The recent flak about William Larkin's comments about troops etc. has reminded me of this piece back in June 2003. I've probably refined my thinking on this but will let it ride for it was.
Who is it that doesn’t support the troops when they are deployed by the United States ? Is it the snot nosed college kids ? Sure they protest, but I think you would be hard pressed to find them not supporting their friends who are currently serving. That sentiment is reserved for a few boomers who slammed their peers when returning from Vietnam. This is surely a different time. Is it the cranky middle-aged, middle income white guy ? Nope. He’s making sure FOX gets ratings, not shouting at the boys in uniform.
Is it the most extreme neo-fascist holed up in the woods waiting for Armageddon and spouting about the new world order ? Nope. We really don’t use the UN anymore. The fringe left-wing militants ? Perhaps. But it is awful hard to get one to speak coherently about his feelings for the actual troops. Even an ardent Libertarian who opposes the war based on his frugal taxpayer considerations or obstinate constitutionalism, does not complain about the public employee that is paid to kill the enemy. The policy wonks maintain control at the party levels, with its limited ideological spectrum. The rest is trickle-down beliefs and assertions.
The people who do not support our troops are probably being shot at right now. A few articles about the absurdity of this citizen rally cry is the argument they can make against war itself, not the troops. They don’t talk about why the average soldier can’t have a beer when he gets home. Ernie Pyle would have captured that irony.
Certainly our fathers, mother, brothers & sisters are employed by the government, which we choose, to invade a country. If you disagree with the war you are not un-patriotic. If you support the troops you are not unwavering in support of any given administration’s pursuit.
If you really don’t support the troops because you don’t support the Washington’s policy, there’s not much that you can do until the elections happen. After seemingly years of analysis and endless political knit-picking, that most people don’t want to listen to, somebody will be President again. He gets to point all the guns at whoever threatens ‘us’.
Saying ‘I support the troops’ is like burying your head in the policy sand. It is a virtual straw man. The military pays cartoonists to create leaflets for the invaded nation. Surely the message there is ‘support our troops’. All the people not supporting the troops are not camped out at airports waiting to harass young man and women coming home from service. Is it any surprise that a 20 year-old mechanic on a US carrier thinks that Saddam is evil and the only solution is to take him out ? It becomes very easy to vilify this bad guy and his thugs. Trickier engagements with rebels not considered something to be drained like a swamp, are taken up by French Troops. The Congo and Liberia being prime examples. Large sentimental rallies are not happening in Paris. Coverage is marginal and lame in the American media. Indonesia is now incorporating many American tactics in its most recent crackdown. It’s doubtful the middle-class is so enamored with that ‘ war on terrorism’.
The military conditions its soldiers to regard the enemy as something to be ‘engaged’. Dispassionate references to ‘targets’ and hostile opponents takes the punch out of the fact the innocent lives are being lost and classified as ‘collateral’ damage. A term first coined around the first dubious Bush invasion of a sovereign nation, Panama. Service in the military used to involve a draft and a reluctance to get caught up in the problems of Europe. Now it’s a voluntary setup with the opportunity for adventure. Considering the advances in technology and the relatively low rates of casualty. Many battles on World War I lost more people in a week then the entire death toll in Vietnam. Now you can pay for college after a two-year hitch on a boat watching US blips erase the enemy. We’ve marketed and packaged it to bored and disaffected youth amongst our poor and middle class. The well to do go off to University and devise elaborate paradigms to justify the engagement of the latter.
One constantly hears them talking about defending our freedom. Certainly not our economic freedom. We are heavily taxed to support this adventurism abroad. No other country is close in military expenditure. We can deploy massive air, sea and ground power in a matter of days, anywhere. We used to have real tough enemies, the Nazis, the Japs and Communists. They have been squelched by the power of a free democratic nation. The power to combat the latter is kinda like all the Prohibition authorities after they made booze legal again. Make marijuana and terrorism illegal and everybody finds work again.
Do teary-eyed WWII veterans ever think about the poor guys in The Great War ? MacArthur set to attacking them in our nations capital over pension benefits. Media hungry Senators clamor to extend more benefits to out brave soldiers before they even get back. Angry people organize marches supporting the troops in America’s most remote towns and counties. The love it or leave it crowd wants to shout down all dissent as candy-ass liberals. Click on Limbaugh or O’Reilly some time. They spout and foment about the unpatriotic fools who can’t see why 19 guys with box cutters caused the greatest military power in history to adopt a paranoid atmosphere of detention centers for enemy combatants.
Perhaps it’s the fear that justification for the war is not forthcoming. Nobody understood Vietnam or Korea when they set out to eliminate those threats. Ho chi Minh never made it to the West Coast with his tanks. The poor Chinese bastards on the other side of Marine rifles and mortar during the Chosin Reservoir battle didn’t know why they were fighting. They were conscripted, cold and hungry facing a similar set of guys who were from somewhere else. I recall talking to a Ranger right after the Panama invasion in 1989. Bad things happened there too.
The point is that nobody ever holds all the eggheads in charge accountable. A couple scapegoats emerge after history starts to reveal itself, but the inherent hubris in those who would be ‘in charge’ always pisses me off. So when some local cheese-head says ‘support our troops’. I think to myself – why ? I hear support policies that are unconstitutional and divisive the accepted world opinion that advanced industrialized nations need not impose democracy on dirty regimes. Everybody agrees it not the troops or people, it’s the regime.
Eric, I just wanted you to know that I did reply to your excellent comment, but on the Plastic Mind site so that the continuity of the thread could be maintained.
By the way, I find your remarks on the "support the troops" rhetoric very insightful.
Mike,
Thanks for the post here too. I'll check out response and see if we can get something going there ! When libertarians argue they tend to go around about the same insular stuff ad nauseum. Hopefully you won't bite my head off like the KoSians do . . .