The man makes the uniform!
Earlier today I read an entry at Michelle Malkin’s blog regarding last week’s episode of a show called “So, you think you can dance.” I refuse to pay a penny for broadcast television, so I will never see this show. I know now that I am better for never having seen it after reading the following regarding an incident that aired last week:
Excerpt taken from Michelle Malkin’s blog:
According to Newsbusters, the show featured a dance judge wearing Marine Dress Blues with upside-down Marine emblems on the sleeves and anti-war dances by the contestants. Video at Weblogging. The moonbat judge had absolutely no idea–no, none at all–that wearing Marine insignias upside-down would offend anyone.
I am having a really hard time envisioning this dance that somehow summons world peace to fall upon us, but I can picture the uniform this woman was using to make her statement. She commented in another part of the article on Malkin’s site that she received “hate mail” because people were telling her she should be ashamed of herself. That is not hate mail. That is good old fashioned disagreement and cohort correction. Her response to the correction is not really the issue. The issue for me lies within the fact that this person showed a very public and unabashed disrespect for a military (Marine) uniform.
The military uniform (whether it be ACUs, BDUs, Class As or Bs) may be just an article of clothing to some. To others it may be a tapestry for them to alter, deface and use as a form of expressive art work. To some it is just pomp and circumstance. To me the uniform is inseparable from the man, and therefore it is a precious symbol — a symbol that has a transference to it. When a uniform is defaced and disrespected I simply can not divorce that act from direct disrespect to the men and women who wear, live, work, love, bleed and die in that uniform. I can not separate it from the Marine who sits in the shadow of death trying to care for a fallen comrade while dodging bullets that are meant to take him down too. I can not separate it from the young Marine who is buried in it, as his mother touches and caresses his uniform one last time. How could I separate the two? The uniform is what it has become to me because of the men who wear it.
When I see a soldier in public I can tell his branch, rank, his MOS, sometimes his duty station, his Battalion, his accomplishments, and his awards. I notice when I see a soldier in ACUs with a duty hat on instead of his beret — it tells me something about him at that moment. I notice a soldier’s boots and can tell the standard issue pair from the deluxe models carried at Ranger Joe’s and Commandos. I smile when I see a blue cord because I know that I am gazing at an Infantryman. The uniform is a story. The uniform is a diary and a time line of a soldier’s life.
Everyday soldiers wear on their bodies symbols of their career as a defender of freedom. That uniform may have had tears shed on it by a wife who was left behind holding a fussing toddler as her husband walked away to board a plane that will take him to Iraq. That uniform may have had his baby’s spit up on it one day several months ago. His ACUs have pockets that toddlers like to rummage through, after daddy comes home from work, hoping to find some special treat. That uniform is a part of that soldier, and therefore it is a part of his family.
When you take the uniform lightly then you have taken the sacrifices of the men and women who live in it, lightly. When the uniform is used in a derogatory way to protest the very job and actions of those who wear it, then it is a mockery. Our men and women deserve better than that.
As far as the peace dance goes, I will excerpt for you what I said earlier about this issue:
When a dance can fight off the enemies of the United States of America then I will participate. When a dance can stop terrorists and prevent them from murdering innocent American civilians then I will get my tap shoes out.
Until that time I will stand behind and support the men and women of the armed forces who “stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.”
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