By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents.
It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt.
"I want you to know we support you," she gushed.
Rivera soon reached the limits of her support.
"Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told him.
"Parental consent is the toughest thing we face right now," said Rivera's boss, Maj. Michael Sherman, 36, commander of the recruiting battalion headquartered in Pittsburgh. "There are so many kids just waiting for their 18th birthday, so they can enlist.""
As much as this is pointed to display the hypocrisy of the parent's flag waving, it is in some sense exemplory of the whole "support the troops" mentality. There are so many eager to pump the Bush war message of "clap louder and you won't notice people dying for no reason", but when it comes down to actually sacrificing their own children or themselves for the war effort, they bail or consider themselves in another category.
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