Reply #47: "Troops" has lost all its meaning

[Cats Against Frist]

Thanks to the neocons/freepers/hate radio mongers -- ultimately they have tied, within some people's minds, a false binary to the word -- meaning, you either support the Bush administration and support the troops, or you don't support Bush and, therefore, you don't support the troops.

I prefer to think of the soldier. Who knows where he or she comes from. What his or her story is. It could be a wayward kid, who found discipline in the Army -- or not -- and he's an asshole to his fellow soldiers and enjoys imperial domination. It could be the man or woman who gives commands he or she disagrees with, or carries out missions that betray his or her own moral convictions. It could be a tormented soldier who hasn't heard from his girlfriend, or has just had a baby, or just had her mother die while she's in Iraq. It could be a soldier lying in a hospital bed, with no arms, barely conscious, destined to elicit hope, for a few brief moments, before he or she dies. It could be a middle class kid who signed up so he could get a degree in Social Services or for God's sake Recreation and he doesn't know why he had to be there, but he went.

Some of these soldiers know nothing. They don't know why they're there -- they don't have backgrounds in history or foreign policy, but they go because of duty, or because of a death wish, or because they had no where to go. Some of them are horrible people, some of them are weak, some of them will get caught up in atrocity, some will lead, some will enjoy it -- some will wake up sweating, someday -- saying "God, I'm sorry." Some will come home and nothing will have happened -- I'm back, I've soldiered, I'm sand. I did what I had to do -- and will watch football and will wave the flag, and will die fifty years from now, hating the neocons who put him there -- or she will die loving the cause still, because superiority is survival. Acquisition of resources, of position is a shingled roof, shiny slide, and an artificial heart, a trip to the moon. To the Victor goes the flatscreen, the Clapper.

Some are sorry they're there now. Some think they're doing good. Some ARE doing good. Some are scared. Some are sunburned. Some will come home and preach the glory of war to here CUTE and UNASSUMING ANTI-WAR neighbor who is simply trying to smoke a cigarette and admire her new Pacific Northwest Native American Windsock with the visage of a Salmon on it. Some will swim upstream, be sorry. Some are horrible fishes, who had no other water to go to, no land, just weeds, some will wave the duty, wake up a shingled roof. To the few brief moments goes the "God, I'm sorry." And it is muddy neocon, who is a broken limb, a broken moon, a dead moral conviction, a wayward slide -- a baby, barely conscious or a death wish.

I don't blanketly support anything -- except for various soft cheeses, experimental cinema and my own antibodies -- but I am thinking about the soldiers, all the time. What got them there, who put them there, what I can do to respect their memory. How I can fit respect for them into me, when I don't have respect for their mission. How I can honor their memory, when I feel that they are at the whim of men who have no honor. How I can forgive them. How I can thank them, for whatever it is that I should be thankful to them for. Which I'm still not sure that I know. Thank you for going. Thank you for occupying your role. You served it well. You did better than I would have.

That's all there is.