I haven't been in the political or news loop much in the past two years, because I spent 16 months of that as a combat infantryman in Afghanistan, but it is always refreshing to come back and hear this kind of talk.

When I'm in uniform, I salute for the pledge and the national anthem. When out of uniform, I place my hand over my heart. I wear a flag on my sleeve to work every day.

But thats about the shallowest form of patriotism I can think of. Shoulder up seventy pounds of body armor and weapons and walk for a couple of days through the mountains of Afghanistan, and I think you might have dug a little deeper.

Spend a couple of months submerged in a submarine, man a checkpoint in Anbar, or hell, volunteer at an inner-city school for Teach for America and your claim on loving your country becomes much more legitimate.

But every slick, flag-lapel wearing talking head on TV that I've seen advocating this and that, well, they've always just been too busy, or too good, to be true.

I am a soldier also. The only problem that I have with your quite accurate comment is that it empowers those that have neither a real sense of duty nor a real understanding of sacrifice to use your comment as a justification to snub the nation.

Having a cancer ribbon on your lapel does not mean that you alone are aware of cancer or that you have the one true vision of how to cure it. It means you are aware and are doing something.

Having a lapel flag and holding your hand over your heart means you are aware, want to express that awareness. It does not mean you are the perfect patriot.

I don't support our illegal wars of aggression or empire. I wouldn't join the military to aid Bush/Cheney in their war-mongering, and can't say that I respect those that do. Maybe if the war planners didn't have enough soldiers they'd be forced to reinstitute a draft, and finally the American citizenry would wake up and do something, or at least feel a sting of sacrifice. I don't stand for pledges or wear lapel pins from China. I sometimes get goose-bumps when I hear the pledge, and only because it reminds me of what this nation once stood for in the hearts of some honest freedom-fighters a few hundred years ago. Is this unpatriotic?

Oh wait... that's right, they didn't have enough troops and avoided a draft, and unseating themselves from power, by transferring traditional military duties to a few hundred-thousand "contract workers". They also transferred more than a few billion dollars of national wealth in the process. Paying someone else to do the job that most Americans won't do-now that's patriotism.

Yes.

Think that most of the time the heroic and gritty efforts to defend the flag and the shallow demonstrations of fealty to the cause exist in parallel universes. A really smart mold breaker from the political leadership would be to say that their overt patriotiotic displays are so inadequate to express their deep appreciation for the everyday sacrifices of the front line troops. Obama's problem is that he's continually diving into an inherently shallow end of the pool -- and that's where most serious head injuries occur. My heartfelt thanks for your service.