Have a Heart

On Sunday, February 5 local columnist Deborah Carter wrote a column entitled Have a Heart about the local Democratic Party taking on the task of sending off phone cards to the local members of the Maryland National Guard that are currently deployed.

This is of course the height of their Support the Troops but not the mission mentality. The phone card will include a short note that states: “We would like you to know how grateful we are to you for the sacrifices you are making. Please accept this small token as a sign of our appreciation.” But what they really want to say is, “We don’t believe in you at all and we wish you’d come home right now and leave the Arab world for the Arabs.” How do I know this, because after the first two paragraphs detailing the project she launches into a tirade that the use of the Guard limits our ability to protect our homes from natural disaster and that it must be tough for a former student of hers’ a career Marine since 1993, “e-mailed me from Iraq recently. "I have missed my son's first birthday and his first steps," he wrote. ‘It makes me question why I am over here.’”

That sure doesn’t sound like any of the Marine’s, Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen that I’ve had the pleasure of communicating with that are in or have been in Iraq. In fact it sounds to me that she cherry picked a comment out of an email to her letting her know that this career marine is willing to sacrifice what he is doing in Iraq even if that means missing his son’s birth and first birthday. The sad part is, unless that Marine comes forward we’ll never know, we have to take her word for it that he is seeing the war as a failure.

Her column continues on with a plea for readers to contact the Gov. Ehrlich to beg him to bring our fellow Marylanders home and to leave their mission incomplete. This Ms. Carter is a selfish request on your part for to bring the Marylanders home will only result in the sending of others to complete their failed mission. Furthermore, Ms. Carter for you to deny my belief in the mission is simply an egocentric position on your part. Are we to believe that you know better than I what our troops should be doing, or how they should be doing it? How many years did you spend in the military training for war that you are now the expert on how many soldiers it takes to complete a particular mission or are you basing all of your knowledge gained in the many years of teaching as the deciding factor about who knows better how to conduct the mission in Iraq or Afghanistan for that matter?

The loyal opposition’s self centered ideals are the reason we are in Iraq right now for if your party had not spent years promoting a false sense of security based upon appeasement then we would not be in this war at all right now. We could have finished the job a decade ago. Instead Ms. Carter better men and women than your “comrades” in the Young Democrats and Young Socialists are now picking up your messes and fixing them so that you don’t have to sacrifice any of your sensibilities.

Have a Heart indeed Ms Carter, have a heart for the brave men and women of Maryland and in all of our armed forces that are willing to sacrifice their safety and security so that others may live safely and securely. Go back to teaching literature, Ms. Carter, for as a political maven you are a failure.