"Support the Troops" is a slogan meaning "Support the War in Iraq."
Which war in Iraq?
There was the war to topple Saddam. Check. Won that.
There was the war to eliminate the threat from WMD. Check. Won that. Four years ago. Mission Accomplished. Well done, troops.
There is the war on Osama bin Laden. He's in Afghanistan. Or was. Or is hiding in a cave in the nebulous border between tribal Afghanistan and tribal Pakistan. Not in Iraq. Never was. Got it.
Or on Al Qaeda. Wasn't in Iraq. Elements may now be flying in after we tore up the hornets' nest, but this is after we started the war on Iraq, not before. If we're going to attack every country containing people who hate us, we're going to be attacking a lot of countries. Iran and Syria come to mind. Attacking them will enrage people in a lot more countries. We'll have to attack them, if I understand the Bush-Cheney Doctrine correctly, so we don't have to fight the people who don't like us right here in San Francisco.
Well, why not send the troops here now before we attack countries all over the Middle East, as we now have, thanks to Bush-Cheney, a lot red-blooded, patriotic Americans who think the George W Administration has sold us down the Global River, ruining our image, ruining our respect, meaning the respect in which the world has held us even though they had disagreements with us.
After 9-11, the world expressed its outrage against the terrorists and its sympathy and support for us.
Even the French. I am an American, too, said the French. We are all Americans.
The way JFK said, against the Berlin Wall, I am a Berliner. "Ich bin ein Berliner!"
Not too many people abroad want to say "I am an American." Especially American tourists. "I am a Canadian," is more likely to keep them out of harm's way.
What happened?
Bush v. Gore (2000) is what happened.
Our government was hijacked by a bunch of right-wing crazies who were going to out TR Teddy Roosevelt, and out-empire the British Empire, which was a non-stop series of colonial wars for a century-and-a-half in the name of a trade arrangement founded on importing raw materials to the home island and exporting finished goods on British bottoms protected by the British Navy.
Ours is oil.
Same game, different commodities.
Okay, I don't have trouble going to war over commodities to keep the game going, that is our economic system. We've got to live. But so does the other guy, the skinny, desperate, jobless fellow who stands no chance of feeding a family, much less of having one while we join exercise clubs to try to get rid of the lard.
Perhaps we should support America, and spare the troops, by saying exactly what it is that America stands for, rather than what we're against. Yes, we're against terrorists. That's like being against the Devil in a dualistic world in which he plays the cartoon role of bad guy against the role of good guy played by an another cartoon figure we call God. If something bad happens, we blame it on the devil, although sometimes we say it's an act of God. I never did figure that one out. Chalk it up to one of those paradoxes that pop up in large cultures like ours where every opinion center, meaning every individual who cares to comment, has the right to define for himself, and if lucky, for the rest of us, his picture as to how the world is or should be.
Good. If that's the case, I'm speaking up. As long as we have the freedom of expression, constitutionally guaranteed, and supported by troops, I'm going to support them by insisting that this country know what we stand for so that we don't waste the lives of our boys, and girls, by sending them in harm's way to get blown up in a war that isn't terribly well thought out, like post-Mission Accomplished Iraq.
Every day I read about more American troops getting killed in ambushes, or by suicide bombers, or IEDs, or in firefights. I see their pictures in the paper. They remind me of my sons and nephews and friends sons and their couisins and friends, some of whom have been fighting in Iraq, or en route. It tears me up to imagine one of them getting killed in a war that should have ended a long time ago, if even it should have been started by us. So when I see a kid killed that I didn't know, what difference does it make whose kid is killed. He's dead. His family is torn apart. That family could've been mine, or yours. Why send the neighbor's kid if you wouldn't want to see your own son, or nephew, go to war and die? Yes, you want to support the troops, but that doesn't mean you have to be stupid, or obstinate, and believe that because we entered a war, and have troops fighting because their military and civilian leaders tell them that it is their duty, their country demands it, their honor requires them to fight and die, that we keep feeding them like sausages into the machinery of death.
