Damn you Rob Riggle!

So, the other night, dh and I were watching The Daily Show, and there was a hilarious segment with Rob Riggle about Code Pink protesting a Marine recruiting office that opened in Berkeley.

Ironically, this was the second time I had been exposed to people having a problem with military recruiting. The other time was a character in a novel I was reading by Tawni O’Dell, called Sister Mine. This was an issue that had previously flown under my liberal radar. Now, I had to give it attention.

Now, since the Daily Show segment was very funny, and the Code Pink women looked like idiots, and Rob Riggle was articulate and smart, my knee-jerk reaction was to side with him. But, there was a nagging voice inside me, asking, Is this OK? Or is it taking advantage of desperate young people, like pushing drugs on campus? So, I went a-researching.

First off, I have to discard anything I read about college campuses. The “kids” in college are really adults. If we can trust them to vote for our government representatives, then we need to also trust that they won’t be swayed by shiny pamphlets and cool uniforms. We have to believe that whatever values we instilled in them will come to the surface when they’re making these decisions about their future.

But, high school? I have a different opinion. In my searches, I found these articles, which illustrate a clause in the No Child Left Behind document, mandating that high schools release contact information about students for military recruitment purposes, and that the military has a database collected about our students’ information, for recruitment purposes. This is more than just housing an office or setting up a table on career day, this is an aggressive, all out organized effort to get kids to sign up for the military, sometimes making a commitment while they’re still minors through a delayed entry program (although this is not a legally binding commitment).

I am not in favor of this war. I’ve been opposed to it since it started, when it was unfashionable and unpatriotic to be against it. Now a lot of others have switched sides, so it’s not so alienating to hold this opinion. But, I am in favor of our military. Specifically, an all-volunteer military. I am grateful to our men and women in service for their unwavering commitment to keeping our country secure. I have no ill will towards our soldiers. If anything I feel guilty as an American for sending these people, who fight and defend upon command, to risk their lives for something that a lot of us believe have questionable ethics behind it. So, if I respect them for fighting an honest war, I respect them even more for fighting a questionable one. It’s not their fault for being there, it’s OUR fault for putting them there.

I also realize that to keep an all-volunteer military, we need to have volunteers to serve in it. We need to recruit members, people who have these admirable qualities and are willing to risk their lives for others. I understand that and respect it.

I felt I needed to say all that before I could move on to the real topic. See, this isn’t about my beliefs on the war of the military per se, this is a parenting blog, so things need to be viewed with parent-glasses on. How I feel about this war or the military as a citizen may not be the same as how I feel about them as a parent.

I’m not OK with the government having a database on my children for any purpose. I’m not OK with the military having contact information on my children for recruitment purposes. I’m not OK with military recruiters planning lunches with my kids because they fit a profile. I’m not OK with a non-legal binding contract (which my kids may feel obligated to hold to anyway), being signed when they’re seventeen. At 18, they’re released upon the world, and the world released upon them and if they engage in unsafe activities like using drugs, having promiscuous sex, reckless driving, or joining the Marines when we’re in a war, then that’s out of my control. Because while as a citizen, I appreciate the military and honor its members, as a mother, I don’t want my kid to join up. I guess I see that as akin to the priesthood. It’s an admirable career, one that demands respect and offers many opportunities that they might otherwise be denied, but please, oh please, not my son. The difference is, that the Vatican isn’t aggressively recruiting my son for the priesthood (not overtly anyway), whereas the military is using state-of-the art hard sell techniques.

So, while I’m perfectly fine with a military recruiting office being opened up anywhere, and I’m fine with people protesting it, and I’m fine with people making those protesters look like idiots on the most popular comedy show in America, I am not fine with the other things I found in my digging. Maybe you feel differently, and I’m OK with that, too. Thank you Rob Riggle.

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That is, unless you happen to be part of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association.

According to the Associated Press, the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs, Colorado is taking a zero tolerance approach when it comes to peace-loving holiday decor this year.

A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

No, I am not making this up for good blog fodder. This is actually true.

Hard to believe though? I’d say so.

How anyone could take offense to the peace symbol is beyond me. I mean, I know that homeowners associations have the right to their rules -?�? no matter how inane those rules may be -?�? but let’s get real here for a second. This is a holiday garland in the form of a peace symbol. What are people going to take offense to next? Frosty the Snowman decorations?

