The San Diego Union Trib ran a puff piece off the Associated Press on a lady in Kansas who just LOVES her cute stickers. The article isn't online AFAIK, though you could Google the title. This was my response:
This is in response to "A Bumper Crop of Ribbons on Vehicles" (Union Tribune Sunday edition, March 13, 2005.) This article confirmed for me the motives of people who have yellow "Support Our Troops" stickers on their cars. Sandra Wetmore gushes about hers, "I think it's immediate. I think it's cheap, and I think it's something that you can say, 'Well, I'm doing something'."
I'll give her one thing. It is cheap. However, it is not doing anything.
Soldiers overseas, particularly those in Iraq, are often starving for simple things from home. Usually it's the prepackaged snacks we all take for granted, but also magazines, books, games, and other things to keep entertained. In more remote areas, they can lack things as basic as toilet paper, toothbrushes and toothpaste, and in the case of female soldiers, tampons and sanitary napkins. If someone wants to support the troops, they can do better than to stick a Chinese-made magnet on the back of their car. They can make an effort towards actually giving the support the troops need.
www.anysoldier.com is a website which gives you all the information you need to send a care package to a member of the armed forces who has volunteered to distribute the contents to other soldiers. A close friend of mine who recently returned from Iraq told me that such packages go miles towards raising morale.
Other web sites you can consult are: www.booksforsoldiers.com and www.soldiersangels.com. Soldiers’ Angels makes sure that no soldier has to go without getting mail from someone, even if they have no families. www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com is a site which takes used cell phones and trades them in for calling cards that soldiers can use. They have to pay to call home, and rates can be as high as 25 cents a minute. This lets some of them call for free.
As a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, I feel bound by conscience to actively send aid and comfort to soldiers serving there. I don't have a yellow ribbon on my car, but I do contribute regularly to Any Soldier. I challenge anyone who has a sticker on their car and thinks that they're doing enough for the war effort to click any of the links above and actually make a positive difference in a soldiers' life.
(Yes, I know two paragraphs are cribbed right from my flyer, but oh well.)
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