God Bless the Coyote

For some reason I had the song “God Bless the USA” stuck in my head the other night. Okay, it was because I saw some commercial about a CD of gospel music done by country bands, but that’s not the point. The point is that the song was stuck in my head and I couldn’t get it out. And after the 50^th time I sang the lines “And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.” I started thinking about those men and women and when the last time we actually had to fight for our freedom was.

Don’t get me wrong; I fully support our troops all over the world and respect them for what they’re doing. I have several friends and coworkers that have spent time/are currently/will be spending more time in Iraq. And I’m not about to start another debate over the merits, or lack thereof, of the current conflicts. My point is that when Lee Greenwood released that song in 1984 we were pretty much done fighting for our freedom. WWII would be the last time I figure we fought for any form of freedom. The Nazis were actively taking over Europe and committing genocide. There’s no guarantee that they would have tried to cross the pond and invade us, but it’s best to not wait for that to happen.

Vietnam and Korea? We were fighting for other peoples’ freedom, not ours. As much as the government wanted you to think so, communism was not a virus that would spread across the globe unchecked. You may have a few countries go communist, but who’s to say that’s bad for them? It’s not like our republic (constitutional federal republic to be exact) government over here created a paradise for all US citizens.

And once again we’re involved in wars to protect other countries’ freedoms. Iraq had no credible involvement in the terrorism of 9/11, had no credible weapons of mass destruction, and no plans to come over here and take our freedoms. Nor did any of the terrorist that attacked us on 9/11. They could give 2 shits if we’re free; they just got sick of our constant meddling in their affairs and our funding of their enemy’s army.

I think we can all admit that the Middle East conflict is about securing a steady supply of oil and settling a family grudge against Saddam Hussein. We did go after some terrorist cells in Afghanistan early on, but those days are long gone. Now we’re stuck in a ‘You break it; you buy it’ situation in Iraq. But whatever.

The good news in all of this is that American soldiers haven’t had any reason to fight for our freedom in 50 years. That’s awesome. It’s a nice feeling to know that no one has the means and/or desire to take that away from you. And an even better feeling to be able to ignore your manipulative government and sensationalist media when they try to convince you otherwise.

And now for some cheery miscellany:

I think I saw a woman walking a pet coyote the other morning on the way to work. I’m not 100% sure it was, as I was driving past at ~45mph, but it sure looked like a coyote. Skinny, right height, same coat coloration, long narrow snout. I’m sure it was just a mutt of some kind, but it sure looked like it had some coyote in it. She’d be wise to keep it away from road runners and large wig-based rockets.