What War?

I see the snippets of footage on the nightly news or on cable news and almost every night I can expect to hear of how many were blown up in Iraq today. It’s gotten to be so repetitive that it’s not news; it’s not new news; it’s the same old stuff. I watch it and get angry and then I say a little prayer for all the people impacted. Visions of those stupid plastic “Support our troops” yellow ribbons that many have on the back of their vehicles flash across my eyes.
Do they really support the troops?
Do they have any idea of what these young men and women are really going through?
I have an idea, but I’ll never come close to know the way they feel because I haven’t walked in their shoes.

An article in Sunday’s Washington Post gives an insightful look at just what these men and women feel. Here are a few paragraphs:

The United States that Iraq veterans are returning to is relatively indifferent, many said. One that without fear of a draft seems more interested in the progression of "American Idol" than the bombings in Baghdad. Sure, there are the homecoming parades, the yellow-ribbon bumper stickers, the pats on the back -- they continue as troops arrive back home.
But for many vets, those moments of gratitude were short-lived or limited to close friends and family. Soon they were joined by bitter impressions of a society that seems to forget that it is living through the country's largest combat operation in more than 30 years.

But perhaps the worst is when they don't say anything at all and just go on living their lives, oblivious to the war.Which is exactly what Army Capt. Tyler McIntyre was trying to explain to some family members while eating at an Italian restaurant when he was home on leave a couple of years ago.He looked across the restaurant and saw everyone stuffing their faces with pasta and drinking wine. "And everyone's kind of just sitting there doing it," he said.Which is really sort of extraordinary, he said. The country is at war. People are fighting at this very moment. Don't these people know what's going on? Don't they care?
No, he decided. They have no appreciation for their easy, gluttonous lives and don't deserve the freedom, prosperity and contentment he was fighting to protect.
He wanted to yell, "You don't know what you have! You don't appreciate it! You don't care!"But he didn't. He kept his mouth shut. He was only home on leave. Soon, he would be going back to the war.

Gee, I wonder if this soldier saw the Support Our Troops ribbons. Doesn’t this show that we care?
It seems that I saw something like this on TV back in the early sixties, Rod Serling hosted the show and it was called The Twilight Zone. To many, the war on terror is being waged in The Twilight Zone.