This, of course, is what the British did in the first World War in the trenches of France at the battles of the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele, among many others. We entered that war, which had become a war of attrition in which the British fed the cream of their youth and the Germans starved because Germany was blockaded, its fleet in port, blockaded after the naval battle of Jutland, unable to protect shipping delivering food and supplies. Britain may not have won that battle, exactly, but it won the war, with a little help from us, after German U-boats attacked our shipping and killed innocent Americans aboard the Cunard liner, Lusitania.
It's one thing to see young men fight and die to protect their country from attack, as in World War II when the Empire of Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, sunk the battleship fleet (the carriers were at sea and available to carry the war back to Japan, thankfully, otherwise we wouldn't be writing). Nazi Germany declared war on us a week later. Suddenly we had a two-front war in which the whole country was engaged in a fight to the death.
This is not the description for our unprovoked attack on Iraq, I'm afraid. This is an optional war of choice and it's now four years down the road with little to show for it.
"Support the troops," the war supporters say, as those who say "Bring them home, soon," are not supporting the troops, which seems exactly backwards.
The nation uses its troops to fight for its preservation, mainly, or should, and it's other interests, which if they don't amount to self-preservation per se, require a lot of explaining, and the explanation had better not be based on lies, falsehoods, negligence, or mistakes, which describes our decision to attack Iraq, I'm afraid.
So I say that if you want to support the troops, you do so not by flag-waving in support of any war that comes along, good, bad, or indifferent for as long as troops are dying, while we replace them indefinitely, but by asking what kind of a country are we? What kind of a war is this? And the last people you listen to for answers are those who are too fully invested, or committed, or emotionally involved for one reason or another to the point they can't think straight.
As one near and dear war-fighter's mother said to me today, "I think we've turned the corner in Iraq."
"Yeah, right, I'll believe it when I see it."
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports today that the Administration is considering large troop withdrawals come autumn whether Iraq is read or not to fill the breach with its own troops, because the nation has turned against the Bush Administration and its war to a very large degree. Bush, of course, a lame-duck, promises "a sprint to the finish line" of his administration. I know he's a true believer, but he sprinting to the finish using the lives of American boys, and young women.
Caveat true-believers.
Support America, and the troops will thank you for it.
Where's my Support America bumper-sticker?
Memorial Day is coming up, a good day to visit a nationial cemetery to observe the ceremony. At the Presidio of San Francisco, last year, some of the participants wore period costume, from Civil War uniform to the Spanish-American War of 1898, to WWI and a few WACs and WAVEs of World War II.
Visiting the national cemetery reminds you that we are the beneficiaries of what the people underground fought and died for. The least we can do to honor their memory is to speak up when we see the nation veering off the track onto an arrogant, self-destructive path, if that is what we think, and I certainly do.
You don't give up your right to think for yourself just because you visit a patriotic ceremony. The right to think for yourself is the hallmark of what it means to be an American. This is what the fellows underground fought so hard for, so that you and I can have this discussion.
If we thought it, and didn't say it, because other folks thought differently, and wore their own bumper-stickers and yellow "Support the Troops" ribbons, we'd be letting down those who fought for our right to speak our mind.
See you at the memorial, I hope. I'll be the guy with the camera. I like to record important events that I witness. Have a good one.
Since writing the above, I've seen the reports of Vice-President Richard Cheney, the administration chief proponent of the war in Iraq. Here's the article from the Baltimore Sun, below.
He makes two main justifications for continuing the war for as long as it takes:
1. 9-11, which Iraq, Baghdad, Saddam, and his non-existent WMD had nothing to do with; and
2. Al Qaeda is the enemy (true, they committed the crime of 9-11) and Iraq is where they have gathered. The problem with this argument is that when we started the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. By our invading Iraq, we stirred up, created, thousands of new recruits for Al Qaeda. They're attacking, and killing us, because we are their enemy and we are there, in Baghdad, where we have created a target rich environment for IEDs, suicide bombers, ambushes, snipers, and firefights. If we weren't there, where they can get at us, and kill us, we wouldn't be losing so many soldiers, another eight as of yesterday and counting.
