How To REALLY Support Our Troops

And it doesn't end with the selection of the next best President, or the members of Congress. Bush Jr. will be gone come next January. And our troops will eventually be withdrawn from Iraq. Someday.

But there's still Afghanistan. And Syria may be tomorrow's Iraq, for all we know (if the U.S. launched attack there yesterday is any indication). And the underlying roots of the problem, for which the American people have to accept their 50% share of the responsibility, will still remain. Regardless of who occupies the Oval Office.

Here are two things you can do:

1) Don't let 9/11 continue to be this country's "Groundhog Day." I've blogged on that point before. But let me punt here to someone far more qualified to state the case--Andrew Bacevich, the author of The Limits of Power:

"[A] state of perpetual national security emergency aggravates the disorders afflicting our political system, allowing the executive branch to accrue ever more authority at the expense of the Congress and disfiguring the Constitution."

We as citizens can't declare war, or withdraw our troops. But we can refuse to allow ourselves to be consumed by a false sense of a perpetual national security emergency. The threats are real, sadly. But a "State" of Emergency is not a sustainable, habitable place for us all to live. We know that, don't we.

2) Set thine house in order. Again, I punt here to Mr. Bacevich:

"U.S. troops in battle dress and body armor, whom Americans profess to admire and support, pay the price for the nation's collective refusal to confront our domestic dysfunction." (emphasis added, and of my doing).

We all know about the dysfunction in Washington and on Wall Street. But we need to start thinking about our own dysfunction. There's a "disparity between how much we want and what we can afford to pay." "As individuals, Americans never cease to expect more. As members of a community, especially as members of a national community, they choose to contribute less."

I don't want to be preachy--I really don't. I've been no better, really, for most of my self-absorbed life. But there are all these truly important ideas already out there... and have been for quite some time now. I just want to share them with you, in case you haven't already discovered them for yourself. (But take heart, the "preachy" factor should largely disappear after November 4th).

And I'll leave it to the presidential historians to render their final verdict on Bush. But I do wonder about how History will judge us, the American people. And so, I'll leave you with this one last passage from The Limits of Power:

"History will not judge kindly a people who find nothing amiss in the prospect of endless armed conflict so long as they themselves are spared the effects. Nor will it view with favor an electorate that delivers political power into the hands of leaders unable to envision any alternative to perpetual war."

One last note of backstory, though, on the book and author. His son was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, and died in Iraq last year. The book is dedicated to him.