Daily Kos: 'I Don't Support the Troops..oops, There, I Said It'
Wed, Sep 19, 2007 at 5:51:40 pm PDT
A significant percentage of the new mainstream voice of the Democratic Party thinks like this: Daily Kos: I Don’t Support the Troops..oops, there, I said it.
These kinds of diaries have a way of suddenly disappearing when pragmatic administrators notice the link from LGF. So here’s a screenshot, followed by the full text of this Daily Kos writer’s argument against supporting the US military.
This has been digging at me for, oh, about 4 years now. I have been hesitant to express this thought, in comments sections and in discussion with other people about the Iraq quagmire for fear of, I don’t know, being called mean. Or, un-American. Or something.
Supporting the troops essentially means supporting the illegal war. It seems that us anti-war types have been doing all sorts of mental and philisophical gymnastics to try and work around this. What has emerged is a sort of low impact, mealy-mouthed common wisdom that is palatable to everyone but is ultimately going to allow us to stay in Iraq for years to come.
Even Jim Webb’s shelved equal time legislation carries the scent of this erroneous wisdom.
Now, I don’t intend to demean Jim Webb. He is determined and impressive in his stance against the war and the crippling of our military. But this kind of legislation allows us to comfortably continue to support acts of aggression, as long as we give the troops a long enough break in between.
Until we have another draft, this is a volunteer armed services. I am not even beginning to count the numerous mercenaries that are involved in the occupation. You signed up, you get to go to the desert and risk being shot at by brown skinned people who don’t believe the lies you’ve been told. A war of aggression is immoral, period. If you believe in God, you can damned well be sure you are going to hell for your participation in it. The only troop I support is the man or woman who refuses to be deployed so that they can make the middle east accessible to profiteers who don’t give a flying F about morality or democracy. Or a soldier’s life.
When Sunni tribes got paid off enough to stop shooting at GIs and instead shoot at Al-Qaeda (in reality themselves) it is funny how they suddenly became Freedom Fighters. During WWII, French resistance fighters were also called terrorists and insurgents by their German occupiers. Can an anti-war proponent look at these Iraqi resistance fighters with the same admiration, even though they worship differently than us and when they eventually win are likely to install a distasteful (to Americans) theocratic tinged state. Can a person who doesn’t believe in violence support that people’s right to govern themselves, perhaps violently.
I am sorry but supporting the troops means supporting this illegal war.
(Hat tip: Killgore.)
Frank says:
