Armed Forces Day 208 and a New Covenant

Today is Armed Forces Day, and I have some questions for my fellow citizens who like myself have never been in the military. Who are you? What are you made of? Who do people think you are?

Your time has come. Your time is now. The time is incumbent to form a new relationship with fellows who serve in the military to protect us. They are not to work alone. They are not to be left alone in their work. Good townsfolk always back up their sheriff. They do not leave their sheriff out in the street alone. They back him up. They stand with him.

The load the troops and their families carry is our load. They carry it for us. The time is right to stand for those who stand for all of us. To carry the load with them. To look out for their families while they are off looking out for ours. Real mean and women do not build themselves up on their fellow backs. My family's future will not be built upon the forfeiture of my neighbor's family's future.

The time has come to stop silently not supporting our deployed neighbors because to do so might be taken as indirectly supporting any particular conflict. Intelligent people are bigger than that, and those who aren't are best ignored. The time has come to loudly stand up for those who stand up for all of us. Fear not to say they are good. Fear not to say they are strong. Fear not to back them up. Meer lip service is for losers. Tangible support is for real men and women. And it is time for all we civilians to stand up and be counted. It is time for all good citizens to come to the aid of their troops and their families. 2008 is a year in which we Americans can enter into a new moral covenant of support for those who we ask to support us. Never again let the "but" word pass a ne'er-do-well's lips unchallenged. When someone says "I support them 'but', ...." Interrupt them and challenge them to spell out precisely they have actually done to tangibly support those who protect them. How big a check have they written? How many packages have they sent.

There are those who coyly hide on the premise that loudly showing support for and tangibly providing support to the troops and their families would indicted support the war. Rubbish. Silly confused unsophisticated incomplete thinking. America was built on rugged determination. We are not wimps. We are not a destined to be a nation of ninnies.

We will honor those who have gone before us and entrusted us with their creation by doing right now what is necessary to preserve their creation and pass it on in proper shape and form to our children. We will keep in order the national house which we are asking our deployed neighbors to risk themselves to protect. We will point to what they are doing and demand that it be respected by honoring what they are protecting, and by loudly supporting them while they support all of us.

Our time is now.

Martin C. Boire
May 17, 2008