It was long ago when a work buddy and I were having a few drinks at a local watering hole after work when our conversation turned to our military experiences. It was the first time I had ever heard anything negative about the American Red Cross. He related that when he was in the Army, he was involved in some emergency in the Caribbean that brought on elements of the American Red Cross.
The Red Cross was there to support the rescue and emergency work that was going on, and was supplying donuts and coffee to the American service personnel at the scene. He expressed his shock and outrage when the Red Cross demanded payment for the donuts and coffee. I looked at him in disbelief but he assured me that had happened. Needless to say, I began harboring some suspicions about the Red Cross.
Years later, another good friend also related that when he was in the Navy Seabees, he too experienced the outrage of Red Cross charges for a tiny bit of home in the form of donuts and coffee. Clearly, my evaluation concerning the “charity” status of the Red Cross began to take on an increasingly negative dimension.
My earliest exposure to the Red Cross was as a young child during World War II. A proliferation of posters showing a Red Cross along with a white clad “Angel of Mercy,” confirmed in my young and undeveloped mind the innate goodness of this venerable America-supporting umbrella of compassion and protection. And when older, starting probably in the first or second grade, the teacher would apprise us of the compassionate goodness of the agency that was always there for us in any time of need. The school would have its annual Red Cross funding campaign, and for the mere quarter that the impressionable school children would bring to teacher in their hot little hands, they would receive a little tin fold over white pin displaying the Red Cross symbol.
Considering the very early age that the goodness of the Red Cross was ingrained in not only my mind but also in the minds of probably most of those in my age group across America as well, the beneficence of this great “American” agency and its unquestioned contribution to our society should be unimpeachable. I say should be, until the seeds of doubt began to be planted by revelations to the contrary.
The doubt originated by the complaints of my friends who revealed the cash mongering practices of the Red Cross is in stark contrast to the image the organization has labored so hard to present. Yet, these comparatively minor incidents have the potential to evolve totally innocuous when exposed to the light of a reasonable presentation of the realistic internal needs of its successful continued operation. But then came September 11th.
Americans of every kind donated over $800 million to help their fallen fellow citizens and their ravished, horribly savaged and disrupted families. A new and unprecedented umbrella of caring and compassion came over America. The innate goodness and compassion of the American people rushed unselfishly to the fore. And standing obstructively in the way of this surge of true caring and compassion, was an adamant, jealous, self-serving Red Cross, having consolidated both the money and the good intentions of Americans. Again, it was prepared to put operating costs above the needs of America.
And what agency was it that accused the United States of violating the Geneva Convention as regards the treatment of prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay? Wasn’t it the “American” Red Cross that leveled baseless charges against the United States military complaining about the treatment of the very terrorists that so enriched them to the tune of $800 million? If it hadn’t been for the much-publicized efforts of one reporter, Mr. Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, this now proven communist cancer of our society would have undoubtedly made off with the bulk of the cash intended for the victims and families of September 11th.
And now, they are offending and traumatizing the very school children they once solicited for quarters from their hot little hands, forcing them to consider rejecting God, religion, and country in the form of passages from the Declaration of Independence, to align with the Red’s new philosophy. And judging by the letters to the editor over at WorldNetDaily referencing the Cross’ latest outrage, many more American military veterans are voicing their experiences with this cash mongering, profiteering, socialist bastion of “compassion.”