![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/me.jpg\" "\\"me\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n[Picture above is me talking to loval villagers about their educational and potable water needs.\u00a0 If my lieutenant sees that picture, I swear this may have been the only time I wore my Red Sox hat outside the wire.\u00a0 Well, that might be a lie, but I swear I had the helmet somewhere.]<\/p>\n
Here we go again.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Thomas Walker, a \u201clecturer in the intensive English and orientation program\u201d at Iowa State University has gone the way of the Law Professor at Suffolk<\/a>, and taken issue with attempts to send carepackages to deployed troops.\u00a0 I really wish it hadn\u2019t been ISU as I have an affinity for the school because that is where my friend Past National Commander Rehbein spent the better part of his working life.\u00a0 And the reality is that no one school should be culpable for the actions of one individual.\u00a0 It amounts to a sort of \u201checklers veto\u201d where the school gets a black eye for the actions or statements of \u00a0a single miscreant, while the good work of so many others is largely ignored.\u00a0 But so it goes.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at what he has to say:<\/p>\n I read in Tuesday’s Iowa State Daily that the College Republicans have begun collecting sundries for U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why? Doesn’t the U.S. Army victual its soldiers? Don’t their families send them yuletide goodies? Aren’t GIs paid enough to buy what they need, and even what they want?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, the army \u201cvictuals\u201d its troops.\u00a0 In fact, we get a lovely assortment of MREs whenever we headed out.\u00a0 A true culinary classic is the spaghetti and meat balls.\u00a0 The sublime experience of eating pound cake in the pouring rain is enough to bring the owner of even the least discerning palate to tears.\u00a0 As I read his statement it conjured to mind the famous question of George C. Scott as Scrooge: \u201cAre there no prisons?\u00a0 No work houses?\u201d<\/p>\n You know why care packages sent from home mean so much?\u00a0 Is it because we were starving?\u00a0 Is it because we were too poor to afford our own food?\u00a0 No, because it meant something.\u00a0 Sure, I could get heaping portions of food from a Mermite, but when you know that someone cared enough to send food halfway around the world, the food nourishes not only the body, but the soul as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some folks don\u2019t have families to send them stuff Mr. Walker.\u00a0 Many of us don\u2019t have an extensive family support mechanism when we deploy.\u00a0 Which is why groups like Soldiers\u2019 Angels exist, and have mottos that encapsulate that:<\/p>\n May No Soldier Go Unloved <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n May No Soldier Walk Alone <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n May No Soldier Be Forgotten <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Until They All Come Home<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “As Republicans we believe in charity,” stated Jeremy Freeman, a member of the College Republicans. Donating toiletries, boxed and canned foods, socks and beanies to U.S. soldiers who can already deodorize themselves, who eat better than the poorest Americans and who are gallantly garbed, is an eleemosynary travesty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cGallantly garbed?\u201d\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 Are you $#!^^ing me?\u00a0 Let me tell you about my gallant garb.\u00a0 My wardrobe was digitzed and mono-chromatic.\u00a0 Sure, it is trendy among homeless folks you see with cardboard signs, but seldom if ever do I see Giselle Bundchen strutting the catwalk outfitted in a lovel ensemble of digital pattern BDU\u2019s.\u00a0 And our boots are not the Uggs sold to us by her touchdown munificent husband.\u00a0 Also, our accessories are indeed functional, if not downright alluring.\u00a0 Nothing says \u201cI\u2019m ready to party\u201d like a PRC radio, a couple of mortar rounds, and a sleeping bag that hasn\u2019t been washed in months.\u00a0 Love the use of SAT words though, it just stresses to us uneducated grunts how smart you are, more so (clearly) than I am.\u00a0 In fact, based only on your consummate grasp of diction, I would move that we set up some form of Oligarchy centered on folks who can use \u201celeemosynary\u201d properly in a sentence.\u00a0 In the farrago<\/a> of human imbecility, typified by the profligate galimatias<\/a> of useless pontification, you are truly the beacon on the hill.\u00a0 (There, I also used big words, can I join your club now?)<\/p>\n Necessities should be doled out to people who really need them and who might get them if not for the hundreds of billions of dollars being funneled to the Pentagon in the greatest squandering of money on the planet. If anything, Republicans should sympathize with veterans struggling to find employment, a challenge that may daunt the discharged soldier, who might wish he had reenlisted. Soldiers are to Republicans as fetuses are to them: prized. But once out of the womb-like army, Republican solicitude for hapless veterans goes where extracted zygotes go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There are many of us who do work to help those veterans, and here at The American Legion we have 2.5 million of them all working to do just that.\u00a0 Not sure how this because a partisan issue, except for your obvious antipathy towards the group trying to send these packages.\u00a0 But again, I think this paragraph was meant more to show how smart you are, and less to make an actual point.<\/p>\n “We get to show the troops we still appreciate what they’re doing for us,” said another College Republican. What are they doing for us? Nothing. But against us they’re doing a lot: creating anti-American terrorists in the countries they occupy. Said the same College Republican, “It can’t be fun to be away from your family for the holidays. As if American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan had been conscripted? They chose to leave home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ah yes, the old saw about how US Troops do nothing but create enemies.\u00a0 Never mind the hundreds of thousands of dollars that US Troops pour into aiding the citizens of those countries we are in, nor trying to make it so little girls can go to school without fear of being killed.\u00a0 No, our true legacy is just creating terrorists.\u00a0 As someone who did in fact volunteer, and who would do so again, I can second the emotion that being away from home on the holidays is (as they say in the infantry) The Suck.\u00a0 But, when you look at the things you are able to accomplish, it makes it worth while.\u00a0 Here for instance is how my unit once spent a holiday, look at all the little terrorists we were creating\u2026.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n