I had been meaning to write on the topic of the alleged inseparability of supporting the war and supporting the troops for some time, and now that the Boston Globe's excuse for a conservative columnist has weighed in on the subject, it's given me renewed vigor to discuss this. The fact is that this is just another example of a conservative verbal bear trap that is a non-issue and is easier to discuss than the real issues at hand. With that being said, let's delve into the fallacy of the "issue" regardless.
So, are supporting the troops and supporting the war inseparable and one in the same? Is it possible to support the troops, but not support the war? The latter is the question at hand as the debate in the US House of Representatives has been focused on the conflict in Iraq and what to do about President Bush's plan for a "surge" in troops. Democrats have been tip-toeing around the minefield of anti-war rhetoric and are being careful not to suggest in any way that they don't support US troops in the field. Yet, is that really an issue? Let's remember that this is Mr. Bush's war, and one of his choosing. The troops did not choose to go to Iraq to start this conflict. They are merely doing Mr. Bush's dirty work as ordered. For all we now know about the lying and distortion of intelligence in the run-up to war, it's dishonest to suggest that the military had any say at all in the mission. So this war is not the troops' war, it is Mr. Bush's and his alone.
The conflation of supporting the troops and supporting the war goes back to the start of the Iraq War, if not before, when Americans started putting ribbon style magnets with the slogan "Support our troops" on their cars. The magnets themselves were a brilliant idea and they fed perfectly into creating a verbal trap for any war dissenters. Did placing a magnet on your car mean that you supported the war? Maybe, but the magnet didn't say "Support the invasion of Iraq". No, it said something that no American in a post-Vietnam War era wanted to disagree with - support our troops. That was the brilliance of the slogan. Who in their right mind would not support our volunteer American forces? And by placing it on your car, you weren't explicitly saying that you supported the war in Iraq, but in reality you were.
Now the verbal trap has been sprung. House Democrats are finally able to do something in opposition of Mr. Bush's war, and the conservative spin machine has gone into action so as to put them in a bind. If you're against the war, you're against the troops and you want them to fail. If you cut off funding for the war, you'll be cutting off the funding for our troops and presumably they'll start dying of hunger in the Iraqi desert.
These assertions are ridiculous, of course. One could easily suggest that the best way to support the troops is to get them out of a futile situation in which they have become nothing more than target practice in the middle of a civil war. If there is any failure to be associated with the invasion of Iraq, the blame for it clearly sits in the White House, not with the military and the troops. It's questionable whether the latest stated goals in Iraq are even achievable militarily.
To go further, how can one possibly suggest that supporting the troops entails sending more into Baghdad so that even more of our brave youth can go to their deaths on Mr. Bush's watch? Does supporting the troops mean extending the tours of regular servicemen and National Guard troops beyond their commitments so that they too can continue the facade? Troops who are exhausted and have been separated from their families for an extended period of time that goes beyond what this nation should be asking of them - this doesn't sound like supporting the troops to me. It sounds like supporting the war. The conservatives who cloak their support of the war with the declaration that they are supporting the troops are simply using those troops as human shields to protect their irrational arguments to continue the war. That is dishonest debate, but it is what has become of America since the early '90s.
So in the spirit of being candid on the topic, here is what to do in Iraq. End the war immediately and bring the troops home. History will declare the war to be a failure, but the blame should not lie with the military. For that, pay a visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and ask for Mr. Bush. He's the one you want to see when assessing what has gone so wrong over the last 4 years.
