The supporters of the Iraq war love to say they "support the troops." What else are they going to say? "I say yes to (other people's) blood for oil?"
No doubt many of the people whosay they simply "support the troops" are entirely sincere, but to say that supporting the troops means supporting the war is like saying the only way to support Boeing workers is to support Boeing management, even when Boeing is outright screwing those selfsame workers. The Bush administration does not care about the troops, except in the same way that they care about any other tool of war. They do not care about them as human beings.
Bush's appalling record of unconcern for all but the wealthiest Americans applies every bit as much to GIs as to the rest of us. As Stephen Shalom recently pointed out:
Perhaps this is all to be expected. After all, it's not like the US government was forthcoming about Agent Orange, depleted uranium, or the Gulf War Syndrome.
There is a "black legend" that those who opposed the Vietnam War "spat on the troops" when they returned from war. Well, it's a big country, and there were a lot of angry people on all sides at that time, so it's perfectly possible that at least one such incident actually happened, but in general it's an urban legend.
Returning Vietnam veterans were a mainstay of the movement against the war, as today they are a mainstay of the movement against the Iraq War. Were they supposed to have been spitting on themselves?
Groups like Citizen Soldier that came out of the opposition to the Vietnam War are some of today's staunchest supporters of the rights of GIs. The most militant opposition to the war came in the form of the GI movement, active resistance to the war from within the ranks of the military. Any peace activist worth his or her salt knew about these groups and activities and understood that the fact that someone was in the military did not mean that person wanted war.
Many of us in the anti-war movement are veterans, something you can't say about very many members of the Bush regime. Many more of us have friends and / or family in the military. Many of those friends and relatives are less than enthused about being sent off on Bush's imperial venture in Iraq. If (as is beginning to look likely) this war turns into a protracted, bloody guerilla action, that view could become as prevalent among the troops in Iraq as it did in Vietnam and (God forbid) this war could cause as many casualties in the present generation as the Vietnam War did to their parents' generation. Judging by the recent record, if Bush and his party have their way, they could come home to even fewer benefits than were offered to the Vietnam vets.
The Declaration of Independence speaks of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind" and the US Consititution speaks of "Provid[ing] for the common defense." These are not the principles upon which one sets up a global empire in defiance of world opinion.
The US has legitimate security concerns in the Middle East. We believe that nearly all of those concerns are ill served by the present war in Iraq. The war is a boon to terrorist recruitment, strengthens the worst forces in countries such as Iran, makes it harder to develop a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and threatens to give Iraq either a longterm military occupation or a war of all against all. It is an enormous and expensive gamble, taken in a situation where far cheaper and less risky courses of action were available.
Bush and his cronies speak of "liberating" Iraq at the same time they launch the worst assault on liberty at home in fifty years. Make no mistake: Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator, but you do not fight a war of liberation by aerial bombardment and without any coordination with the population you are claiming to liberate.
The Bush people have no problem with oppressive dictators, as long as those dictators serve their purposes. Rumsfeld, for example, was a special envoy to Iraq in the era of some of Saddam's worst atrocities. Current US relations with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia do not betoken a love of democracy. For these people, "liberating Iraq" is nothing more than a convenient fig leaf to cover up naked aggression.
Iraq is almost certainly better off with the end of the reign of Saddam Hussein. Similar things could be said of dozens of other countries in the world. Does the US propose to bomb them all into democracy? We say yes to a foreign policy based on promoting liberty and democracy. We say no to debasing these fine principles by using them as false pretexts for an aggressive, unilateral campaign of empire.
This document is posted by Wedgwood/Sandpoint Neighbors for Peace, affiliated with SNOW (Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War). Feel free to copy all or part of this document for any non-commercial purpose.
This page last modified April 16, 2003.
The master of this page is http://www.scn.org/wedgsnow/troops.html.
Thanks to Seattle Community Network for providing free hosting for this page.