Support the troops

Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain and Democratic Presidential Candidate Barrack Obama both recently made comments about the wasted lives of our soldiers in Iraq, and both were heavily criticized by their opposing parties and forced to make an apology. Setting aside the glaring hypocrisy of both parties on this issue, what I want to know is why the hell their comments were regarded as controversial at all.

Inevitably the bullshit answer has something to do with "supporting the troops." Because absolutely every discussion about the war has to include that phrase. Anyone who criticizes the war is instantly smeared as unsupportive of the troops by war-supporters, to the point where now every war critic has to jump through rhetorical hoops of making sure every paragraph includes a sentence in "support of our brave men and women fighting in the war."

How do we accept this complete bullshit? How fucking stupid are we? How can someone advocate sending under-prepared Americans to fight and die in a needless voluntary war and then be taken seriously when they question if someone who wants to bring those Americans out of harm's way "supports" those Americans? How can we not collectively rise up in outrage when this administration talks about supporting the troops while they ignore the wounded soldiers whose bodies and minds have been broken by this disastrous war? What the fuck is going on?

Thank the flying spaghetti monster that someone finally clearly articulated this issue. (This is a brilliant article that deserves a better and more serious sounding introduction than that.) All this "support the troops" is just pathetic rhetoric, intentionally designed to tug on the last emotional string of a public that is otherwise opposed to the war, that string being the lives of the people fighting it. The average American doesn't know a whole lot about Iraq, generally wants to avoid war, and strongly believes they should support the troops. That is an equation that is ripe for the exact cynical and manipulation we're seeing: powerful authority figures suggesting without elaboration that certain arguments in a seemingly complex situation reduce to anti-troop arguments.

Put another way, American troops in Iraq, or heading for Iraq, and the American dead from the Iraq War are now hostage to, and the only effective excuse for, Bush administration policy; and American politicians and the public are being held hostage by the idea that the troops must be supported (and funded) above all else, no matter how wasteful or repugnant or counterproductive or destructive or dangerous you may consider the war in Iraq.

The President expressed this particularly vividly in response to the following question at his recent news conference:

"[i]f you're one of those Americans that thinks you've made a terrible mistake [in Iraq], that it's destined to end badly, what do you do? If they speak out, are they by definition undermining the troops?"

Bush replied, in part:

"I said early in my comment… somebody who doesn't agree with my policy is just as patriotic a person as I am. Your question is valid. Can somebody say, we disagree with your tactics or strategy, but we support the military -- absolutely, sure. But what's going to be interesting is if they don't provide the flexibility and support for our troops that are there to enforce the strategy that David Petraeus, the general on the ground, thinks is necessary to accomplish the mission."

This is hot-button blackmail. Little could be more painful than a parent, any parent, outliving a child, or believing that a child had his or her life cut off at a young age and in vain. To use such natural parental emotions, as well as those that come from having your children (or siblings or wife or husband) away at war and in constant danger of injury or death, is the last refuge of a political scoundrel. It amounts to mobilizing the prestige of anxious or grieving parents in a program of national emotional blackmail. It effectively musters support for the President's ongoing Iraq policy by separating the military from the war it is fighting and by declaring non-support for the war taboo, if you act on it.

So just stick a magnetic yellow ribbon on your gas-chuggling SUV and sleep easy knowing you're supporting our troops!