So for the last month my job has been plastered with posters imploring us to donate items to “our troops” to make their lives easier as they wait to roll over the borders. As I utterly oppose this Bushbaby temper tantrum, I have no intention of donating anything to ease the lives of the shock troops. Besides, I pay taxes and if the Pentagon wants to buy phone cards for the soldiers they can take it out of that. The posters are largely inescapable but once one learns where they are located, it is easy enough to avert one’s eyes so as not to see them.
Today, the emails begin. A totally staged exchange of emails sent to everyone in the building from two people who work right next to each other. The one, apparently oblivious to the posters on every entrance, bathroom door, elevator and refrigerator in the building asks the other (and copies the entire building), hey, isn’t there a list somewhere of items we can donate to our troops? To which the other replies (to the entire building), hey glad you asked, why here’s the list right here in this email!
I replied (to the second person only rather than to the entire building), “When do we start the collection for the Iraqi refugees?” To which her response was why don’t you start one yourself, followed by “The collection is not about the war, it’s about the people obliged to go to war.”
Dear cow-orker: Not even beginning to dissect how fucked up the idea that these people were “obliged” to go to war, is there some reason why you’re being so fucking defensive? I didn’t say one word in my email about the rightness or wrongness of this war. I asked about starting an effort to help the people who will be obliged to either try to live in or flee from the war zones. However “obliged” the troops may be to be there, they at least eventually will get to go home. In closing, dear cow-orker, I am starting a collection for the refugees to which I hope you will donate generously. And fuck you.