Saying Thank You

A friend recently e-mailed me a link to an online greeting card of sorts, which she wanted me to sign onto to say "thank you" to the U.S. troops in Iraq. Now, I have no problem saying "take care of yourselves" or "your family and friends love you" or "be careful" and of course "come home safe." I do, however, have a problem saying "thank you." And I expressed my earnest confusion over this specific term to my friend. What exactly are we thanking them for, I queried. Her response, in short, was that we should be thanking them for doing a job that we don't want to do.

Well, hell, in that case we should be thanking accountants. Where's the online greeting card for the schmuck who works a 9-5 in a 4x4 felt-covered cubicle attached by hinges? Where's the support for the loser who wears a shirt and tie to work every single day to go crunch numbers? How many little boys and girls dream of growing up one day to be the person who counts other people's money? Ooh, and maybe they can make a few extra dollars at tax time freelancing. During their off-time. Talk about doing a crap job that nobody else wants. Who's thanking the accountants?

Now, I'm not unpatriotic. Okay, I am. But I still maintain that I don't owe thanks to someone for making their own career choice. So you chose to serve in the military. Okay. That's fine. I don't need to thank you for it. You do your thing.

Now, on the other hand, if our country had been invaded and the U.S. military were literally protecting us, then heck yes, a million thanks. But wasn't this war begun to find WMDs? Where there weren't any? Yeah, thought so. And weren't we fed a lot of propaganda about fighting "terror"? Oh, yeah, these aren't the same people who were behind the 9/11 attacks. Different people entirely. So why are they still there? That's right, they're training the Iraqi military (who aren't bothering to show up for duty) to defend Iraq so they can take care of themselves. Because they asked us to come and do that. Oh, no, they didn't. What should we do now? Send more troops! INSANE!!! But I digress.

It's not their fault that they're there. I feel bad that this is happening to them. Really bad. They're getting hurt, losing their lives, seeing horrors of war. So how about a sympathy card? Instead of sending a card that says "thank you," we should send a card that says "Sorry the government lied to you. They lied to us, too. Sorry you can't come home. Sorry you're helping people who don't want your help. Sorry you didn't have a better guidance counselor in high school. Sorry you didn't become an accountant instead of joining the military."

- Inda