Now, granted, there were only a few homeowners who complained. But the thought that anyone would complain completely befuddles me. And furthermore, the idea that a homeowner would be fined close to $1000 for?�? hanging up a?�? peace sign wreath because it’s “divisive”?�? is just plain sad.

The article states that some of?�? those who complained have children serving in Iraq and were offended by the peace symbol because they viewed it as an anti-war protest. Again, this befuddles me. Regardless of our stance on the war or whether or not we have relatives serving in Iraq, who doesn’t want peace? Besides,?�? if my child were serving in Iraq, wouldn’t that make peace on Earth, and particularly in the Middle East, even more important? (On a side note, the woman facing charges has said that the peace sign was not politically motivated.)

I guess the whole thing is just another reminder to me of why I want to avoid homeowners associations. You may not have to worry about your neighbor painting his house purple, but you might?�? have to start worrying a lot more about your Christmas decor. Because let’s face it, nothing says Satan like a peace-sign garland, right??�?

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Although I tend to be liberal on most issues, that doesn’t mean that I agree with every Democrat all the time. Case in point: House Democrat Rep. Charles Rangel has just announced that he will be proposing a measure in the next few months to reinstate the draft.?�? One of his reasons for making this proposal is to “deter politicians from launching wars.”

“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” Rangel said.

Um, is it just me or is that a really bad reason to reinstate the draft? What kind of crazy reverse psychology game is he trying to play??�? I’m pretty sure that I don’t want the draft used as a way to double dog dare the administration to go to war. Because newsflash, Rangel, they may decide to go to war anyway. Are you ready to?�? allow your children or grandchildren to be drafted into a war they may not even believe in? Because I’m not. And I’m pretty sure most Americans aren’t either.

The good news is that there is almost no chance in hell that this will pass through Congress given that Rangel has already failed twice to pass?�? similar legislation. Maybe he should take the hint and figure out a better way to deter politicians from going to war.

Hmmmmm…?�? Might I suggest the upcoming Global Orgasm for Peace Rally?

?�?

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Five years ago today, I was one week into a new job in a centre tangentially related to emergency response. The television was kept on, in case one of the emergencies we dealt with was on the news. So when a plane flew into the World Trade Center in New York City, we were all there, glued to the screen.

Five years ago today, we watched the second plane fly in. We saw the towers fall in real time, saw people running panicked in the streets, heard rumours of downtown Toronto office buildings being evacuated. Normally our phones rang off the hook, but that day they were silent. When one did ring, and we answered it, the voice on the other end would say, “Did you see? Do you know? What’s happening?”

Five years ago today, when the second plane flew in, when the second tower fell, I thought, the United States is going to war. They’ve never been attacked on their own soil and not gone to war.?�?

In the five years since, I got pregnant and then became a mother. I willingly brought a child into a world that holds miracles and joy and opportunity for some, and unimaginable brutality for others. Does this make sense? I still don’t know. As I planned the pregnancy, and then the birth, and then watched my daughter grow, 8,587 Afghan troops, 3,485 Afghan civillians, approximately 42,000 Iraqi civillians (some estimates put this number as high as 200,000), 3,000 American soldiers, and 450 coalition soldiers have also been killed, for a total of over 57,000 people, not including the wounded. That is the equivalent of a WTC attack every three months for five years.

My daughter has lived her entire life in a world at war.

Last week, I caught part of a funeral for a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan, in a mission that is looking less like peacekeeping and more like war by the day. This soldier left behind a wife and two sons, one 13 and one 11. When the younger son approached the hearse to put a flower on his father’s casket, his face cracked and he cried, and I sobbed. For him, a young boy who will have to grow up without a father; for his family, for his father; for the?�? three thousand?�? people who died in the original attacks, and for the fifty-seven thousand who have died since then, as much the victims of the terrorists as anyone who stood in the WTC that day five years ago and had to decide whether to jump or burn. And for their families, their children, their spouses, their partners, their parents, their siblings, their friends, their cousins. For the wounded and disabled, and for those whose bodies are whole but whose minds have been broken.

Today is not Remembrance Day; but I will take time anyway to think silently of those who have already been lost and those we have yet to lose, on all sides. Today I will ignore the political browbeating of both sides, and think simply of the human toll, the sheer loss. For one day, for this anniversary, I will not think about whether the war is right or wrong, the response justified or not, the objectives met or failed; for one day, I will grieve.

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