Look at how Cheney shamelessly glosses over any truth that conflicts with his simple-minded, I would say misleading, account to make the war swallowable to the parents of the new military academy grads who will be sent over there, some to be killed. They cheered him, wonder of wonders.
He's killing their kids, and they're cheering.
Maybe someday I'll get it. Just not today.
Support America; Impeach Cheney
Read it and weep:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.cheney27may27,0,5404216.story
From the Baltimore Sun
Cheney renews case for Iraq war
During speech at West Point, Cheney gives graduates graphic warning of terrorists' aims
By Noam N. Levey
May 27, 2007
WEST POINT, N.Y. -- With the Bush administration laboring to persuade skeptical Americans to stick with its war effort, Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a graphic warning yesterday about the high stakes of the conflict in Iraq.
"Al-Qaida's leadership has said they have the right to kill 4 million Americans, 2 million of them children, and to exile twice as many and to wound and cripple thousands," Cheney told graduates in a commencement speech at the U.S. Military Academy.
"America is fighting this enemy in Iraq," he said.
Cheney's caution came just a day after President Bush issued his own new warnings at a White House news conference during which he told reporters that terrorists are a danger to their children.
Bush succeeded last week in turning aside a congressional effort to impose a withdrawal timeline.
But he continues to face mounting pressure from Capitol Hill and elsewhere to bring the troops home, and he has opened the door in recent days to troop reductions.
Polls show that nearly two-thirds of Americans favor a timetable for pulling out troops.
The White House has said that such plans would surrender Iraq to terrorists intent on striking the United States anew.
Cheney, who is often responsible for the administration's most combative rhetoric, particularly on war and terrorism issues, painted a particularly dark picture of the consequences of failure.
"Scarcely 50 miles from this place," Cheney said on the leafy campus perched above a wide curve of the Hudson River, "we saw thousands of our fellow citizens murdered, and 16 acres of a great city turned to ashes."
The vice president heaped scorn on "enemies" that he said "oppose and despise ... every notion of upright conduct and character."
"Their cruelty is not rebuked by human suffering, only fed by it," Cheney continued.
Yet, he said, when captured, they "demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution."
"America is fighting this enemy in Iraq because that is where they have gathered. ... And we are there because the security of this nation depends on a successful outcome," Cheney said.
While Cheney won applause from the graduating class at West Point -- and a hug from one cadet -- the administration's message was challenged by another military voice.
In their weekly radio rebuttal to the president, Democrats chose a Marine Corps reservist who served a seven-month tour in Afghanistan.
"I know I speak for many of my friends overseas when I say that the best way to honor the troops is to responsibly end our involvement in Iraq's civil war," Elliot Anderson said in his address.
Noam N. Levey writes for the Los Angeles Times.
Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun |
I agree with your analysis, JR (an old S.I. friend), and fear that you may also be terribly correct in predicting that we'll be attacking Iran on whatever pretext is available, nuclear or other, to prevent it from coming in and picking up the pieces of the wreckage that we'll be leaving in Iraq.
Thanks for the perceptive comment.
rs
Posted by: rs | May 27, 2007 at 10:30 PM
All along the better course would have been to "stay the course," but in Afghanistan. If that was done then we already have gotten Osama bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Laden. Instead we provided him a much easier battlefield on which to kill our own people. As the bits and pieces keep coming in it appears that the decision making process at the top had its mind made up even before they got to Washington. The only one that saw the light was Gen. Powell and they were able to get around him.
I would expect that the Nuclear Weapons facilities in the northern part of Iran and around Tehran will be attacked or destroyed prior to the next presidential election. This will be accomplished to remove the capability and to send a message to others who are building similar facilities. Also, there are others in the region who will see a military advantage in removing the facilities near Bushehr.
Posted by: oldnacl | May 27, 2007 at 10:44 AM