A Wary Veteran Patrols the Daunting Home Front

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“I was kicking down doors, driving Humvees,” is the terse way Rob Timmins summarizes a year in Iraq. His description of his new job — roaming the American home front trying to get Americans to care about other returning soldiers — is more complicated. “The Support Our Troops magnets on people’s cars will eventually come off, and 5, 10 years from now, who will remember the veterans?” asks the 25-year-old Mr. Timmins, outspoken as the Staten Island bartender he used to be.

As outreach director for a nascent veterans group, Mr. Timmins engages the casualty wards at veterans hospitals, addresses public hearings and lobbies Congress, all the while sensing the insufficient traction of his cause. “We live in an MTV-“American Idol” culture where you can change the channel and not have to be engaged in this war,” he says.

There’s only fitful attention to the resettlement problems of more than one million men and women who have been cycling home all too anonymously from two war fronts, wounded and otherwise damaged and not making much noise yet.

(snip)
As he works the home front, the Support Our Troops bumper stickers eat at Mr. Timmins. He concludes lip service is better than nothing, but fantasizes asking bumper-sticker patriots exactly how they support the troops. “I figure they’d fumble, without an answer,” he says. Then again, he hardly looks forward to the day the stickers fade entirely from sight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/opinion/18mon4.html

[Left_Winger]

1. Maybe it's just me

but many of the yellow ribbon magnets around here have " 'till they come home" on them. As a vet I see this as a slap in the face.

This indicates to me: "Yeah, go give what you have and we'll give you superficial support while you are there, but when your time is over and you come home, you're on your own bub."

Is this a sign of the disposable society in which we live?