Red Shirt Fridays

I just got my umpteenth chain letter about how no one cares about our soldiers except for patriotic Republicans. (That's redundant, of course. All Republicans are patriotic; it's those damn Democrats who are so un-patriotic.) I was, in fact, wearing a red shirt this morning, but I had to change into a clean one. I think most soldiers would feel better as they serve their country in Iraq in 120 degree heat knowing I am wearing a clean gray shirt as opposed to a dirty red one. I could be wrong. I usually am.

I get so tired of all these chain-mail messages that claim that people who support the soldiers are a "silent majority." Who in the world is glad or uncaring that American, or British, or Albanian soldiers are dying in the name of George Bush's war? I know no one who doesn't think that it is a tragedy, a crime that we send these men and women to fight and possibly die in this war.

I have absolute respect for these men and women, but that does not mean I am blind to the real reasons our country has sent them there. The Pentagon has recently admitted that their aims are to establish a permanent base in Iraq (http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_6139319?source=most_viewed) which is a great way for us to babysit their oil reserves and governments. America believes it owns the world and its resources, and God help the foreign national who doesn't believe or respect this, because soon enough we will we parking on his front lawn (if he has one) with an armored vehicle. Then we have to explain to that soldier's parents that someone far, far away took offense at tanks in his front yard and killed their son or daughter. And to clarify, that yard we drove onto was NOT Osama bin Laden's house. It was someone who never knew the bastard. If we wanted to get to the bottom of that, we'd be in Saudi Arabia, which we will never do because we don't want to offend our largest oil source, and personal friends of the Bush empire.

That is not a fight for freedom. It is a fight for resource control. To confuse the two is extremely dangerous and delusional. And deadly to more than 3500 American soldiers and innumerable Iraqis. (But why bother counting them? They aren't Americans, after all.)

Patriotism is all well and good until it starts discounting the rights of everyone on this planet to enjoy peace and prosperity UNDER THEIR OWN AUTONOMY. I understand that Saddam Hussein was an evil man. There are MANY very evil leaders in this world right now. We only seem concerned with the ones who sit on very large oil reserves. Otherwise we'd be invading China, North Korea, Libya, and many more.

I love my country, I love its soldiers, and I love and appreciate that I have the right to compain (and vote to change things), but I do not believe in our presidency or its intentionally mis-labeled international policies. The more damage Bush does in our name, the less of a democracy we become. As a matter of fact, countries in the Middle East generally do not see us a democracy, rather as an autocracy. They don't claim they are democracies, either, (Lebanon comes closest in that regard, with regular elections) but they recognize abuse of power when they see it, perhaps because they have often been victims of it themselves by their own governments, and certainly for centuries from the British, French and American empires.

So let's all put on a clean shirt for our soldiers today, and be here for them when they need us, as we should. And for God's sake, let's think of them as we vote in the 2008 election!