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I have a very dear friend who is very religious. I've known her since high school. She sends me all kinds of things via email. In the past week though, I have received stuff like the tripe that follows. I truly believe, that as a religious person, she is thinking only of the prayerful aspect of this post.
I watched the flag pass by one day,
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease..
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud,
With hair cut square and eyes alert
He'd stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil
How many mothers' tears?
How many pilots' planes shot down?
How many died at sea
How many foxholes were soldiers' graves?
No, freedom isn't free.
I heard the sound of Taps one night,
When everything was still,
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That Taps had meant "Amen,"
When a flag had draped a coffin.
Of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No, freedom isn't free.
Enjoy Your Freedom & God Bless Our Troops
Show Your Support Send This Page Along Today
When you receive this, please stop for a moment and
Say a prayer for our servicemen. There is nothing attached.... This can be very powerful.... Just send this to all the people in your address book. Do not stop the wheel, please.... Of all the gifts you could give a US Soldier, Prayer is the very best one.
I certainly don't want to stop getting emails from her, but I do want to send a reply to her and the other fifty people that she sent this to that is not too hard-hitting but that explains the truths we know. Help me to respond. Here is how I have begun...
My proposed response:
God knows that I pray to keep our soldiers out of harm's way. But I do more than pray for them. I write letters to the editors of newspapers that don't report the truth about the war because, if we want them to be safe, people have to know the truth.
The truth is, that over 2,300 of our troops have perished in a war that did not have to be fought--a war that has nothing to do with freedom. The war was started over WMDs. To claim that the war is being fought for our freedom is to romanticize it and to hide the ugly truth about why our soldiers are really dying. We must never forget that they are dying because of lies and by remembering that perhaps we can hold those who lied accountable for their senseless deaths.
Just today on the news we are hearing that the president lied in 2003 about WMD's. He was told then that there were no WMD's but he still told the American people that they were there. The president even revealed the secret identity of a CIA company and a CIA undercover agent in order to push for the war in Iraq because they told him there were no WMDs. This CIA company, called Jennings Brewster, was operating undercover for at least a decade just like the companies that you and I work for each day. Instead of doing real business though, they were actually protecting our freedom by collecting information about real terrorists around the world like Osama Bin Laden. By blowing their cover, we lost track of people who would and will likely do harm to us in the future.
My prayer for our soldiers is that those who sent them to their early graves; who will not even allow the returning coffins to be shown on TV; who sent them to war but have not attended even one of their 2,300 funerals; who won't even provide body armor to keep them from dying; who have shut down hundreds of VA hospitals around the country causing some soldiers to have up to six months' wait for treatment--my prayer is that these people who created this black mark on our nation's name, are brought to justice for these senseless deaths.
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