Yesterday an American Soldier told me that nobody cares about Soldiers. There wasn’t the tiniest hint of self-pity in his words. It was stated as fact, just simple cynical fact.

Me, being me, declared ‘YES they do. Many people do. The AMERICAN PEOPLE CARE!‘ I said it with passion and conviction.

‘Why do you think that?’, I asked.

‘We are pawns in a political game.’ he replied. He told me about how the guys over there all talk about it - privately. They see the news, they hear what people say. They know they are expendable.

‘It’s disheartening’, he said. Again said not with self-pity - just as fact.

I went into a tirade about how the loudest people are getting all the press and that he shouldn’t let that influence his attitude. I told him that most people, MOST people understand and know what they are doing there. Most people love and appreciate them and what they are doing. I told him that the average person isn’t like John Murtha, or John Kerry, or Air America, or any of the other narcissists that are willing to use the Soldiers’ lives for their own political gain.

In fact, I told him, most people despise those people for their carelessness with the lives of our Soldiers.

He listened, or didn’t listen, but he waited till I finished my onslaught in defense of the American people. Then he replied. ‘We know.’ That’s all. Just ‘we know’.

I felt like crying. I still feel like crying over it. I wanted to jump through the phone and make him understand that people do care. What he is doing is honorable and the people are behind them 100%.

But I’m powerless to make him understand. I’m powerless to make people understand how harmful words can be. I’m powerless to change anything.

All of this was in response to me asking him some questions about what they are doing. He skirted around my questions, but he finally started telling me what he could about his work.

‘We are having to train our troops to not shoot until we are certain that we are being shot at.’ He said they were training the troops to not shoot just because someone is shooting, they have to make sure they are shooting at them.

I asked, ‘What - you have to wait till you’re shot before you shoot?’. ‘Pretty much,’ he replied.

He told me that after the incident in which two Soldiers had been mutilated he had to have a long talk with his men about saving the last bullet for themselves should they find themselves over run.

‘You have to ask yourself, would you rather your mother get a letter that you died in battle or that you died mutilated with your penis cut off and crammed down your throat.’ he told his men.

He told me about ‘cultural sensitivity’ courses they are being required to take. He said the word around is that everybody is skittish about the ever present cameras and newsmen. They have to make sure nothing can be interpreted in the press to make the Americans out to be the bad guys.

‘Everybody’s afraid to pull the trigger. If you don’t pull the trigger, you might be killed, if you pull the trigger you could be ending your career.’ He added, ‘They’d really rather us be killed than get any bad press. So we aren’t supposed to pull the trigger.’

I’m watching Israel go after one Soldier. They refuse to leave this one Soldier to the horrible fate that the Palestinians undoubtedly would have in store for him. The news is calling it a ’stand-off’. It’s not a stand-off. Israel is beating the daylights out of them. But the press is doing all it can to give the Palestinians hope that they might be able to live through a real all out assault by Israel.

Why won’t America do that? Why does America tie the hands of our troops? Why don’t we kick the press out of the platoons and let them do what they need to do? Why would we RATHER OUR SOLDIER’s be killed than get bad press?

We are getting bad press ANYWAY. I’d rather the world RESPECT us than like us. No one can respect THIS kind of weak, lily-livered fighting.

It’s all so silly and at the same time so sad.

How does a mother stand having her child in this battle with the worst of the enemies being the American media and progressives who would see our Soldiers dead than admit there is a real threat from the islamic world.

I thought we learned that lesson in Vietnam.

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