Americans...correct?

The company I work for recently sent six 50 lb. boxes to M in Iraq. In getting it all ready, I was sent an e-mail with a list of things my co-workers thought appropriate. On the list was cigarettes. I sent an e-mail back to the originator and told her smoking was frowned upon heavily by the military, and had been for about 20 years. So she took it off the list...end of story, right?

Not so skippy. Some time later, another employee walked up to her and said the following: "So...like...our soldiers murder someone and then smoke a cigarette?"

In Washington State this past weekend, a group of recalcitrant's entered a cemetery after dark and replaced over 200 US flags on graves with white, hand-drawn flags bearing a Swastika. Families and friends entered that cemetery to honor their fallen loved ones and were horrified, hurt, and deeply saddened by this act of anonymous cowardice.

In both cases, I'm talking about Americans who did and said these things. Americans...home of the free, land of the....what?

Pop quiz skippy:

Who do you think will be the first group of people that will scream "WHERE IS THE ARMY!?!?" if a nuke goes off in Philadelphia, Chicago, or Kansas City?

Uh huh.


PS A little post-script here. To those who would read this and tell me, "Not everyone is that way", I would obviously respond in the affirmative. But the fact of the matter is, more people are acting that way then ever before in this country. Studies have shown that even though the bulk weight and raw numbers of care packages being sent to service men and women in the Middle East is still as high as it ever has been, the sources for these packages has diminished by some accounts as much as 85%. Which means that 15% of the people are still loading up through the help of organizations like Anysoldier.com, Operation shoebox, etc. who keep the mail and comfort items rolling by petitioning large business as well as the general public.

In my own company's venture, 16 people out of 63 filled those six 50 lb boxes. That's 25%, an extraordinarily low and personally embarrassing number. Some of them were not just co-workers - but were people I considered friends. How much does it take to hit the supermarket and buy a few packs of gum to throw in the box? Not much. It's not because they couldn't either - it's because they wouldn't.

We have reached the precipice. We are now equating the soldiers - our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, friends and neighbors- with the politics and anger of our own individualistic feelings.

Don't tell me it isn't true, because the statistics speak for themselves. Don't tell me we haven't cut off our nose to spite our political faces, because we have. Read the papers...the letters to the editors...watch the news...it's right there staring us in the face: Faux patriotism - wrapped in a blanket of "I support the troops but not the war or the President". I can clearly see the lack of support for the war and the President, but for the life of me, I'm still searching for something that shows me the troop support...it's just not there as a fact.

Only words, skippy... only words.