To Root Against Your Own Country, 2007 edition

[mark414]

(lightly adapted from an Art Hoppe column concerning Vietnam. I say lightly because I only changed 7 separate words or phrases...read the original here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1829818&mesg_id=1829818)


The radio this morning said the Coalition surge in Iraq had bogged down. Without thinking, I nodded and said, "Good."

And having said it, I realized the bitter truth: Now I root against my own country.

This is how far we have come in this hated and endless war. This is the nadir I have reached in this winter of my discontent. This is how close I border on treason:

Now I root against my own country.

How frighteningly sad this is. My generation was raised to love our country and we loved it unthinkingly. We licked Hitler and Tojo and Mussolini. Those were our shining hours. Those were our days of faith.

They were evil; we were good. They told lies; we spoke the truth. Our cause was just, our purposes noble, and in victory we were magnanimous. What a wonderful country we are! I loved it so.

But now, having descended down the torturous, brutalizing years of this bloody war, I have come to the dank and lightless bottom of the well: I have come to root against the country that once I blindly loved.

I can rationalize it. I can say that if the surge in Iraq succeeds, the chimera of victory will dance once again before our eyes -- leading us once again into more years of mindless slaughter. Thus, I can say, I hope the surge fails.

But it is more than that. It is that I have come to hate my country's role in Iraq.

I hate the massacres, the body counts, the free fire zones, dropping phosphorous on civilians, the poisoning of the water supply. I hate being part of Haditha. I hate the fact that we have now dropped more explosives on Iraq than we did on Germany in World War II.

And I hate my leaders, who, over the years, have conscripted our young men and sent them there to kill or be killed in a senseless cause simply because they can find no honorable way out -- no honorable way out for them.

I don't root for the enemy. I doubt they are any better than we. I don't give a damn anymore who wins the day. But because I hate what my country is doing in Iraq, I emotionally and often irrationally hope that it fails.

It is a terrible thing to root against your own country. If I were alone, it wouldn't matter. But I don't think I am alone. I think many Americans must feel these same sickening emotions I feel. I think they share my guilt. I think they share my rage.

If this is true, we must end this war now -- in defeat, if necessary. We must end it because all of the Middle East is not worth the hatred, shame, guilt and rage that is tearing Americans apart. We must end it not for those among our young who have come to hate America, but for those who somehow manage to love it still.

I doubt that I can ever again love my country in that unthinking way that I did when I was young. Perhaps this is a good thing.

But I would hope the day will come when I can once again believe what my country says and once again approve of what it does. I want to have faith once more in the justness of my country's causes and the nobleness of its ideals.

What I want so very much is to be able once again to root for my own, my native land.

[marzipanni]

1. I was an Art Hoppe fan back in the days

I am a 56 year old woman. My father would
have turned 106 last December, so he was too old to
join our armed forces in WWII. His older brother, an
Annapolis grad, was a Rear Admiral during WWII. I have
three older brothers who miraculously avoided being
sent to Vietnam. My mother, my three brothers and I
all protested the war in Vietnam, in our different
ways.

Once, at the dinner table in the late sixties, we were
having a heated discussion. My dad was holding out,
thinking (or maybe just hoping), that our government
was doing the right thing. After all, his brother, who
we loved and respected, had helped to bring down Nazi
Germany. I said "Dad, you are the only one in our
family who still thinks we should be in Vietnam". His jaw
tensed and he slapped my face. It was the only time
he ever did that.

I do love this country. I want it to be strong, but
sensible. We used to be a role model for countries who
respected our strength, our freedoms, our
opportunities.

Now people around the world look at us as strong
in an aggressive way; and our freedoms
Have been "adjusted", supposedly to protect us; and
our opportunities, due to problems both within and
outside of our control, are dissipating.

Art Hoppe is smiling on you. Thank you.

[stillcool]

2. I don't think you're alone at all...

self-censorship is something I practice..often, and I think it's part of the problem. With all the talk about 'free speech', speaking freely has always come with a price tag..for me. I was listening to the radio in the car the other night, and the announcer was going on about the Patriots. He said, they did nothing others don't do, and he thought they deserved some loyalty. Very familiar sentiment.