Attention.

I have to admit I’ve been relatively uninspired to write anything lately and luckily I have AeroSarge to back me up when that happens. This morning, however, I saw a few pictures that started one of those stirrings deep down that eventually makes it’s way up to the brain and becomes a full blown blog piece. It started when I clicked on this link from Bornagainredneck’s site. If you don’t choose to click it right now I’ll just tell you it’s a slideshow of a Native American Marine’s wake. You should follow the link and let the images burn into your brain because this post will mean more if you do.

There, all finished? Good.

Seeing these images reminded me of watching the Extreme Makeover Home Edition where they build a house on a reservation for a family (A Native American man and woman who’s daughter died in Iraq, and their daughter’s little boy and girl). On that particular episode they also built a veteran’s center for the “Code Talkers” and other veterans who fought for this country in past wars. Needless to say it was a very moving bit of television.

With these two examples in mind I feel I have to take issue with a large part of our populous. My issue stems from our treatment of those who fight for us. Until the Korean war we as a country always spoke highly of our soldiers and swelled with pride whenever someone mentioned American military might. Most importantly we as a country mourned the deaths of our warriors with reverence and solemnity befitting the loss. Lately our media (and therefore a large part of the sheep who eat what they offer) use the deaths of soldiers in the field as nothing more than a political tool. To be sure the families mourn and grieve their sons and daughters and hope that no more have to die to complete the mission, but outside of familiar circles there are others with designs on death.

Even though this war has fewer American casualties than any war in history (and let’s face it folks, we’re not even CLOSE to amassing the casualties of other wars) there are many who lick their lips when the body count rises, seeing an opportunity to deepen the divide between the anti war crowd and the rest of America. I won’t rant on this fact, I’ll just call it disgusting and move on.

I would have to call this way of thinking the “Can’t see the trees for the forest” syndrome. People like the Hildabeast, Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, and Alec Baldwin are probably not happy about death on a personal level. As much as the feuding political parties in this country want to make each other out as demons, heartless and cruel with nothing but evil in mind for all, I imagine that any one of the major players on each side would cry their eyes out when a loved one parishes. In short, they’re human (and that’s me stretching big time calling Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore, and Hildabeast human). It’s easy for them to cry about one person dying. Death is most often a sad thing. Dying young is most certainly always sad. Where these people lose their humanity is when the big picture takes over and the lives become numbers.

I know, you’ve spotted the flaw in my logic: “What about Bush and his warmongers? They are sending these boys and girls over there to die”.

Wrong.

The mission of this war is not for any American soldier to die or even to be wounded in their service. The mission is freedom. Forget the semantic arguments going on day in and day out about WMD’s, Oil, Revenge, whatever. Even if these were the reasons for us being there the by-product would be freedom for the Iraqi people. We send troops to fight for people who can’t fight for themselves. We don’t get money for it, we just do it. We do it knowing that our men and women can and will die while fighting, but we are and have been since our conception a country who will pay the price for freedom. We taught England that lesson twice in 1776 and 1812. We taught Germany in 1917 and 1944. We taught Russia that for the 50 years following WWII. Now that our freedom is more secure than in any time before, we seek to bring that freedom to others.
How dare we. Apparently we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
Politics and semantics aside, I see a larger problem with our attitudes towards those who chose a life of service. We allow things in the name of the first amendment that demean people who die defending us and then turn around and deny others the same free speech by labeling their opinions “Hate Speech”. We ignore the nobility and sacrifice of our soldiers and focus on the politics of the conflict they’re fighting in. We label them “baby killer” and “fascist” without a single thought about them as a person. We take half truth and lies from the media and pass them to others as gospel. We doubt the goodness inherent in the American spirit of freedom, justice, and liberty, instead focusing on the few here and there who pervert it. We’re so hell bent on pushing the limits of every freedom we have that we don’t even stop to think about whether what we’re doing is right. But of course with our new sense of relative morality it doesn’t matter what you do, because you can just change the rules to make it right.

Seeing those Native Americans give honor to a warrior, one who was brave and chose to serve others instead of himself makes me think we should take it all back to zero. We need to focus on goodness, weed out the destructive behaviors we see through social change not government legislation and move forward towards better things.

We’re 230 years old and we still have so much to learn.