The one sacrifice that all right-wing American civilians should give their military men and women.

[The Backlash Cometh]

The one sacrifice that right-wingers should make, especially if they're chicken hawks, is that they should show more bravery than they have displayed since 9/11. You talk to a Republican, or someone who sided with the Republicans since 9/11, and it's the fear angle which has allowed George Bush to take us down some cowardly corridors.

Before the Iraq War, I had one last conversation with a long-time friend who said that she agreed with George Bush about going into Iraq because she didn't want to be attacked by them first. She believed they had Weapons of Mass Destruction, but when I told her the proof was non existent and that we'd lose world opinion attacking a country without just cause, she said she didn't care what the world thought of us. Safety came first. In fact, the media exploited the Safety mom angle during one election, claiming that they would tip the outcome of the elections. They probably meant the moms of very young children, and not those of young teenage boys.

Then when Iraq became a quagmire, every talking right-wing head spinned this for the Ditto-heads, claiming George Bush was brilliant because all the Al Qaeda members were being drawn to that area and fighting our soldiers over there, instead of attacking us over here. Never mind that the Al Qaeda members were multiplying every day that we over-spent our welcome.

Our military boys and gals were suffering in Iraq in ways that we are only beginning to understand now. Well, we on DU may have known this years before everyone else did and tried to tell this to our Republican acquaintances and they all responded with one voice, "They all knew what they were getting into when they enlisted."

So I'm here to say, no, no they didn't know. Not this time. Nothing that we have seen in the last century of wars prepared them for a president who had such total disregard for their lives and safety and no war prior to this one prepared them for such American civilian wimpiness.

The president is only one person and all of his plans would have been pre-empted if the American civilian hadn't been such wimps. I admit I wasn't prepared for their response either. I grew up on a military base and maybe I'm use to being with the bravest of the brave, but the image that Americans portrayed overseas was that they were fearless. Americans were people who would strap themselves to a rocket to see if they could steer it to the moon. And even if one failed and blew themselves up in the process, there was a line of them ready to be next to try. Now we slip into this century, and the scandals in the space program seem to be an apt portrayal of everything that has gone wrong. Everything was just media hype. Americans really are not what they were portrayed to be.

The sad fact is that the majority who voted for George Bush, are wimps and their fears are being exploited, even today. Now that Reckless George's reign is coming to an end, they're doing everything possible to reinforce why they trusted him from the start. Take the Scotland airport bombing a month or so back. They're whispering among themselves, "They were trying to come over here and they were doctors!" This is never going to end because cowards die many deaths.

So George Bush said that it's time for Americans to sacrifice, and on that point, he's right. It's time for Americans to stop being afraid all the time, to stop being so easily exploited by every neo-con in this country. They owe at least that much to our American service men and women.