It’s Not About the Troops - Either Way
Perhaps the most unremarked-upon aspect of the much-noted fourth anniversary of the Iraq debacle is the deeply confused way Americans talk about it.
Most egregious is the constant refrain from all sides that whatever they want is first and foremost about ’supporting the troops’ - whether keeping them there forever, or bringing them home immediately.
While concern for American forces serving in Iraq is certainly well-intentioned, the rhetorical focus on ‘the troops’ is not just irrelevant, but dangerously misleading.
The most significant reason ‘the troops’ are not the central issue in Iraq is that they’re all volunteers.
This is radically different from Vietnam, where almost all the soldiers, and certainly the grunts, were there because of a socio-economically unjust draft that allowed Bush and Cheney, for example, to avoid serving in a war they ’supported.’
As a result, the demand at that time to ‘bring the troops home’ had substance in both foreign and domestic realms, since the vast majority had not signed up for the armed forces, let alone guerrilla war in a tropical jungle.
But when applied to an all-volunteer military, the same slogan means almost nothing - which is why both Bush and his most determined opponents are able to invoke ‘the troops’ as their chief motivation with, at least seemingly, straight faces.
And the fact that ‘the troops’ can be used to justify completely contradictory positions indicates precisely why American discourse about Iraq is so radically off-course.
For Bush, ’supporting the troops’ justifies the same policies he has promoted since 2002, whose chief beneficiaries have been political Islamists like Sunni Osama bin Laden and Shiite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the one hand, and, on the other, extortionate no-bid contractors like oil-logistical-services Halliburton and high-tech mercenaries Blackwater.
From this perspective, ’supporting the troops’ means:
1) Congress has to approve any and all Iraq appropriations, because failing to do so is prima facie evidence of, you know, not ’supporting the troops’; and
2) the US has the right to go after anyone - Iran / Sunni insurgents / Moktada al-Sadr / whoever - it claims is ‘hurting’ the troops, because not to do so would mean failing to, you know, ’support the troops.’
At the same time, the focus of the ‘anti-war’ movement on ‘bringing the troops home’ is as wrong-headed as the Bush / Cheney / Rove mantra - completely unchallenged by intimidated Washington Democrats - of ’supporting the troops.’
To be sure, the reasons are different - but equally problematic.
A main one is nostalgia for the simplicities of anti-Vietnam war days, which you can see baby-boomers happily re-living and channeling into their own - and, by this point, grand - children.
But contrary to both domino and conspiracy theorists of the day, South East Asia in the 50s / 60s / 70s was just not very important either economically or strategically during the Cold War era.
That’s why the US could just pack up and leave, albeit in undignified retreat, without any discernible adverse effects, at least for Americans.
Iraq, by contrast, lies at the heart of both the key oil-producing region of the world political economy and the volatile Arab / Islamic world.
Consequently, ‘bring the troops home’ is a visibly inadequate response to a highly complex and strategically crucial situation that cannot safely be abandoned, unlike mid-1970s South East Asia.
In this sense, ‘bring the troops home’ is an attempt to avoid the deeply unsettling fact that Iraq has destroyed ‘politics as usual’ - not just domestically, but, even more importantly, in America’s now structurally disturbed relations with the rest of the world.
Put bluntly, no one is going to help the US clean up the disaster it unilaterally created in Iraq - over the objections of the entire world - without fundamental change in the entire American mind-set that ’supported’ this insanity in the first place.
That’s why the obsession with ‘the troops’ is not just irrelevant and - in view of the shocking medical neglect of the wounded - unseemly,
but a major impediment to any possibility of fixing the catastrophe in which major American elites - political / media / business / academic - have responsibility.
As a result, anyone who wants to do something constructive about Iraq should immediately stop talking about ‘the troops’ …
and start thinking about how to begin the profound house-cleaning the US must undertake if it is going to have a prayer of getting anyone in the world to co-operate with it … about anything … ever again.
Grok Your World blogger David Caploe writes and speaks about global affairs in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I think it’s time we stop saying anything about supporting the troops, and when we get the line of baloney about fighting the terrorists there or we’ll be fighting them here, to blast back with the truth about this war for oil.
If one has voluntarily signed up to serve, aren’t they free agents who can also voluntarily stop serving? Certainly works that way with my volunteer job.
This reminds me ofthe vintage Mad Magazine cartoon showing the Lone Ranger and Tonto surrounded by a band of hostile Native Americans and L.R. says “Looks like we are in a heap of trouble partner” to which Tonto says in the next panel: “What you me we Kimosabe”.
If you think they are “our troops” ask and answer the following question: “Are the people who command them accountable to we the people for their usage of “the troops”? See hpw easy it is to demonstrate whose troops they are?
Whenever “they” (meaning this current government of occupation in the US) get the rest of us to say “we” instead of “them” they have us fighting ourselves as well as them. As a result “we” have lost before “we” get started.
It is past time for Rodney King’s plantiff plea of “can’t we all just get along?” The answer is “absolutely not” and the sooner progressives unbuerden themselves of such an illusion the sooner they can facilitate the defeat of their (and the American people’s) enemies.
Impeach Cheney, Bush, and Gonzalez. Vote (and $upport)Nader/Kucinich/ or Gravel for President in 08.
>>Put bluntly, no one is going to help the US clean up the disaster it unilaterally created in Iraq - over the objections of the entire world - without fundamental change in the entire American mind-set that ’supported’ this insanity in the first place.
Added to the above quote:
I think the word the author is searching for is “militarism.” And then I would absolutely agree with this conclusion. But militarism is deeply ingrained into the national DNA and it seems the majority of the American people don’t want to look in that mirror. The reasons transcend history, of course, and reside in the number of people who work for and profit from, our military-industrial complex. Until we’re willing to admit that “Wars R US” and face up to the fact that our society and crusades like World War II are quite different from our situation in the last 40 years, we’re going to keep allowing ourselves to be led down this garden path.
