Bait and Switch 2

From time to time, I get email forwards.

I don’t get many. When you go to Snopes, research the myth, paste the link into the “compose message” window, and send back a one word reply, “Hoax,” with the link, eventually the forwarders get the message.

One of my friends very judiciously chooses what to forward to me. Those forwards usually bring a smile (though I do not forward them to 10 people within one hour–I am the king of breaking the chain).

I got a forwarded email the other day from one of my old bosses–the best boss, in fact, that I or anyone ever had. I hear from her seldom, so I know it was a forward from the heart, not just some reflex:

We need to show more sympathy for these people. They travel miles
in the heat, they risk their lives crossing a border, they don’t get
paid enough wages, they do jobs that others won’t do or are afraid
to do, they live in crowded conditions among a people who speak a
different language, they rarely see their families, and they face
adversity all day every day.

I’m not talking about illegal Mexicans, I’m talking about our troops.
Doesn’t it seem strange that the Democrats are willing to lavish all
kinds of social benefits on illegal’s, but don’t support our troops
and are now threatening to defund them?

Please pass this on. This is worth the short time it takes to read it.

While the sentiment seems sincere, the reasoning is fallacious.

The message sounds nice, but it is a distraction. It’s a political version of the shell game, designed to get us to look under the wrong shell for the truth.

The decision to go to war, especially to go to a war of choice, rather than a war of self-defense, is ultimately a political decision. The email forward quoted above attempts to distract us from that fact with thoughts of the service of the men and women in the uniform of the United States of America.

The troops did not send themselves to Iraq, however honorably they may serve there.

They were sent to Iraq by a corrupt and conniving regime that cynically and duplicitously marketed a war, much as someone would market toothpaste or Tylenol.

It did not “support the troops” to send them on a fool’s errand, or on an errand for a fool.

It does not “support the troops” to keep them on a fool’s errand, or on an errand for a fool.

The Current Federal Administrator broke the egg that has become the constant carnage of the War in Iraq, a cascade of American and of even more–much more–Iraqi blood. And we, as American citizens, are implicated as his accomplices.

There is no graceful exit.

And the fool’s errand–the errand for a fool–will forever stain our sacred homor.

Meanwhile.