Gut Check

This is from a post today by Cassandra at Villainous Company.

"Our military are committed in the short term. They are in harm's way. Waffling and infighting will not bring them home sooner; they will only place their lives in greater jeopardy, while rendering the sacrifices of those who have died or been grievously wounded meaningless. They deserve better from us.

It's time for another gut check, America. Time to stop the whining and the carping. Time to stop insulting our fighting men and women; diminishing their voluntary sacrifices by calling them children. They are not your "kids". As one reader, a Vietnam veteran, so aptly remarked last night, there are no children on a battlefield and the military does not recruit babies. They can read, write, and think for themselves by the time they sign on that dotted line and when they reenlist, as they do from combat units all over in astonishing numbers, that says something very powerful that all your condescending and cynical rhetoric can't wipe away. It says that they believe in each other and in their mission even if you don't. And our President believes in them, even if you don't.

What a sad, sad commentary that is, when the American people have lost confidence in the armed forces who have served them so nobly and so well under such difficult circumstances, under a Congress and a so-called free press who have undercut them at every turn, who have published classified details of vulnerabilities in their body armor so snipers would have a clearer idea of how to defeat it, all in the name of "freedom".

And you, the people of America, stood silent and allowed this.

You, the people of America, the conspicuous consumers, did not object, did not cancel your subscriptions to the New York Times, because that would be inconvenient.

And now you are tired of war. Only 28% of you approve of the President, and you sit passively in your homes, waiting for him to explain the war to you better, to "ask you to sacrifice". Like spoiled babies, you whine pathetically because the President hasn't asked you nicely enough to participate in this war.

Do you, perhaps, require detailed instructions? An engraved invitiation? What mystical force prevents you from "sacrificing" unless and until the President of the United States asks you to? Do you lack the willpower to turn off the television and stay out of the Mall? To keep away from that recruiter's office? It must be horribly, horribly difficult for you.

I pity anyone who feels so powerless that remain a prisoner in their own home, forced into inaction and at the mercy of a President they openly despise; a man with all the formidable intellectual prowess of a mildly retarded chimpanzee who (we are told) somehow managed to rout not one but two vastly smarter opponents in national elections as the Free People of the United States looked on in helpless horror. And that was before he shredded the Constitution and fed it to Barney the White House terrier, completing our national paralysis."