If it were truly an all volunteer military, the majority of enlistees would not come from extremely small towns with few opportunities for earning a living wage. We need to change so very many things about our country that it is hard to figure out where to start, but changing the militaristic mindset would be a good place to begin….
Regardless of whether they are volunteers or draftees, we have to bring the troops home so they can no longer occupy and wage war on the nation of Iraq in our name.
I certainly do agree with you on this one, and that is why my sign for protesting reads in bold white, Support the Truth.
The class war is over. The rich won.
“The most significant reason ‘the troops’ are not the central issue in Iraq is that they’re all volunteers.
This is radically different from Vietnam, where almost all the soldiers, and certainly the grunts, were there because of a socio-economically unjust draft that allowed Bush and Cheney, for example, to avoid serving in a war they ’supported.’”
And today they are there because of socio economic inequities that put pressure on them to join. Can’t afford to go to college? “join up and we’ll pay for it”. Can’t evenfind a job as a dishwasher? “No problem, we’ll train you, and give you leadership skills so that you can find a good job when you get out. And we’ll not only feed you and give you a place to sleep, we’ll pay you every month too.”
Same horsesh*t different war.
“But contrary to both domino and conspiracy theorists of the day, South East Asia in the 50s / 60s / 70s was just not very important either economically or strategically during the Cold War era.
That’s why the US could just pack up and leave, albeit in undignified retreat, without any discernible adverse effects, at least for Americans.
Iraq, by contrast, lies at the heart of both the key oil-producing region of the world political economy and the volatile Arab / Islamic world.”
Despite the authors airy dismissal, the thinking at the time went thus; the U.S. was coming off of victory in WWII and a stalemate in Korea where, which while we were not winning we were able to stop communism from spreading, and we considered ourselves invincible. The Russians were expanding their influence in Africa, we had just had the Cuban missle crisis, and Egypt and others in the mideast were allied with and friends with Russia. It was all about stopping the spread of communism. Which was considered as important in it’s day as the author makes out the middle east to be today. So important in fact that Lyndon Johnson felt that it was important enough to lie us into war just as Bush has today with the same predictable disasterous results.
“Iraq, by contrast, lies at the heart of both the key oil-producing region of the world political economy and the volatile Arab / Islamic world.
Consequently, ‘bring the troops home’ is a visibly inadequate response to a highly complex and strategically crucial situation that cannot safely be abandoned, unlike mid-1970s South East Asia.”
Just another; we can’t leave because, well uh….., well uh…. it’s about uh……., uh ……., we have to have the OIL.
BS, the war is unwinnable and was before we started it, just as Viet Nam was. The only question now is how many more American and Iraqi lives are we going to waste, and how much more treasure that we don’t have are we going to spend before we realize it and leave.
It doesn’t matter if we put in another 350,000 troops that we don’t have, we had 550,000 in Viet Nam at it’s peak, we aren’t going to win.
It doesn’t matter if we clean house and install Hillary Billary in 2008, we still can’t win.
We are what we are seen to be, illegal invaders and occupiers, and that can’t be changed.
The war is lost. What we have to do is withdraw the troops, and clean house by impeaching those that started it. We have to insure that we don’t ever do anything even remotely like it again.
As for the author, if you think it’s that important I suggest you enlist tomorrow, I here the military is looking for a few good lim…………uh……men.
Lobo Gris
My bumper sticker says,
“Support Our Troops - Stop Lying to Them”
“S.O.T” is a highly charged political - not patriotic - slogan.
Yes the troops are volunteers. But contrary to the front page stories about stockbrokers and football stars who signed up to fight after 9-11, they mostly come from a narrow social and economic strata: Southern or midwestern, high-school educated, working class Americans.
The intention behind “S.O.T.” is to command loyalty from this bloc of voters… The message is: They’re not “America’s” troops, they’re “Our” troops… “us” being the rural and suburban voters of “RedState” America.
The Republican Party works hard to keep these voters alienated and resentful toward their better-educated, higher-paid, more socially mobile neighbors. “S.O.T” is part of that effort.
I was really burned when the White House forbade the publishing of photos of returning flag-draped caskets, claiming “respect for the families”. Well I’m sorry, but while those soldier lie under the flag their country, they don’t belong to their families… they belong to all of us.
Every soldier now serving swore an oath of enlistment - to obey orders and defend the Constitution. That is a heavy sacrifice of personal liberty to make for one’s country. We should make it clear that we honor and respect that oath and that sacrifice.
It also puts a heavy responsibility on those of us who have not sworn an oath of obedience to make sure that those who have are not abused and exploited by our political leadership.
I think RedState America can relate to that idea. After all, what does the Bible say about False Prophets?
Bush didn’t just lie to Congress. He lied to Our Troops.
jjohnjj March 26th, 2007 5:29 pm
“I was really burned when the White House forbade the publishing of photos of returning flag-draped caskets, claiming “respect for the families”. Well I’m sorry, but while those soldier lie under the flag their country, they don’t belong to their families… they belong to all of us.”
I was too.
There is no disrespect in seeing or photographing a flag draped coffin. In fact the disrespect occured when they were flown into Dover in the middle of the night and no one was allowed to see or photograph them as if they were something to be ashamed of.
The only shame should be the way they are treated by Bush and co. As with most things done by Bush and his minions, there is an ulterior motive. The bottom line in this case is that they didn’t want them seen or photographed because they feared it would create anti-war sentiment.
Lobo Gris