Bring'em Home, But at Least, Pay'em: Wear Green!

"If you love this land of the free, bring'em home, bring'em home," sings Bruce Springsteen. If you won't bring'em home, at least pay them. $140-$190 a day. That's what a sergeant in the U.S. Army in Iraq makes. $1,222 is what a security specialist for Blackwater grabs daily. Do the math. Army sergeants get somewhere from $51,100 to $69,350 a year. Blackwater specialists: $446,030. The U.S. Army sergeant makes about 15% what the Blackwater dude grabs. There are 1,000 Blackwater guards in Iraq, and Blackwater USA has $594,000,000 in contracts with the U.S. State Department. Blackwater's CEO Erik Prince and company are making huge profits, so the $200,000 Prince donates to Republican causes is money well invested (Sojourners 2008).

Still, it's nice to see Blackwater's corporate execs lavishing some of our tax dollars on their employees. Our government should do the same for our soldiers. CEO Prince donates a couple of hundred grand to the Republicans. Our soldiers devote their lives. Brave and generous men and women in uniform should see something in return for their donation. Prince certainly does.

What is really annoying are all these emails floating around the internet insinuating that opposition to the war indicates lack of support for our troops. Last Fall it was "wear red on Friday" to show you care for the soldiers. This week I got one telling me to "wear blue on Fridays." Instead of clothing ourselves in red, white, or blue any day of the week, we should wear green and tell this Republican administration to pay our troops what they are worth on the free market. That's real support for soldiers and their families (and would save military moms from having to get mac & cheese boxes from the local food bank in order to feed their kids).

Maudlin renditions of songs and poems describing a soldier out in the cold (in desert heated Iraq?) while we are snug and safe in our fireplace warmed homes, lit by the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, raise goose bumps and a lump in the throat. But they fail to pay the bills. Real support for our troops means, well, supporting them, not simply feeling good about some schmaltzy song on the radio. Support means telling our leaders to do what is right for those in the military services, not wearing a color that communicates "We Love Our Troops" to professional patriots whose faux commitment to the cause is embarrassing.

"Young Republican Chickenhawks" is an inspired YouTube clip, made at a convention of college Republicans. Max Blumenthal has these right-wing larvae on camera all avowing true and staunch support for the war. Then he zings them with the question, "Will you be enlisting and going over to fight?" The responses of this young and righteous Republican crowd are indicative of their willingness to have others fight for us. "No, I'm an undergrad right now, and I have to get my education." "No, I'm more career-oriented." "No, I have asthma." (Blumenthal 2007). HBO's Bill Maher ought to make a "New Rule": If you support the war, you have to be willing to go over there and participate.

The Catholic bishops have been against this war from the start. In November 2007, the bishops issued a cogent and compelling analysis of where we ought to move in regards to Iraq. They write: "Some policy makers seem to fail to recognize sufficiently the reality and failures in Iraq and the imperative for new directions. ... Our country needs a new direction to reduce the war's deadly toll and to bring our people together to deal with the conflict's moral and human dimensions" (U.S. Bishops 2007).

Well over a million Iraqis have lost their lives in this war. Almost 4,000 U.S. servicemen and women are dead. Some 27,000 Americans, and who knows how many Iraqis, have been seriously wounded. Over 4 million Iraqis have been displaced. And all Americans will be getting a bill that may well be more than $3.5 trillion (Herbert 2007).

That's "trillion" with a "T." How much is a trillion? Spending $1,000 a day, you'd spend a million in almost three years. You would need almost 3,000 years to spend a billion dollars. At this rate, you'd have to be as old as Adam and Eve to spend a trillion.

Bring'em home. That's the true patriotic choice. This war is illegal, immoral and insane. The cost is much more than we can afford in money or lives. The surge isn't working. More Americans died in Iraq in 2007 than in any other year of the war. "If you love this land of the free bring'em home, bring'em back from overseas, bring'em home, bring'em home."

References

Blumenthal, Max

2007 "Generation Chickenhawk" Young Republican Chickenhawks. Youtube.com (accessed January 2008).

Herbert, Robert

2007 "Now and Forever." The New York Times. Op-ed. December 7,

Sojourners Magazine,

2008 "Wading in Blackwater." JimWallis, ed. Sojourners. January 2008. P. 10

U.S. Catholic Bishops

2007 "Call for Bipartisan Cooperation on Responsible Transition in Iraq. A Statement of the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Bishop William S. Skylstad, Bishop of Spokane. Washington, DC. November 13, 2007.