No, thanks: Stop saying “support the troops”

[hunter]

43. I can't say that. My dad and my father-in-law both got GI benifits.

My father-in-law escaped life as a Mexican "anchor baby" farmworker by joining the military. They used him as a guinea pig in nuclear tests. He got to witness a nuclear explosion up close. See the flash through the back of your head!

But afterwards the Navy paid for his university education.

My dad joined the military too so he could live up to the expectations of his family. His dad was an officer in WWII. My dad got some GI benefits for college, as an art major. He's still an artist.

Both my dad and my father-in-law missed "getting shot at" service in Korea by the skin-of-their-teeth. Random chance. My father-in-law probably got the worse deal but he lucked out by having radioactive fallout resistant genes. He also got to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some of the guys he was with in the trenches, the guys he marched across ground-zeros with, the guys digging in the ruins of Nagasaki, they were not so lucky -- killed by cancer.

I live near a public high school. I see the kids in ROTC often, just this morning I saw them in uniform, in the parking lot, working out with toy guns. They are all the kids of immigrants, documented or not, looking for a better life just like my father-in-law was. I can't help but support them. They want what anyone wants. The "American Dream."

I used to work for a general contractor (retired and sober now) who is a prominent "Veterans for Peace" guy. He saw horrible things in Viet Nam. Really, really horrible things. Bad idea to drink with him after work. You will not sleep.

My brother's godson saw horrible things in Iraq. His job was to scrape up bodies, brains, guts, everything, into body bags. He will never be right in this world. The nightmares will never go away. He still drinks.

But they all joined the military looking for something better.

I don't know what this says about our society, but it isn't good.