Frank Rich: Supporting our troops over a cliff

[cal04]

Americans should feel "guilty" because the Bush Administration "has asked no sacrifice of civilians other than longer waits at airline security," while our troops go to war in Iraq so "we can party on," writes Frank Rich in his column slated for the Sunday edition of The New York Times, RAW STORY has learned. "For all the politicians' talk about honoring those who serve, Washington's record is derelict: chronic shortages in body and Humvee armor; a back-door draft forcing troops with expired contracts into repeated deployments; inadequate postwar health care and veterans' benefits," Rich writes. "And that's just the short list."

Rich also slams President Bush's campaign for a federal marriage amendment while the war drags on ("...we are planning an indefinite stay of undefined parameters," according to Rich). "Though the amendment has no chance of passing, Bush apparently still thinks, as he did in 2004, that gay-baiting remains just the diversion to distract from a war gone south," Rich writes.

Excerpts from Rich's column:
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...Nothing, including the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Haditha, has shaken American affection for the troops. Nothing should. These men and women go to war so we can party on...We've even been rewarded with a prize that past generations would have found as jaw-dropping as space travel: a wartime dividend in the form of tax cuts. "It shocked me that the country was not mobilized for war," said Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who retired after his stint as a commander in Iraq and became an outspoken critic of Donald Rumsfeld.

He told The Wall Street Journal that "it was almost surreal" that the only time some Americans "think about the war is when they decide what color magnet ribbon to put on the back of their car." Should we feel guilty? Yes. The sunshine of last weekend, splendid as it was for a cookout, could not eradicate the dark reality that we keep sending our troops into a quagmire. At Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, the president read a poignant letter that 1st Lt. Mark Dooley, killed by a bomb last September in Ramadi, wrote to his parents. What Bush did not say was that now, nine months later, insurgents rule Ramadi...

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Frank_Rich_Supporting_our_troops_over_0603.html

[Joanne98]

1. Isn't it strange that ignoring the war is desturbing them more

than protesting it.

[YDogg]

2. One of the things that bothered me from the beginning about Bush ...

... after 9/11, was that he (in so many words) said we (the people?) woul dnot have to change anything about what we do, the way we lead or lives. There was no call at all for shared sacrifice, at a time when many or most of us would have gladly done so. It bothered the hell out of me then, and that attitiude still bothers me. Of course, now we see what a sham his "war presidency" has become, and there are damned few people left who support his reckless warmongering. A call for sacrifice now would ring hollow, as he sure as hell hasn't sacrificed anything personally.

[Dunvegan]

5. Hear, Hear...YDogg...Glad to hear that drove someone else to distraction

...I thought that statement from Bush was unconscionable. It sounded more like the "run all day on and sleep all night on 911" clueless frat boy talking.

That's not me, or most of us here, I suppose.

YDogg...that sentiment should be a journal all to itself.

To quote an old R & B shaker: We "get up offa that thing, and work 'til it gets better."

The entire country was moving to act.

That day, I was running a forum with over 6 million hits a year which was devoted to the victims of violent crime. I jumped online to organize our forum and set up two rescue funding efforts.

One was for money to support the needs of the workers at Ground Zero.

And our other effort came about because, having grown up rasing and training beagles at our family kennel, search and rescue dogs are close to my heart. That one was to buy "Muttluks" from Canada for the rescue dogs at Ground Zero.




S&R teams were litterally working their hands and paws to the bone. Neither dog nor handler would rest for nearly a day or so at a time...or until injury stopped them.

Muttluks were the only product to save pet and paw out at the time.

The Muttluks people got the boots we and others bought (along with their own donated thousands) to the dogs. Dogs that didn't want to quit...couldn't be drug away from the rescue efforts. Dogs that were working so hard that they literally shredded their paws in the glass and gravel of the WTC within 48 hours.

The instant shipping, while no planes were flying, was a near miracle. An overnight delivery company that had clearance to cross the border into the US from Canada volunteered to pickup and deliver the Muttluks to NYC.

Later on, we collected books for soldiers in-country and at the medical base in Germany.

If 911 didn't clue most people in, then Katrina absolutely should have turned on some wattage in even the dimmest bulb that this administration had, in it's coup, created a new country.

BushCo: Out with "America." In with "You're-On-Your-Ownistan."

(Props to the DUer that coined that phrase.)

It's a good thing we're all "can do" people.

Even the dogs worked until exhaustion in the aftermath of 911.

But there's no excuse for the pResiden's non-action during all and any crisis. Bloody frat-boy.

[MikeNearMcChord]

3. That one statement

"it was almost surreal" that the only time some Americans "think about the war is when they decide what color magnet ribbon to put on the back of their car." :grr: People who are that shallow, is why I wish sometimes, though I am against it, that the draft would come back. If I was Prez for one week, I would force some of these flag wavers take a nice stroll in the VA hospital, be forced to listen to veterans of this war, experience the nightmares they have, the visions that have burned into them like a branding iron in their minds forever. Then force them to listen to the testimonies of Iraqis who have suffered, the parents of the children killed, the cries of the children who lost parents or were wounded, in this sad chapter of our nation's history.

[lyonn]

4. This war is "surreal"

Hopefully before the Nov. elections this truth will be told many times until the people get it. The marriage issue has definitely been overused. Surely this won't be a distraction. Wonder if they will pound the morals issue again?