Before you watch the Dateline roll call tonight (or not), I urge you to read the story of just one soldier, Lance Corporal Chance Phelps. Read it now.
There's so much that's heartwrenching in LtCol Strobl's story. But one passage jumped out at me:
At the restaurant, the table had a flier announcing Chance’s service. Dubois High School gym; two o’ clock. It also said that the family would be accepting donations so that they could buy flak vests to send to troops in Iraq.(Emphasis mine.)
What? We can't afford to buy flak jackets for our troops?
I did some quick online shopping. First flack jacket I found, the EnGarde Cougar, billed as "primarily used by US soldiers in Iraq." Cost: $1,550. I figure, we're buying in bulk, let's knock a third off. $1,038.50. We've got 135,000 troops in Iraq right now. Which gives us a back-of-the-envelope cost of $140m and change.
A lot to you and me, sure.
It's about .09% of the estimated $150b we'll spend on the Iraq war.
| Iraq |
Personally, I think this story speaks more to the nature of the Marines than to anything else. Plenty of commenters appropriated it as a message about heroes or God or the USA, but those things are fairly extraneous to the story, since Chance was a Marine. I've rewritten this comment four times now, and my only point is the circular one that the story is a fine example of what the Marine Corps is like, but if you haven't lived with Marines, you might well miss what that is. If you are interested, I can expand in private email or suchlike.
And yes, it's pretty foul for civilians to need to provide proper equipment for soldiers.
Comment #1 :: link :: April 30, 2004 12:28 PMThanks for the UMSC insight, Trip. Having only had Navy, Air Force, Army, and Coast Guard in the family, I'm missing that.
The flak jacket flak bitterly recalls the classic lefty bumpersticker / button, "It will be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bakesale to buy a bomber."
Comment #2 :: link :: April 30, 2004 01:12 PMMaybe you should make a new bumbersticker "No Soldier Left Behind"
Comment #3 :: link :: April 30, 2004 01:41 PMWow. Great story. And yes, hurray for the Corps!
I just spent a good half hour looking at all the links on the site. I'm appalled by the idea that our soldiers don't have flak vests and need toiletry kits, etc. Not enough flack vests? Sand scarves? Has anyone found any articles about the vests? ARe they really in short supply?
The Washington Post had a great article recently about another aspect of the war: military medicine has gotten so good that more and more soldiers with serious brain/neurological injuries are surviving. THis war is therefor producing proportionately far more paralyzed, mentally debilitated, comatose etc. soldiers than any other, all of whom will be badly in need of long-term care/therapy/life support.
Comment #4 :: link :: April 30, 2004 01:53 PM
