The Iraq war is coming to an unceremonious end. The US Postal Service just announced that it will no longer handle mail sent to military posts in Iraq; any remaining soldiers will just have to get mail delivered to street addresses. Closing the box on a war that began almost nine years ago may be welcome news, but there’s a real danger in tying the ribbons too tight. No soldier goes unchanged, and the families they return to change as well.

Kristy Kaufmann, executive director of the Code of Support Foundation, which helps bridge the gap between civilian and military America, and other advocates for military families are desperately worried that society will move on and wipe its hands of this decade of war, a fear that was brought home last weekend at a NASCAR race in Florida. At Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden were booed while standing among service members and their families. Defenders of the booing, such as Rush Limbaugh, state what seems to them obvious: “NASCAR people. . . know that in their hearts, the Obamas don’t like them.’’

NASCAR watchers, actually, are split evenly among Republicans, Democrats, and independents. Despite the stereotype of NASCAR as the pastime of blue-collar white men, minorities constitute 20 percent of the most avid watchers; 40 percent of all ticket purchasers are women.

But the really unfortunate part is that Obama and Biden were in Florida to promote a charity called Joining Forces, which supports the hiring and training of veterans. The visit came a day before President Obama signed bipartisan legislation giving tax rebates to corporations that hire long-term unemployed or disabled veterans....  

Why must corporations be given tax money to do the right thing?

The protests on Sunday had the same crassness as the jeering at recent Republican debates of a gay soldier and a questioner who asked whether uninsured medical patients should be left to die. Those people - the gays, the poor, and now the unheroic, struggling veterans - are easy enough subjects for ridicule. In a society that has less than 1 percent of its population in military service, the woes of military families can be dismissed with impunity. Heckling a political opponent flows easily from there....  

Sent to war based on lies by the other 1% that benefit.

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