Thanks, Sucker
Someone called my attention to the Gratitude Campaign website. The idea is to show appreciation for our troops by giving anyone you see in uniform a distinctive gesture of thanks: open palm, swiveling away from the heart.
It’s a measure of how cynical I’ve become of the national discourse that my first reaction to the “support our troops” message was to think it was a ploy to allow people to feel good about supporting the troops without actually, you know, supporting the troops.
Remember the outcry upon learning that returning troops were not receiving proper medical attention at the Walter Reed army hospital? Our commander-in-chief immediately expressed his indignation and promised to fix it up immediately. Heard anything lately on how that’s going—and even more importantly, how all the other, less visible military hospitals are being likewise improved? The military budget, and especially the portion of the military budget devoted to medical care for the troops hasn’t grown. Indeed, the whole Iraq was conspicuously left off the president’s proposed budget, to be funded by a string of “emergency spending” measures, to permit the president to claim he is keeping spending down. Predictably, treating our wounded veterans has not fallen under the heading of “emergency spending.”
A less reported scandal exposed how Pentagon officials began leaning on Fort Drum veterans’ groups to stop being so helpful towards veterans. The waters of the military bureaucracy are as treacherous and confusing as those of any bureaucracy, and veterans often have difficulty in applying properly for their benefits (which may be taken as an excuse not to provide them); often, they are not aware of all benefits for which they are eligible. One of the important functions of the VA is to help keep our returning soldiers aware of what they are entitled to, and to help them get it. But that can get expensive, so apparently the Pentagon has decided to “support our troops” by forming “tiger teams” to instruct the scattered offices in the Department of Veterans Affairs not to help veterans with their paperwork, and keeping the money for projects more glamorous than physical therapy.
This month, the President announced that tours of duty in Iraq will be reduced from 15 months to 12, and that we will begin drawing troops down. How very generous. Tours of duty were only to be 12 months in the first place, and were expanded simply because insufficient cannon fodder could be found, recruiters having a hard time getting fresh blood after stories about our how the Secretary of Defense chose to “support our troops” by going to war with the army he had, instead of the army he should have had. Body armor costs money, you know? And planning for a long occupation doesn’t look so good on a political resume. The presented draw-down is nothing more than the (late) expiration of the troop surge, planned as a short-term measure not because it would only be needed for the short term but because we can’t keep it up. Even the generals, historically vocal in their belief that the US military can take on any enemy, mutter that this little adventure is breaking the army.
They can’t speak up too loudly, of course. A general who complains that the president is not, in fact, supporting the troops gets to enjoy an early retirement. It is proper that officers who go to the press to complain of anything short of criminal negligence or treason in the president’s handling of our military be cashiered; our military is wholly subordinate to the civil authority for good and sufficient reasons. But, sadly, senior officers who opposed the invasion of Iraq quietly, within the halls of power, as they should, also found their careers sidelined into Alaskan air base paper clip inventory. Because, after all, you can’t “support our troops” by insisting they be endangered for real reasons, or insisting upon a plan designed to succeed; that might undermine confidence in a rapid, painless, and inexpensive, albeit fictitious, victory.
Consistently, the conservatives running the country—in the president’s staff, in Congress, in the press, and even the ordinary citizen with a yellow sticker on his car but a refusal to pay taxes to fund the war on his lips—have said “support our troops” when, in fact, they only mean “support our war.” To them, the troops are unimportant. The hypocrisy has been so thick and so consistent that I reflexively think anyone calling for us to support our troops doesn’t give a rat’s ass about them. That’s not entirely fair, but it’s hard to overcome.
It’s not fair to the Gratitude Campaign, which just asks that we thank our soldiers. There’s nothing wrong with thanking our troops, and plenty right with it. They deserve it for offering up their lives (both literally and in the broader sense of career, family, and hobbies), to serve national interests. And if they’ve offered their lives to serve petty, deceitful goals that are not actually in the national interest, the troops, at least, deserve our gratitude (and shame) all the more. It’s not fair of me to think reflexively that this is an excuse to shirk responsibility for supporting the troops in any meaningful, material fashion, just as “compassionate conservatism” was an excuse to abandon the working poor and hope charity would take care of it all. The Gratitude Campaign is probably just some genuine folks who, knowing a few soldiers, realize that soldiers like to be told once in a while that we appreciate their sacrifice. Hearing it from an ordinary citizen who doesn’t have to make the gesture might mean more than hearing it from a politician, who does, whether or not he actually supports the troops.
So my skepticism shouldn’t be directed at the campaign, and with effort, I turn it elsewhere: to any reader who buys into the campaign and begins waving from heart to soldier.
If you think it’s a good idea to participate in the Gratitude Campaign, ask yourself what you’re doing to support the troops besides a quick wave. If you thank a soldier in addition to writing your Congressman to make a stink about Walter Reed, calling for increased taxes to pay to equip them, and demanding government accountability for the war before it started, more power to you. If you merely thank a soldier instead of doing these things, after cheering them off to an unjustified war because it warmed your jingoistic little heart, it’s a bandaid to your conscience, another incarnation of “compassionate conservatism.” Shame on you.