Why support the troops

Extend a hand in friendship to a military family. Invite them over for a meal, bring them a meal or invite them out for dinner. Something as simple as running an errand or taking a walk together can forge a friendship.

If Mom or Dad is deployed , there will be additional challenges for the spouse at home. Get to know them and find out what you can offer. Simple gestures such as clipping extra diaper coupons, cutting the grass or helping to put up Christmas lights can mean so much when you are alone.

When I served in the Army , the holidays away were a melancholy time. Include a service person over for dinner during the holidays. If you have room, invite two, it will be less pressure for everyone. You can contact the Community Relations Office of your local base to get more information. Contact a nursing home or a veterans hospital. A visit can brighten a day and help a veteran to know they are not forgotten. Dogs on Deployment arranges foster care for the pets of the military when they are deployed, during basic training or if they are unable to care for them.

Contact them if you are able to provide a temporary home for a beloved pet. Write a letter of thanks to a military family, those currently in the service or a veteran through Operation Appreciation and Blue Star Families. This organization was founded to connect the civilian population with military families as a bridge to help make military life more sustainable. The free market and corporate magnanimity are supposed to address these matters, but neither has ever been a viable substitute for the dynamic practices of communal policymaking.

A different sort of combat ensues: class warfare, without the consciousness. As in most areas of the American polity, we pay taxes that favor the private sector, which then refuses to contribute to any sustainable vision of the public good. The only serious welfare programs in the United States benefit the most powerful among us.

Individual troops, who are made to preserve and perpetuate this system, rarely enjoy the spoils. The bonanza is reserved for those who exploit the profitability of warfare through the acquisition of foreign resources and the manufacture of weapons. Supporting the troops is a cheerful surrogate for enabling the friendly dictators, secret operations, torture practices and spying programs that sustain this terrible economy.

My wife and I often discuss what our son might grow up to accomplish. A consistent area of disagreement is his possible career choice. She can think of few things worse than him one day joining the military in any capacity , while I would not object to such a decision.

Those who know me might be surprised by my position, but it arises from a belief consistent with my political outlook, that the power of institutions can never overwhelm the simple act of thinking.

In other words, even if the military as an institution often does bad things, the individuals that comprise the military do not have to become bad people. Soldiers can certainly be awful human beings, but so can professors, clerks, musicians, executives, landscapers and athletes. This way of thinking also inversely demystifies the troops, who are burdened with untenable narratives of heroism the vast majority like those in all professions do not deserve.

If we recognize that the troops are in fact human beings, then we simultaneously accept that they are too complex to be reduced to patriotic ephemera. Such recognition is unusual, though.

It is an act of possession that projects fantasies of virtue onto an idealized demographic in the absence of substantive virtuous practices that might otherwise foster national pride.

Plutocracy ravages the state; we rebuild it with narratives of glory and selflessness, the troops acting as both the signifier and the signified in this nationalistic uplift. The selflessness of our troops is particularly sacred. Not only do they bring order and democracy to lesser peoples; they also risk and sometimes give their lives for the good of others, so that civilians might continue driving, shopping, dining and watching movies, the hallmarks of American freedom.

That these notions of sacrifice connote a Christ-like narrative of individual-death-for-collective-pleasure only endows them with even greater cultural power. Whether or not our son ever joins the military, questions about the deployment of mythological slogans in the service of socioeconomic iniquity need to be addressed.

His joining or not joining will have no effect on that need, which will remain even if he becomes a teacher or doctor. I want him to enter into adulthood in a world where people impeach and diminish the mystification of corporate plunder. More than anything, I want him to participate in the process, whether he does it from a barrack, a cubicle or a corner office. It would be wise to avoid countervailing slogans, such as the assertive but nonetheless meager Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home!

Four months after the invasion, Rep. The fact that families of service members sent to Iraq were able to buy body armor and get it to their loved ones in Iraq, while the Pentagon itself was unable to do so, created a firestorm in Congress where legislation was enacted requiring the Defense Department to reimburse service members and their families for such purchases.

Nearly a year later, however, many troops in Iraq were still unable to get body armor through official channels and unable to obtain reimbursement for purchases made by their families. More recently, the pathetic state of the housing that many returning soldiers are assigned provided even more evidence to substantiate that conclusion. On April 24th, Sens. The instant you walk through the front door, you know you are in a building that should be condemned.

The White House has repeatedly opposed efforts by Congress to improve the pay, treatment, and living conditions of our troops and veterans. In many instances there is a clear record of their actions. Since , the Bush administration has repeatedly failed to request the amounts needed to repair and replace badly dilapidated military housing. The Bush administration has also repeatedly objected to efforts by the Congress to restore funds for family and bachelor housing, and increase the resources needed to repair or replace the huge inventory of dilapidated and inadequate housing still in use by members of the military.

On four separate occasions since the beginning of the Iraq war, the White House sent messages to Congress objecting to military pay increases on the grounds that they were too generous. In , they objected to additional pay for reservists who were involuntarily mobilized. In , they objected to Congress granting a 2. In , they once again objected to the higher inflation adjustment proposed by Congress.

The additional 0.