Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Friday, April 13, 2007

As the "War in Iraq" drags on and more people who are either in leadership roles or who have loud voices begin to question the war, a sadly expected debate has begun to occur.

For many people of a particularly conservative nature the arguments about remaining in Iraq become less and less about achieving a specific set of objectives and more and more about this sort of amorphous idea of "supporting the troops". Many of these folks equate supporting our continued military presence in Iraq to supporting the men and women who put themselves in harm's way. In their minds, if you don't support our military actions then you don't support the troops who undertake them.

For those who wonder if we still, as a nation, live in the shadow of the Vietnam conflict, this should clear that up right away. Back in the early 70's, many who opposed the Vietnam War also disparaged the troops. It was only after a time of national reflection on the war and the counting of the cost of that confusion that we realized, as a nation, that the young men who fought there were upholding their commitments to this nation and our national anger about the war had been misdirected at them. In the 80's, we as a nation decided in sort of a collective sort of way (probably subtly led and encouraged by Ronald Reagan and his administration) that we would no longer subject our troops, our fellow citizens, to such abuse. This, in my opinion, was and continues to be a very good thing.

The problem now is that there are those who wish to bring up the same arguments against those who don't support our military action: if you oppose the war, you must be like those nuts in the 70's who didn't support the troops and you don't support the troops. I find such an argument pathetic. No where has there been the mass reviling of our troops, even though they have committed some pretty atrocious acts. Our troops still enjoy broad support from those on both sides of the issue.

To those who question whether those who don't support the war support the troops I only have one thing to say: Knock it off! Don't use some emotional knee-jerk tactic to deflect criticism of the war or how it's been executed. There are good reasons for our military to be in Iraq; start explaining them clearly and stop impugning the patriotism of those who demand those explanations or who don't accept them at face value. What you're doing is once again entangling our men and women in the military in a political issue just like the war protesters of the 70's did. It was wrong then and its wrong now.

Thanks for reading.

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