I can't say I exactly "support" the insurgents. My tax dollars don't support them. They won't be patients in the hospital I work in...

Do I understand why they're fighting the illegal occupation of their country? Of course I can. I would expect myself and my countrymen to do the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot.

Because our soldiers have been ordered by their civilian leadership to occupy their country, they're in an untenable situation. They should be brought home immediately.

And of course I don't think their lives are worth more than the Iraqis'. I, however, am an American citizen, not an Iraqi citizen. My role is to advocate immediate withdrawal and complete restoration of Iraq, which we have destroyed and caused unimaginable suffering to. And to call for those who made the policies, and issued the orders--our present Administration--to be held to account by our own, and all international laws we are treaty to, including the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter on Human Rights. There should be a Nuremberg-style tribunal held with the entire Bush Administration sitting in the dock facing charges.

Hope that clarifies my position.

Interesting discussion between citizen1 and drift. Can I throw something out there to drift? And I'm not trying to be disrespectful, you may have some good answers. Do you support the Iraqi insurgents who are killing US troops? Are they not motivated/brainwashed/bribed by the same sort of things? Isn't their cause more noble and legal than US troops (it is legal to resist occupation)? If you don't support them, is it because they're not American, and somehow worth less?

The people who say "support the troops" are not talking about troops at all. There is no need to convince them the slogan is deceptive by pointing out specific lapses in support.

The suicide rate for veterans is fairly shocking. I would like to know how it stacks up against the public at large, and, how it might differ between veterans of the different conflicts we've had.

One very interesting way to cut the data would be to consider the difference in mental health between veterans of purely elective versus essential wars. Would be interesting indeed.

Anyway, the treatment of the troops is certainly reprehensible. Let's not forget the lack of body armor, inadequacy of body armor, lack of Humvee shielding, truck shielding, the cutting of benefits -- there's a lot more that could be listed.

But, let's not forget that the citizens of Iraq are suffering to an extent far far beyond what the troops endure. At least the troops enlist by choice and are adequately trained and armed by a nation that chose the conflict.

"They found that in 2005 alone, more than 6,200 veterans committed suicide. That's an average of about 120 a week, or 17 a day."

That sounds like an incredibly high number. How many veterans are there? What would be a normal number of suicides in a group of the same size and age range? Does anybody know?

The U.S. military includes age 17 to 50 and beyond. The lifers are absolutely, morally accountable for their actions in the Iraq war and occupation. In 2003, most of the younger soldiers had some degree of moral waiver, since they enlisted under a legal and moral framework such as the Nuremburg accords and UN Treaty barring illegal invasions. By now however, *no U.S. military* has any moral waiver. Those who pickup a gun to go kill people, are responsible for knowing what they're doing, who they're killing, and why. By now it is plain to see, this war was only about OIL, not the national defense. Shame on the troops. They will be condemned by history--just as thinking people today condemn the invasions of Cuba, Philippines, Korea, Vietnam and other victims of U.S. aggression. I strongly disapprove of the U.S. military, an unprincipled institution which has killed millions of innocent people in these wars. I renounce my military career and I renounce veterans' privileges. They are stolen property. I hate what I did, and I hate who I was.

Bob h…. about counter recruitment… I believe a strategy would be to get peace activists to enlist…then campaign enlisted soldiers to refuse to pull the trigger, or whatever.

Imagine 1000s of soldiers just not shooting, but helping out. That would be a big deal, and is a tactic that I believe would work.
There would be no war is the troops were peace activists.

I wonder if the average trooper is provided any mental tools to deal with gravity of extinguishing life ?

(Excepting that he/she is trained to harness atavistic
impulses, perhaps view life in an agressive abstracted fashion. Situationally, if these skills were their only resort when we expect them to use their reasoning 'humanity' to question dubious orders then aren't we asking too much of them to police the battlefront?)

bobh,

Respectfully, after 2, 3, now for some, 4 (!) tours of duty, I can assure you that none of the troops have been left off of any hooks of any kind. Many of them are coming home to lives they neither recognize nor know how to cope with anymore. Some of them will be the ticking time bombs of tomorrow if they aren't helped now.

And to head off any misunderstanings before they may arise, this does not mean I support looking the other way when it comes to soldiers who commit crimes, or those who committed atrocities such as we saw in Haditha. What's most important, however, is making sure we follow these crimes UP the chain of command. In the case of Abu Ghraib we know where that would lead. It's Herr Rumsfeld and Darth Cheney that need to be left to rot in a gutter, not the grunts.

What would be more to the point would be discussion/strate- gizing re. counter-recruitment. How do we make the down side of military service in this illegal war most apparent to all would-be recruits?

citizen1 and drift are engaged in a vigorous standoff - I say standoff because though I agree with citizen1 that troops are responsible for disobeying illegal orders, they are rarely in a position to do that for a number of reasons, including
-many have been seduced into service by lies and huge offers of $$
-many are ill-prepared as Pearline7 states well

I have been impressed by Iraq Veterans Against the War. Their participation in actual combat in the live situation where they are up against reality changes their minds about military participation. Then they know that "War Is Not the Answer."

No, I would not advocate that our troops be quickly excused or let off the hook, but I can understand some of the reasons behind their enlisting.

