A HOLIDAY SALUTE FOR OUR MILITARY

There is so very much crappy news floating about as we head into the end of the year. Wikileaks. Taxes. Debt Commission. Foreign bank and business bailouts in the trillions of dollars. George Soros. FTC takeover of Internet when Congress voted it down. Immigration and border drug battles. North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq. Super X-Rays and pat downs. U.S. taxpayer money being used to fund the Muslim mosque at the World Trade Center. Rising jobless claims. Housing foreclosures.

Where does it all end? When do we get ticked off enough that we literally march on Washington and throw the bums out? Where do I start?

Well, I’m going to start by setting all of those sources of anger aside and talking about a matter of utmost urgency.

It’s been eight years since we sent our young men and women overseas. When we ran out of regular servicemen and women, we called up the active reservists and sent them overseas disrupting their lives, their incomes, their families and their futures. Most of them have served more than one tour of overseas duty. We have not only devastated their standards of living, we have also put them in harm’s way, and thousands of them have come home injured while a few thousand more have come home in caskets.

For their part, the military men, women and families have largely been treated by the country like floating curds in a Christmas punch bowl. The left treats them like war criminals. Congress wants to cut or freeze their pay. Obama wants them to pay for their own medical care. If stationed overseas, they are not able to vote in national elections. We shun them when we see them in an airport or on the street.

How this nation can turn their backs on our military families in such a cavalier way, I will never know.

In this season of family, of giving and sharing, let us not be part of these injustices. Let us seek out military families living in our communities and invite them to dinner. Would it not be great if every community held a community-wide event and threw a party for them? At the very least, send a greeting card, but a $25 or $50 gift card to Wal-Mart or Target is not a bad idea, either.

I ask you to set aside the problems of the nation for just a moment, long enough to let our military men and women and their families know that we do care.

That’s MY AMERICAN OPINION, respectfully submitted.