Every morning while I'm visiting in Germany, I start the day with the Stars and Stripes, which regularly lists the names of servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Back home in Kentucky, these names are apparently worthy of mention only if the deceased hailed from Kentucky or Indiana. Over here, as you enter the post, you see welcome-home banners hanging from the fence, and when you walk around the neighborhoods, you see blue-star banners peeking out of plenty of windows, each one signifying a loved one who is deployed. Pick up the post newspaper, and you will see joyful photos of units coming home evenly matched with the sorrowful photos of those who are being sent out. What do you see back home? Stupid yellow ribbon magnets on cars.
It's abundantly clear to me over here, where the war is so visible on a day-to-day basis, that most Americans are comfortably insulated from the war (even those with the afore-mentioned stupid yellow ribbon magnets) and that the only people who are sacrificing ANYTHING for this war are the same ones who are either fighting it or giving up their loved ones to fight it.
The Army has been suffering lately from a severe lack of funds. Temporary workers have been fired, and those left behind are under pressure to pick up the slack. Lots of installations haven't had the money to mow the grass in the common areas. Heck, Fort Sam Houston can't pay it's power bill! Word on the street here in Mannheim is that the reason quarters are sitting empty for so long is that Housing doesn't have the money to bring workers in to clean and repair the units between occupants. Meanwhile, incoming soldiers and their families are stuck for longer and longer periods in hotels and temporary quarters. It's hard in the face of all of this to feel anything but contempt for the sheer impotence of the yellow ribbon magnets.
At the same time though, I have some degree of sympathy for the ribbon-magnet people. After all, short of enlisting themselves (which, hey, soon you will be able to do up to the ripe young age of 42! Doesn't THAT just open a host of put-up-or-shut-up opportunities for a certain demographic?), what can they do? The civilians left behind in World War II rationed gasoline and sugar. They bought war bonds and grew victory gardens. They DIDN'T slap a yellow ribbon on the ol' SUV and call it a day! But what is there for us to do, short of displaying the ribbon while we drive for our Disney vacation to let the terrorists know that they haven't won?
Well, I have an idea. What if we imposed an additional tax on gasoline, one that would go specifically for short-term defense funding? There would be a certain harmonic balance in seeing an oil-driven war paid for at least in part by the consumption of that black gold.
Not likely to happen though, is it? Raise the price of gasoline even higher, and then voters might get angry and politicians would get voted out of office. And how sad would THAT be?! Meanwhile servicemembers and their families will continue to take it in the shorts, and our fellow Americans will continue to memorialize our sacrifice on the bumpers of their cars.
Happy 4th of July--if I sound bitter, it's probably because I am.
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