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The Times - A lesson in patriotism from Smalltown, Georgia, by Carol Sarler

In an impassioned speech on Friday General Dannatt expressed his dismay at the morale-sapping apathy shown to our troops who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. A young soldier, he said, deserves respect for his courage; he wants to know “that people in his local pub know and understand what he has been doing”.

Rhetorically, he asked how many councils would even consider a homecoming parade, which took him neatly to a comparison with the United States where, instead of what he sees as a widening gulf between army and nation, he says, correctly, that there is “outstanding” support shown for the military and its personnel.

There are, to be sure, good and bad reasons for this – though none that I can see involve the widespread xenophobic prejudice among Europeans, who concoct a version of Americans as war-hungry imperialists enjoying a scrap with Johnny Foreigner; most Americans, indeed, incline too far the other way and would prefer never to have to meet Mr Foreigner at all.

So, this starts out pretty good, since I think there’s a real distinction there between the American system and the British one, and she seems to sort of get it, but then…

In some communities, nobody is spared. Recruitment is proactive, especially in the poorest, rural areas, where army marketing men make synchronised swoops upon complete generations of the semi-literate who have not previously travelled 20 miles – which is, of course, precisely why they sign on the treacherous dotted line, lured by the only promise they have ever had of education, training and escape from inheriting their parents’ soul-sucking grind. When they return alive there is therefore a whole village that has known them since birth to let out the breath it has been holding and to tie their yellow ribbons round their old oak trees; when they return dead, there is always a florist’s window.

These shrines, together with tearful, televised declarations of family pride in he who sacrificed his life “for our freedom”, conspire to give the false impression that the American people simply don’t get it; that they have been bamboozled into believing political propaganda that would have Iraqis, rather than Saudis, flying planes into skyscrapers – so stupid those Americans, they get what they deserve. This is harsh and it is wrong.

The directly bereaved divide into two distinct and opposite camps, both equally understandable. On the one side are those such as Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in 2004 and took to campaigning bitterly against the war that took him from her; on the other are those such as the florist, whose only balm for grief is to convince herself that he must have died for good purpose. Until we walk a funeral mile in their shoes, it is unfair to draw inference from either.

That’s where I stopped reading.