I dont believe your analogy is correct about you being a software engineer and the support that you get or dont get.
You are supported ultimately by those people that buy the software package that you provide for them. They no buy, your boss no pay wages.
I
may understand you, but if I do then I'm surprised that someone like you would make the point that you're apparently making. So let me clarify what I understand to make sure that's what you intended to say.
I think you're saying that it should be clear to me that I have whatever support I need because there are people who value my work highly enough to be willing to pay me for it of their own free will: that the simple fact that they're willing to pay me money they could just as easily have spent elsewhere demonstrates that I have their support.
The troops, on the other hand, are paid with money that was plundered involuntarily at (implied) gunpoint by the government from Americans who had no choice whether to pay it or not, so the simple fact that the money keeps flowing is no guarantee that their work is actually valued by anyone other than politicians. Therefore, people who do value their work must find ways other than the free market to express their support if the troops are to comprehend it.
Is that what you meant to say?
However there is a great difference to me and to my country for the service that the professional soldier renders and your service to our country for producing wonderful software. That soldier defends with his life the freedom that I enjoy. You sir do not. I am not making light of you or being cavalier in my comment but you do not occupy a place on my totem pole at the same height as any active duty member of the armed service of the United States.
Here we partially disagree. No soldier in Iraq is defending your freedom with his life. He's advancing Bush foreign policy, and incidentally Iraqi freedom, with his life. The situation would be different if that soldier were here on American soil defending Washington DC from an Iraqi attack. No, wait--bad example. (If Saddam were to wipe DC off the map, there's a good chance we'd all be
more free, not less.) The situation would be different if that soldier were here on American soil defending
the town where you live from an Iraqi attack.
To be perfectly honest and politically incorrect, actually, it is really I (as a member of the citizen militia) who comes a lot closer to defending your freedom with my life than any soldier in the US military. Given that we have no foreseeable serious threat of invasion and occupation from any nation in the world, the most significant threat to your freedom at the moment is not foreign regimes, but our own government. If push comes to shove in that area, it's going to be the US military that will be fighting on the government's side to take away your freedoms, and the militia that will be fighting against it to preserve them.
(You could make the argument that the
reason there is no serious threat of foreign invasion is because of the US military. Granting that, the fact remains that the US government is encroaching on our freedoms, and foreign nations are not.)
Interestingly enough, though, it doesn't matter one whit to me whether I have your support or not in that mission. Perhaps that's because I pay my bills with my own money, rather than with money that's been stolen from you.
To support the troops to me does not mean " I hope that you are not injured or killed and wish you a speedy return."
Well, that's all I can conscientiously mean by it. I'm sorry if you're not satisfied.
Third, why would you want anyone to give a task/mission to a soldier or the armed forces as a whole with the prior concept of "I know that this mission is in jeapordy because I have information/equipment that I choose not to give to the military unit that would greatly enhance the units effectiveness?
I'm sorry: I didn't properly explain my point, and you (undoubtedly accidentally) took a sentence out of context, which made the situation more confusing.
Of course I believe that people should be given what they require to do their job, or else they shouldn't be given the job in the first place; that's obvious.
I was simply asking why it seems to be universally accepted that one of those required supplies is gifts and compliments from the general public for professionals who are soldiers, but not for professionals who are...well, pretty much anything else.
