Syndicated columnist Marc Munroe Dion: Ukraine embarrasses America
As backdrop to this column, remember that, as of 2018, around 7% of Americans were military veterans, and that percentage includes a fair amount of the unwilling who got shipped to Vietnam like sides of beef.
However much we say we "support our troops," however many memorials to dead soldiers we build, however many times we post on Facebook that "freedom isn't free," there is one thing we do not do.
We do not join the military.
We get a "high and tight" military haircut. We buy an AR-15 that looks just like the guns the real soldiers carry. We go to the range and shoot at paper targets. When we're at the range, one guy is the "range officer." We wear a T-shirt that says, "All gave some. Some gave all."
We do not join the military.
We talk a good game, is what we do.
We say, many of us, that we're drooling for a civil war, that we're ready to fight off and overturn a repressive government, that no nation will ever invade America because, if they did, there would be an armed patriot behind every blade of grass.
I've wondered in the last few months why Americans haven't been louder in our support of Ukraine.
After all, aren't the Ukrainians doing the most American of things? Aren't they fighting for democracy? Aren't they citizen soldiers? Aren't they the kind of armed patriots who used their squirrel-hunting skills to knock the Redcoats over like bowling pins? Aren't the Ukrainians white, and as nominally Christian as the population of Ohio?
If not for President Joe Biden, we'd have left the Ukrainian army to gurgle and choke in its own blood.
The Ukrainians embarrass us, or at least they embarrass a lot of those Americans who practice their fast draw in the mirror when their wife is at the grocery store, the guys wearing the T-shirts that identify them as proud gun owners.
I didn't serve in the military, but I don't say that I did or that I "almost joined the army," and I don't talk about what a hero I'll be if there's a civil war in America. I don't wear camouflage clothing to Home Depot, and I don't wear the kind of boots you wear if you're about to jump out of an airplane over enemy territory.
But, if I did those things, I'd be tremendously embarrassed by the Ukrainians, who are back to the wall and fighting like lions. I'd be so embarrassed I'd have to get a beer and play Call of Duty until I felt like a hero again.
We brag and we growl about how tough we are, but we don't join the military. Instead, we buy another gun and another bragging bumper sticker and another video game.
And we "knew" the Ukrainians would get whupped in a couple weeks, because their gun laws were stricter than ours, and, besides, they're Europeans. We knew they couldn't fight like Americans.
Somewhere in the back of the mind, where the reality lurks behind the fantasy, the Ukrainians are who we say we are and who we might not be at all. We'd rather turn away than look at them, risking and losing their lives, losing their legs, their dreams, and their husbands, wives, brothers and sisters.
America hasn't won a war since 1945. Since then, we've made a specialty of losing wars to people who've never been to a gun range, to five-foot-six-inch farmers firing the first gun they've ever owned.
Look hard at the Ukrainians. They are who we were when we did less bragging and more fighting, and the combination of the two made the British go home.
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