I, and a lot of other people, have been saying it for a long time. The "Anti-war" crowd, no matter how much they'll tell you they support the troops, inevitably show themselves to be anti-troop.

There are the more subtle methods - inviting speakers to events, a poorly-worded headline. And then there are the not-so-subtle methods - a nasty email, a nasty blog comment, efforts to kick recruiters off of campuses, spitting, and assault.

The anti-war crowd will tell you that the spitting incidents never happened following Vietnam - that spitting on troops was a myth. They'll tell you that they've never documented it happening. Of course not - they've never talked with anyone that got spit on. But I've heard from vets who say it absolutely did happen - to them.

It's happening now.

There have been precious few incidents reported in the MSM - not surprising. There was the airport incident, the mat incident, and now a hero who ran into their hospitality at weekend's anti-war rally in D.C. What makes this even more disgusting is that this particular hero was already privy to the anti-war crowd's method of supporting the troops.

Joshua Sparling. The name should be familiar to readers of this and other milblogs. Joshua Sparling is the Hero who got a little love note from the anti-war crowd some time ago, as he was recovering in Walter Reed:

Dear soldier,
Have a great time in the war and have a great time dieing(sic) in the war.

Miguel
P.S. - DIE

In the aftermath, Sparling received thousands of cards from well-wishers.

The sender? Well, Michael Crook of Forsake the Troops fame claimed responsibility. His reprehensible website was subsequently taken down by the very people crook derided. Ah, sweet justice. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving dirtbag. The site that URL now takes you to is much more pleasant. He allegedly put up new sites - opposethetroops.com, citizensagainstthetroops.org, and disownthetroops.com, but as of this posting, I didn't find any of them up and running. If there is any justice in this world, those were nuked too - and so will anything else the worm puts up.

But I digress. Joshua Sparling attended the rally this weekend. He's made quite a recovery, despite losing a leg to the wounds that put him in Walter Reed. And how does the "we support the troops but not the war" riffraff greet him?

Michelle Malkin has the answer - By spitting on him.

Sure, the blogosphere will be ablaze today. People will again send messages of support to Sparling, and for a few days the anti-war crowd will be persona non grata.

But what about after that?

The American hoi polloi seems to have a collective case of ADD. We can't even remember back to September 11. We can't remember the President's speech, telling us that Iraq would be a long fight. That the War on Terror would span generations. We sure can't take the time to remember back a few decades, to the death of Robert Dean Stethem, to hijacked airplanes, to PanAm Flight 103, to Americans held hostage in an embassy for over a year.

It is not enough to just react to the more flagrant incidents. It's not enough to send cards to one Hero being spit on. The anti-war crowd does this every single day. They don't stop. And but for a now-shrinking crowd of people who understand why we're in Iraq - why we have to be in Iraq - support for the troops is often relegated to a magnet on a car. Don't get me wrong - the magnets are, at the very least, a reminder. But just having the magnet isn't enough.

We cannot stop at just reacting to the boldest of the moonbats. Every single time I come across someone bashing the troops, I say something. Every single time. It doesn't matter where it happens. At work, at the store, at family events - everywhere, every time. I force myself to when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable. I do it because the people they're bashing are willing to die for me. The absolute least I can do is open my mouth when someone's insulting them.

I'm not perfect. I'm not the icon of troop support. But I do something. I don't just say I support them - I live like I support them. It should be a no-brainer. But it isn't.

And let's face it - the anti-war crowd is largely composed of cowards. My husband, during Desert Storm, faced down a crowd of anti-war protesters at the college we attended (I wasn't there, unfortunately). How? By just opening his mouth. He called them morons, and a few other things, and they skulked away.

I faced down one at the store once. It took one sentence.

When the anti-war crowd visits this blog, the most frequent posts are drive-bys. One nasty comment, and they never come back to face the music.

In a recent discussion, someone told me that "none of the troops believe they should be over there."

"Not true," I said. "Many of them understand exactly why they're over there."

"Well, some of them don't. And people don't support them."

"True. Maybe they'd all understand why they're over there if people over here did."

It became a discussion of how "nothing good" was happening over there.

Funny thing, though - when I fired off a list of what had been done, I was told that my ill-armed opponent "didn't know that."

What a surprise.

The point is, the anti-war crowd gains momentum when people allow them to. At the beginning of all this, the anti-war crowd could gain no purchase. We simply wouldn't tolerate it. Remember, they tried to oppose Enduring Freedom, too - they were given the clear message that it wasn't acceptable.

There are some very real dangers in the anti-war movement. For starters, it's heavily populated by socialists and communists. If you don't think that those two philosophies are still a danger in the world, you've been living under a rock. Those ideologies are very real threats today - the only problem is, the threat isn't coming from outside - it's coming from our own country.

The other danger is that the anti-war crowd again has control of the media, and has the ear of legislators. Want a similarity to Vietnam? Well, there it is.

If you support the troops, I ask you to make a promise to yourself. If you don't send one letter of thanks, or care package, to our troops; if you don't send one dime to organizations that do; if you do nothing else - promise to speak up.

Do not remain silent. Do not abet with apathy. What these people do is NOT okay. It is NOT acceptable. The solution is not to accept unacceptable behavior - when you see it, say something.

Because if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. And if you're part of the problem, you are abetting the enemy.



UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has an update on what the dirtbag moonbats did during their "peaceful" demonstration. Funny, I never thought of vandalism as "peaceful." I'm telling you, South Park's Eric Cartman has it right.

Labels: Anti-War protests, Left-Wingnuts, Moonbats, My Two Cents, opinion, Supporting the troops