up in a mess like that."

Every time this stupid sentence is used or displayed, somebody dies needlessly.

It's very easy to send some poor slob in the Army or Marines to hump around the dunes when you don't have to do it yourself.

When I was 18 and as stupid as all the troops over there now, including the square-jawed, talking-head generals, I was supposed to be bringing democracy to a Third World country. It was baloney then and it's baloney now. All we did (I was a grunt in the Marines), was make a thousand Viet Cong for every one we killed. And the ones I killed have haunted me since.

How about a new line, the short version being: "War is for Cowards" and the long version, "War gives the Pentagon's cowardly bureaucrats, the federal government's cowardly politicians, and America's citizen cowards the chance to try to convince themselves that they're not the cowards they know they are."

AL BROWN, Hood River

http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonatwar/2006/03/support_dont_support_the_troop.html