Soccer Mom: Unplugged

Five men,  obviously foreigners, were sitting on flight 1874 today.  The men weren't speaking English and were carrying books about "aircraft flight" but it wasn't until they refused the ham salad lunch that a Federal air marshall radioed ahead to Newark and put the Port Authority on stand-by.

Okay, that bit about the ham salad I made up but doesn't it seem a little bit overreactionary to freak about five foreigners with a book about helicopters?  Did they rush the cockpit with box cutters?  Did they even unfasten their seatbelts and stroll to the little terrorists' room? 

The FBI interrogated the men for nearly three hours and eventually identified them as follows:  

"The men - identified only as four Angolan military personnel and an Israeli - were traveling back to their home countries after attending helicopter training school in Texas"

Can you just imagine the stunned look of these five men, world travelers, unlike most FBI or Port Authority agents, possibly invited to our country as military allies on a training junket paid for by their own governments?  I understand the fear but do you really think after 9/11 that a terrorist would board with a flight manual in hand?  You know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

A special thanks to the House Armed Services subcommittee that opposed the Pentagon's proposed hikes in Tricare fees. Retirees and servicemembers know what many Americans don't.  Military healthcare is not free and has not been free for some time.  In fact, when my father retired in the early 70s after spending 22 years, mostly in Asia, in uniform, there wasn't a solitary concern with respect to his future medical needs.  The military used to take care of its own.  Now, retirees pay for a worse system that offers less and outsources them at every opportunity to other providers where they become responsible for copays and in many cases the cost of medicines and medical supplies.  And once you are old enough for medicare, that becomes your primary coverage and the, supposedly lifelong, Tricare coverage becomes a secondary.  What medicare doesn't cover, Tricare won't so you can screwed over coming and going.  It's ugly.

I know for many insured Americans, this is normal, but the DOD had done a much better job in the past of offering benefits to compensate for the embarrassingly low salaries that servicemembers receive. 

The Pentagon's plan to hike enrollment fees, more than triple them to be exact, and to substantially raise copays was an effort to push more retirees away from using Tricare as a primary provider.  It was specifically designed to "discourage people from taking advantage of a benefit that they earned serving our nation" according to Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Arkansas). 

Why aren't people picketing over that?

Page 6 of the Army Times May 8th edition carries a FastTrack blurb about HR 5037.  Commonly referred to as the "Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act",  this bill is a direct response to the inbreds at Westboro Baptist Church led by Pastor (and family patriarch) Fred Phelps.  These folks like to picket the funerals, memorial services and burials of U.S. servicemembers to remind the nation that it is not wild-eyed insurgents with cell phone operated IEDs that kill our folks in uniform,  rather it is the wrath of an angry God who dislikes the nation's tolerance for homosexuality and adultery. 

An aside:  I'm as religious right as anybody else, to be sure,  I consider homosexuality a choice (there's been no gay gene discovered) that is contrary to the basic purposes of God. Adultery falls into the same category and it undermines the family, the fundamental and very first institution ever established.  However, condemning a behavior and condemning a person are two wholly different acts.  Believe me, I'm a mother,  I have to make this distinction every day.  And certainly, the loving God I know has been more apt to allow me to suffer the natural consequences of my actions than to impose punishment for my acts on a stranger simply because he wears a camo flak jacket.  Just my opinion. 

What really caught my eye was the photo that accompanied the 2 paragraph writeup.  Generally, Phelps is lucky to draw a crowd of 6 to 8 supporters at one of his protests.  In this picture it appears that there are more reporters covering the morons than there are morons.  Must've been a slow news day...

WWII American propoganda painted the German soldier as a monster that relished killing and torturing others.  It painted him as unthinking and unfeeling - a knuckle dragging neanderthal - who lived to wreak havoc and leave destruction and death in his wake.  It was a psychological tactic designed to allow young American soldiers, most of whom were completely unexperienced with the horrors of war, to kill another man or boy in cold blood. 

Today the same tactics are being used by Americans.  Not by the military establishment, mind you, our soldiers know very well that they are killing men who probably have wives and children, adversaries with mothers and fathers.  They understand that their enemy is no less complex than they themselves are.  They do not relish the duty which they are called upon to fulfill but they recognize that freedom is a right all men must share if any of us it to be free from the threat of terror.

No, the propoganda war isn't being waged by the U.S. military but against them.  Anti-war protestors levy charges of "baby-killer" and "mercenary" against Soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines daily.  Spurred on by left-leaning politicians and partisan hate-mongers, these voices fill the air with the vilest rhetoric and the most judgemental accusations.  The shouts of protestors and the angry descriptives they use to reference our military appear designed to convince us that those in uniform are subhuman monsters who either relish the act of killing or who are able to emotionally detach themselves from their actions. 

The ability of anti-military citizens to shout these characterizations with such hate and venom attests to the fact that they have become vicitims of their own propoganda.  They have become the mindless bigots they claim to despise.  The descriptives they attribute to our servicemen and women are mirrored in their own behavior.  They have demonized an entire group of people and endeavor to enrage others by using a generalized caricature of their own misperceptions.  Living with the hypocrisy required to accuse our soldiers of mistreating and dehumanizing Iraqi insurgents while reducing our soldiers to lemming-like homicidal minions must demand an immeasurable amount of self-delusion. 

That such "pacifists" have become the most hateful and horrifyingly biased of our people is a tribute to the American soldier.  Amidst the frantic antics and loud sounds of the anti-war protestors, the American soldiers trudge on.  Standing ready, ever ready, to protect the freedom of even those who unfeelingly and unthinkingly despise them.