Supporting both troops and protesters

In his recent commentary for The Daily Campus, Michael Correll asserted that for one to take to the streets in protest while our soldiers are at war is “no different than spitting on them in the street.” I take exception to that ludicrous and irresponsible statement. His comments belong right where they were placed – next to an editorial about “Girls Gone Wild.”

Mr. Correll went on to ask, why protest a war that’s already in progress? I’ll answer that question with the words of one anonymous patriot. “This is the crucible of being a true American now – standing up for what we believe in without illusions, without any real hope that we will be able to change anything.”

Also, the Editorial Board took best-selling author Michael Moore to task for using the Academy Awards to promote a “political agenda.” If you want to call peace a political agenda, then sign me up. I have a feeling that most of the attending audience – the same audience that gave Moore the first standing ovation of the evening – would be right behind me. It was only a very few who actually engaged in booing the Oscar winner.

Interestingly enough, through the modern miracle that we call TiVo, I was able to slow the footage down enough to see the actual naysayers. There they were – Bush’s twin daughters, seated right next to Charlton Heston. We all know how rowdy those girls can get after a few cocktails and a smoke or two. Indeed, they are the original girls gone wild.

In all seriousness, we should, at the very least, thank Moore for adding a little depth to a self-congratulatory awards show that puts more emphasis on rhinestones than reality.

Now, before all you flag-waving, love-it-or-leave-it zealots with the intellectual capacity of a gnat on the grill of your SUV get your stars and stripes underwear in a wad and go all Taliban on me, let’s get a few things straight. I love my country. Lately I’ve felt like a “partly cloudy patriot,” but I’m a patriot nonetheless.

Just like Correll, I grew up on military bases. My father was a member of the U.S. Air Force, and now works for a major defense contractor. Moreover, both of my little brothers are active members of the U.S. Army. One has already been deployed, leaving behind his wife and a three-month-old son.

In fact, the armed forces have put food on my family’s table and clothes on our backs for many generations. In other words, I know the sacrifices that our military’s brave men and women, to say nothing of their families, make on a daily basis.

So, Mr. Correll, before you go around accusing me of spitting on my family, consider this: I’m out there in the street to protest this war because I want my nephew to grow to know his father, because I have nothing but deep love and admiration for my family members who have been deployed to fight a war with which I happen to disagree – not because I want to spit on them.

Supporting our troops and standing up for peace are not mutually exclusive. I feel we honor our servicemen most by promoting peace and their safe return. They deserve the highest of honors, even when their self-interested commander-in-chief does not.

We’re at war. People are dying. We should be speaking our minds.

If Osama bin Laden were given the chance to speak his mind, I’m sure that he would like to thank our government from the bottom of the dark little cavity where his heart should be. He would thank us for the military training and $3 billion in aid he and his fellow terrorists received under Reagan, for the $245 million in aid the United States gave Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in 2000-2001 (no doubt, the fruits of that expert training and those billions of dollars came in handy when it came time for the world’s most infamous cave-dweller to murder some 3,000 innocent people on Sept. 11).

And now, he would thank Mr. Bush for single-handedly accomplishing the one goal that bin Laden himself was never able to realize. Osama was never able to unify the splintered factions of the Islamic world against us – not until Bush launched a unilateral war against Iraq and the admittedly evil Saddam Hussein.

As a result, our greatest fear and bin Laden’s greatest victory have been realized – those very factions have come together in a common anti-American campaign. Even the most moderate of Islam’s leaders and thinkers are now calling for a holy war against the United States. Surely no person with the smallest grain of foresight denies the frightening reality that there will be retaliation against the United States for many years to come.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a long, bumpy ride.

Instead of using his weapons of “mass distraction” to alienate an astounding majority of the world’s population (including the Pope and the Dixie Chicks), trampling international law, rendering the United Nations irrelevant and committing one of the most egregious unilateral acts of aggression in modern times, perhaps our president should turn his attention elsewhere.

I humbly suggest President Bush implement a color-coded warning system for when unemployment climbs to almost 6 percent, when, in slightly more than two years, over 2.5 million jobs disappear and the federal government goes from a record surplus to the single largest deficit in its history, when the average American doesn’t have enough on which to retire, when tens of millions of people in our country can’t read and write at a fourth-grade level, when the Dow loses 200-plus points in a single day or when 40 million people in the greatest and richest country in the world live in poverty and have no health insurance.

One thing is for sure. If such a warning system were in place, it would be lit up brighter than the night skies of Baghdad.

So here’s to our troops. As they strive to protect us, may we strive in turn to protect them; may we act in their best interests such that they may return home safely to our great land.