Catching Idle Butterflies

You failed.

WARNING! WARNING! RANT UP AHEAD!
Please make sure your seatbelts are fastened and your trays are in their upright position.

I wrote this a few weeks back, but didn’t have the courage to post it. Plus it breaks my usual rule of not discussing politics in my blog. David McClain reminded me of it with his entry "Invalid Entry" , so instead of taking up so much space in a comment, here it is:

“You’re not doing your job,” says your boss. “Therefore, I have to not only fire you, but eliminate your job.” He pauses. “Come to think of it, I’m closing down your entire office. You and all your co-workers failed, I made a terrible decision by opening that office, and there’s nothing anyone can do to rectify the situation. Go home.”

Can you imagine your boss telling you that? Here you are doing exactly what you were told in the best way possible, and your boss turns around and calls you a failure. Would you at least be insulted? Pissed?

Flip it. If you were an employer, would you treat your employees that way?

That’s exactly what the Iraq Panel said to every member of our military currently serving in that country. Even worse, our new Secretary of Defense said we’re not winning the war in Iraq.

Has this man, has any member of this panel not stepped foot in Iraq? Has not one of them talked to a single person serving or have served in that country, or are they all depending upon the media – actively doing its best to make sure everyone thinks it’s a failure so we’ll quit – to tell them what’s really happening there?

But that’s beside the point. I’m furious at these politicians constantly putting down our military. On the one hand they say they don’t want “another Vietnam,” but they are doing their absolute best to make sure it will be. And they have the mainstream media to fully back them up.

I don’t care if we shouldn’t have gone there in the first place. I don’t give a crap if it was really about oil. That’s not the point. We’re there now. Our youth voluntarily put their lives at risk every day. They deserve to be told every day they’re doing a great job, and they are not only winning, but will continue to win. They need to know we expect nothing less but success from them, not to be told they’re failures.

Telling them less only hurts them, and they deserve much, much better than that. I long to give these men and women ticker-tape parades, not have them slink home in defeat.

God I hate politics.