Gonna be back-to-back-to-back posts today, so much stuff is going on (and yes… the pilot episode of Super Dudes is done and online. Link to follow.)

Daphne reminds us today is Patriots Day.

You know, anyone can cheer on the winning team, root for the home team in an “easy war”. When the going gets tough? When things go really wrong? That’s when you see what people are made of. Our troops need our support more than ever.

Whether Saddam and Oday Hussein are hiding on a farm dressed as peasants somewhere, or they’re primordial ooze underneath a pile of rubble… either way, they’ll never be a threat to anyone again. No one will shed a tear for them, least of all me.

Where are all the holy men? You know the ones who scream “Death to America” everytime their coffee is too cold, or their eggs are too runny? Why aren’t they putting out a plea to the Iraqi looters and say “Hey, stop stealing other people’s shit, and destroying 7,000 years of history and artifacts!” ?

Just something new to blame America for.
It’s always America’s fault over there, isn’t it.
When the U.N. sends peace-keeping troops to some hotspot on the planet, they only see it as “The Americans interfering again.”

So now, on top of dealing with mercs, suicide bombers, and snipers, they’re expected to stop people from stealing their own shit? Give me a fucking break. Sorry we’re more concerned with combat and finding our people who are being tortured somewhere. Amid the gunfire and chaos, these ingrates are whining “this is democracy???”. What, they don’t have the balls to stop the looters themselves?

Like I said. This is where it gets hairy. We just did the world’s dirty work for them, took out the trash because no one else was willing to take on the “Butcher of Baghdad”.

Now the shit talking is starting again over there. Talk of expelling the “American agrressors”. You know “Saddam is gone now. We never liked him anyway. Now you have to go… infidels, shoo.”

You’re welcome, pricks.

You were afraid of Saddam, yet you talk of taking on our Marines??? HA! Good luck!

What got me thinking of this all (even if it weren’t “Patriot’s Day”) was a response to a “letter from a reader who is ashamed to be an American because of the war and after seeing a ‘heartbreaking picture of a terrified little Iraqi girl’….”

That’s all it took to make you ashamed of America and turn you off to the horrors of war, lady?
You think that’s the worst thing that’s happened there? How naive!

No one who has seen the ugliness of war up close and personal would cheer a war on, or “look forward to watching a good war on tv”. It’s a horrible business, filled with carnage and blood, and the stench of death everywhere, leaving combatants fucked up for life sometimes.

It should always be a last resort.

But ashamed of America? Not me. Not ever.
Whether it was our place to do so, or not. We had to go to another land and take out an asshole, in a place where they never knew some of the stuff we take for granted. A place ruled by fear and terror, where my family and I would pay the ultimate price for saying 1/10th of the stuff I get away with on this site.

… because no one else was willing to.
(Of course I’m including the U.K., Australia, Ireland and the others… but you only hear them bitch about the Americans… as usual)

For better or worse, this is the new America. Because a billionaire Saudi-exile madman thought he can smack planes into buildings, and we’d just let it happen without lifting a finger. Now any and all potential fires will be stamped out, before that happens again. The days of letting them talk their shit and spout thier empty threats are long gone. They tend to keep it down to hushed whispers once the armed forces come knocking at their door now.

Maybe now, people will learn better than to fuck with us.

I may not always agree with what what we do, but I can’t think of a better place to live than here. And once our troops are called to action, I’d never let my words discourage them, or be used against them by our enemies. Foreign or domestic.

And now, in a land where our welcome was worn out in a matter of days, our troops need our support more than ever. You can count on me…

American… loud, obnoxious, and proud.