The yellow ribbon on the back of the car read "Support Our Troops." Some of us wonder, what’s the need for the ribbons? Who doesn’t support our troops?
An incident last week, when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was questioned by the troops while visiting Kuwait, shed light on the shameful fact that it is our own government who is not supporting them very well at all.
Rumsfeld was asked by a Tennessee National Guardsman, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through landfills for pieces of scrap metal to armor vehicles and why don’t we have those resources readily available to us?"
Rumsfeld appeared caught off-guard by the question and finally gave the soldier one of the most disgraceful answers of this or any war by a public official. "You go to war with the Army you have," said Rumsfeld, "not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
Much has been made of the fact by the conservative media that the question had been secretly given to the soldier by an embedded journalist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press. The hue and cry by the right-wing media is that Rumsfeld was "set up," and that because the question did not originate with the soldier it was somehow not "authentic."
These lackeys for the Bush administration are more concerned that Rumsfeld was embarrassed than in whether the question raised legitimate concerns. Regarding the journalistic ethics, keep in mind that the reporter himself — Edward Lee Pitts — had been barred along with other members of the media from questioning the secretary during his Kuwait visit.
Pitts had written a series of articles for his newspaper prior to the incident questioning why 8,000 of the 30,000 military vehicles in Iraq do not have the necessary armor. He did not coerce the soldier — Spc. Thomas Wilson — into asking the question. The issue has been of longstanding concern to our troops; the reporter just helped Wilson frame the question.
How about a follow-up question?
Why, Mr. Rumsfeld, is this the Army that we have with which we are fighting this war?
The question of adequate armor for the vehicles isn’t the only one bothering some of our troops. Respected observers such as Sens. John McCain and Joseph Biden have reported that some of our troops have been sent into battle without adequate body armor.
In fact, some of the military families have been forced to personally provide body armor for their sons and daughters in Iraq. McCain and Biden recently reiterated their longstanding call for more troops if we are to win the peace — a call that until recently fell on deaf ears in the Bush administration.
You see, the real shame of this war isn’t that a planted question embarrassed Secretary Rumsfeld; it’s the lack of proper support provided by this administration for those brave soldiers who have been placed in harm’s way.
No matter how you feel about this war, the real outrage is the arrogance of the president and his men for sending in too few troops with too few resources to win the peace. The truth is there are lot of questions that Rumsfeld could’ve been asked when he visited Kuwait, like did the president place the political importance of his tax cut ahead of the safety and welfare of our troops? If winning in Iraq is so damn important, why are we trying to do it on the cheap?
The president likes to talk about the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq. I’m not going to trivialize the importance of holding free elections, but if the elections are only a cover for us to declare victory and abandon the country, we will have put the exclamation point on one of the most shameful periods in our history. Because Colin Powell is right: We broke Iraq, and now we own it for better or worse.
It may be that saving Iraq is beyond our control, but we won’t know until or unless we make up our mind that it is going to take more troops and more money. And where is the loyal opposition? During the recent campaign, Kerry and the Democrats were ready to abandon ship under the pretense of making the war an international responsibility, and most of them now seem ready to be silent partners in the selling out of Iraq.
Those yellow ribbons on the back of your car? A nice touch. They might make you feel good, but the truth is that the phrase "Support Our Troops" has never been so empty. What sacrifices have we at home been making to support the troops? Has anybody stopped buying SUV gas-guzzlers that send money into the hands of terrorists in the land of oil?
Really — the troops deserve more, and for that matter so do the Iraqis.
