So I'm surrounded by family that deliver two lines to me on a regular basis:
- support our troops
- support the office of the president
As the only liberal leaning person in the family, I get those statements in response to my peace-sign and my "is it 2008, yet?" bumper stickers. As I don't (EVER) bring up these conversations, the frequency with which I'm bombarded with those two statements makes me nuts. With the article I just found and posted about the pentagon, I've just boiled over. So I bring my complaints here.
Please consider that 'deep background' to my real question.
It seems to me that the line "support our troops" is used to mean "support our administration's decisions about the troops". Really, who DOESN'T support the troops? I think the closest argument one could make for who doesn't support our troops is whatever administration doesn't fund veteran services. I suspect there are threads to that affect already in politics.
I was listening to a Springsteen song called "Brothers Under the Bridge" (last song on disc 4 of "tracks") which has some heartbreaking lyrics:
Quote:
Saigon, it was all gone
The same Coke machines
As the streets I grew on
Down in a mesquite canyon
We come walking along the ridge
Me and the brothers under the bridge
Campsite's an hour's walk from the nearest road to town
Up here there's too much brush and canyon
For the CHP choppers to touch down
Ain't lookin' for nothin', just wanna live
Me and the brothers under the bridge
Come the Santa Ana's, man, that dry brush'll light
Billy Devon got burned up in his own campfire one winter night
We buried his body in the white stone high up along the ridge
Me and the brothers under the bridge
Had enough of town and the street life
Over nothing you end up on the wrong end of someone's knife
Now I don't want no trouble
And I ain't got none to give
Me and the brothers under the bridge
I come home in '72
You were just a beautiul light
In your mama's dark eyes of blue
I stood down on the tarmac, I was just a kid
Me and the brothers under the bridge
Come Veterans' Day I sat in the stands in my dress blues
I held your mother's hand
When they passed with the red, white and blue
|
So I started to wonder if all this "support our troops" business was offensive to actual troops. Particularly the ones from Vietnam. I was a bit too young for Vietnam, but it seems like it would piss me off to hear/see that line and know that it was being used as a political slogan and that more troops were going to come home and get the shaft for the rest of their lives, too.
Any chance that makes any sense?