Support

With the talk this election year turning to the war, there is much talk about "supporting the troops". I think it's time to examine this sentiment.

Now, I was never in the armed forces. Let me establish that for you right up front. But before you label me some hippie peacenik, know that in 1991 I tried to enlist in the Navy. I took the ASVAB, and passed with flying colors. Then came the physical exam. What I learned then, much to my own surprise was that I was too hard of hearing. I couldn't believe it mattered - I had never met a soft-spoken military man in my life, including my father. I was PDQ'ed - permanently disqualified from military service. So much for a government funded college education. So much for my future membership at the VFW. So much for all the good that a few years in the Navy would have done for me. All protests in vain, I remain to this day a lifelong civilian. They couldn't draft me now if they wanted to: I'm pushing 40, and too old to die for my country.

So I watch from the spectators' bleachers whenever our country goes to rattle its sabers, and my opinion as a civilian is inevitably dismissed as naive at best. I simply do not understand the scope of war. I've never witnessed it firsthand, like much of my fellow citizens; it's a few seconds of news from my daily CNN fix, a transitory topic barely acknowledged in a barrage of information that seems to want to focus more on the emotional state of Britney Spears.

You can't blame the media at this point for treating the war like old news - it is old news. We were attacked more than six years ago, and the war seems to be losing relevance day by day. Are we still pissed about 9/11? Of course we are. But it begs the question, what does this war have to do with 9/11? All we ever hear about is Iraq, and Iraq wasn't involved in that terrible attack. None of the 19 alleged hijackers were Iraqi citizens. They didn't train in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, by our own government's admission, wasn't part of 9/11's planning committee; neither did he finance the training.

So I cannot support the war. If I could see a direct relationship between September the 11th and our war in Iraq, I might feel differently. As I've posted previously, I think the war as it stands is a farce, a distraction, a crime, a sham. I believe that it does not serve our interests as a nation to be embedded in a war in Iraq, and it never did. I see no gain, no profit, and no benefit to us, our soldiers, our national interest, or our standing in the world community. I do not believe that the suicide bombings in Iraq will ever cease so long as our soldiers patrol its streets. I believe that whatever good we had hoped to accomplish has either already been accomplished, or never will be. There is no hope to turn that country into an eventual ally. We have done too much damage and refused to understand the people and their perspectives. They resent us, they want us out, and they have every right to feel that way.

Also, I cannot support the President. Apart from my long list of other grievances with this man, I believed that he knowingly and willfully misled the Congress and the American public into this war. I believe that the he knowingly made false claims about the level of threat that we faced from Iraq. I believe that he consciously distorted the facts to make it appear as if we needed to attack them for our own safety. I believe that there has been no good argument put forth as to why we should stay there one more minute. "Iraq will descend into chaos if we leave" is the resounding battle cry of the "stay the course" crowd, but I'll give you two good reasons why that logic is flawed: first, it's already chaos, and our presence only exacerbates that, and two, using that logic, it will never be safe for us to leave. Fifty years from now, we'll still have ourselves convinced that without our presence, they couldn't fend for themselves. That, my friends, is called arrogance. Our national sin is pride, to the degree that we believe we are the right for all the world's wrongs, and only by forcing our point of view can we affect peace and stability. This war will end someday, like it or not, and the question we need to answer now is how will we quantify an accomplished mission? By what benchmarks will we not only define progress, but completion?

This brings me at long last to the troops. These men and women, fighting and dying in foreign lands, believe that they serve their nation in the process. Now it's true, that to lay down one's life for what one believes is truly the height of nobility. Most of us have something or someone in our lives that we would defend at personal risk, even unto death. I love my country, I love my family, I love my way of life. Attack my child, my wife, even my pet, and there's no limit to the suffering I would gleefully inflict in response. Perhaps this isn't the most enlightened point of view, but if we're ever going to understand how things got to the point they did, it's important to acknowledge our baser instincts and give them their proper due. To fight for another is a noble cause. So my grievance is not with our soldiers. They follow orders - this is the first and most important thing they are told as soldiers. You define yourself as a good soldier by your ability to follow orders. They do not set policy, they enforce it. They do not declare war, they fight the war. That a corrupt President misled a wounded and angry nation into an illegitimate war is not the fault of the soldiers. Their nobility is not in question because their commander-in-chief's is.

When I hear people say "support the troops" they almost inevitably mean that we should support the President and his policy to stay forever locked in this pointless war. To me, these are separate issues. I can support the troops and be grateful to them. I can take pride in the willingness these men and women demonstrate to fight for their country, to do the right thing, to put themselves in harm's way on my behalf. But that has nothing to do with the man who knowingly sent 4,000 of them to an early grave to advance his clandestine agenda. George W. Bush should be considered guilty for causing the deaths of every American soldier who has died in Iraq because he willingly deceived the American people into believing that this war was necessary, justified, and winnable. These brave people who gladly laid their lives down did so because they believed they were fighting for something good and noble. The truth is they were deceived into fighting a madman's war for no good gain. My heart goes out to every family member of these fallen soldiers, and I encourage my nation to hold this man accountable for what this is: war crimes.

So I do support the troops. They have my admiration, my thanks, and my eternal gratitude. This war, however illegitimate, was fought by men and women who loved their country. But now it is time to honor the efforts of these brave patriots and give them the greatest gift we can: peace. It is time to call them home, to the families that miss them, to the communities that need them, and to the nation that honors them. I am sure we can find something for them to do, whether it's provide aid when the next natural disaster strikes or securing our borders. I have no doubt that if we are ever called upon to fight a true and honorable fight against those with the means and will to hurt us, our military will answer the call, and that they will fight valiantly for this nation. Knowing what we now know about the war, about the President and his lies, the truest gesture of support we can offer our troops is to welcome them home.