Enjoy Your Ribbon

Got a magnetic yellow ribbon that says you support the troops? Think I don't because I see Cindy Sheehan's cause as righteous? Have you seen a 19 year old kid with a severed spinal cord crucified on a giant metal frame, looking like a pelt nailed to a barn door? Have you tried not to stare at his shrapnel-shredded skin oozing with infection? Have you done your best to concentrate on drawing a wounded man's blood while he begged you to kill him?

Were you told to take a leg out of refrigeration and then recognized the foot as the one you’d scratched the other day for a kid when it was still attached to him? Had you and your O-positive buddy both given a unit of blood to replenish what was leaking from that damaged femoral artery? Do you remember staring at the foot and expecting the toes to wiggle?

During the first Gulf War, were you haunted by an urge to abandon your family and go back to your old job again -not for flag or country, but out of duty and concern for the wounded? Did you enlist in 1969 when you were seventeen, or did you have a student deferment?

Are you enraged when damaged war veterans get the bum's rush from the government and are ignored by the V.A.? Do you think loyalty to your political party transcends your humanity? Think I'm unpatriotic because I don't believe in sacrificing lives for an elite group's vision of global omnipotence?

Enjoy your ribbon.