Editorial
Really Supporting the Troops
While some lament that many Americans treat Memorial Day as just another day off from work or school, many in our community took the time to honor soldiers as well as those now serving abroad in a number of ways.

Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión presented the 145th Maintenance Company, based at the Kingsbridge Armory, with a Bronx flag to fly over the unit’s overseas base in Iraq. A crew of volunteers at the Woodlawn Cemetery planted flags at the graves of fallen soldiers.

The Jewish War Veterans continued with their annual commemoration of their fallen brethren.

At the armory itself, some residents neatened up a memorial of ribbons on the fence at the Kingsbridge Armory and sadly added new ones. Each ribbon represents an American soldier who has died in Iraq. And those who created the memorial also added a sign mourning the thousands of innocent Iraqis who have died since the war began.

These are thoughtful actions that show that past wars, and the current war in particular, are very much on the minds of Bronxites.

People who engaged in these actions have various opinions of the Iraq war. Some support it. Some don’t. Other are ambivalent.

But maybe there’s something that we can all agree on. “Support the Troops,” emblazoned on virtually every other car on the street should not be synonymous with supporting the war. It should instead be a call to do whatever we can to make sure that the troops have the protective equipment they need and to support their families at home in whatever way we can.

Since the 145th hails from our area, we should particularly be concerned about the well-being of these National Guard soldiers. These are men and women who, most likely, could never imagine that they would serve in a war overseas. Before the war, they served one weekend a month and two weeks a year and were usually only deployed by governors in natural disasters. But National Guard troops are being heavily relied on to fight in Iraq. And yet their families do not have the same support services and networks at home that full-time soldiers have. Their families had no reason to expect that their loved ones would be deployed for long periods of time and they don’t have access to discount stores or commissaries. Legislation is being considered in Congress to offer these families greater financial support, but it hardly seems to be on the front burner.

Guardsmen are probably equally, if not more, prone to the equipment shortages that all the armed forces are experiencing in Iraq. Operation Truth, an organization run by soldiers who have returned from serving in Iraq, provides a great deal of this kind of information and suggests ways to get involved. Their Web site is www.optruth.org  

Supporting the troops does not have to be an abstraction. The men and women serving in Iraq and their families are our neighbors. As a community, we should put our heads together and think of concrete ways we can help them.

Then we’d really be supporting the troops.
 

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