You're the last one here with any credibility whatsoever to be talking about a "higher moral authority."

Your words and twisted thinking have hung you already.

Let 'em rot...

DON'T SUPPORT CITIZEN1.

citizen is partially correct. But I wonder if he's ever been subjected to military jingoist, racist, theocratic brainwashing and peer pressure. A necessary means of reshaping a young man or woman into a killing machine that follows orders even if it means dying for it. To a civilian, revolt in the military would be a bit like having a tax revolt. Not many would dare.

"The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."
Noam Chomsky

Our politicians will not speak out against the military industrial complex and the overwhelming majority of my countrymen do not want to see what our troops are doing, i.e. enabling illegal wars of aggression, over and over. If anyone is wondering about the current state of our country (and how Americans are viewed in rest of the world, an exception is Israel!!!) then you should not wonder at all.

Just because our troops are a volunteer army, and just because they are following orders, from military or civilian, does not give them a free pass. If you are a religious person view yourself justifying before the Good Lord "I am innocent of killing innocent civilians because my leaders told me to do so".

Our troops are not only citizens, but also fellow human beings. All these excuses about following orders is nothing but lame excuses. There is an alternative - resist and disobey illegal orders - no soldier at his stage of the game can plead ignorance.

Just because someone has served in the army does not give him/her a higher moral authority. Actually he/she should be rather cautious about making any comments before finding out how many innocent civilians he/she may already have killed in his/her ignorance and misguided zeal to blindly follow orders.

You can call me names and throw sticks at me, but the facts don't change: Our troops are enabling war crimes and illegal wars of aggression. Don't support them!

Oh yeah, this is a major high school, where there where NO ART CLASSES, NO SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSES, NO MUSIC CLASSES, NO BAND and the only sports were ball sports, basketball, baseball and football. Not too good when you have two boys who are legally blind. Hey, at least they were safe from the recruiters.

I agree with Drift. The majority of the enlistees, I feel, just have no idea of what is really going on politically. i lay a large part of that at the feet of our educational system which has NO civics or current affairs classes required in schools except for a minimal 1/2 semester in SOME high schools. They do not follow what is going on and have no idea who their representatives are or what they do. It is amazingly pitiful. I went back to Pisgah Alabama 2 years ago and in that high school there, which takes kids from 5 surrounding junior highs, the military recrutiers were in the halls almost weekly. Good=looking, well dressed men, with flashy cars and well paying jobs...and when the best jobs available in the area for young unskilled people are being a bagboy or cashier at Lucky's Supermarket or if you want to travel, there is Mcdonalds and Walmart off of the mountain, these recrutiers looked like saviours...and they LIKED you! (My four sons attended high school there) In the local laundromat was a glossy flyer done in the format of the Old West WANTED posters =$70,000.00 is yours for college when you join the Army, a smiling picture of your friendly recruiter in Hunsville was on it. I almost wept.

For anyone perplexed concerning my invective toward citizen1, this is an argument we've been having for a while now...

This is an article posted on CD 3 weeks ago concerning the problem of homelessness being experienced by our vets who've served in Iraq:

Published on Saturday, November 10, 2007 by The Boulder Daily Camera (Colorado)
Support The Troops? Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
by Clint Talbot

And this is what citizen1 had to contribute:

citizen1 November 10th, 2007 3:09 pm
"I don't support our troops. They are enabling war crimes and imperial wars. Homeless? So what? They should be glad that they are not being tried for war crimes."

So here we have a situation where returning veterans are being left to rot in the gutters of our streets after serving our country. And what is the counsel of citizen1? Let 'em rot, he says. They should be grateful that--after bearing the worst wounds, physically, psychologically, and spiritually for the crimes and lies of OUR government that ALL OF US are complicit in--they aren't the ones being dragged in front of a war crimes tribunal.

At long last, citizen1, have you NO SHAME?

The responsibility for this crime lies at the feet of those who lied to our country to perpetrate it. They have names, and they hold offices for which WE THE PEOPLE must hold them accountable. We must hold them accountable not only for the million or more innocent dead Iraqi civilians, but for our own sons and daughters who've bourne the greatest wounds for their mendacity and lust for power.

We all know who they are. We needn't be deluded by the perverse logic of sociopaths like citizen1.

IMPEACH. REMOVE FROM OFFICE. PROSECUTE. INCARCERATE.

It starts with supporting HR 333, Articles to Impeach Dick Cheney, authored by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and now sitting in the House Judiciary Committee waiting for a hearing. Call your congress critter today, and demand it be brought forward for a hearing. Demand they co-sign it. Call John Conyers, the Chairman.

And support Dennis Kucinich in the primary:
http://www.dennis4president.com

STRENGTH THROUGH PEACE (And rational thinking...)

I usuaully try to keep things very civil with my posts, but I make an exception for you, psychoboy.

I served my country in the Peace Corps, and also fighting fire for the Forest Service. I understand what it means to serve. I criticize my country because I take exception to it's leadership, not to its citizenery. We have a citizen's army that take orders from a civilian leadership.

I've explained this to you before, but because your reasoning is fundamentally flawed, you don't get it. In fact, you don't WANT to get it, because you're a sociopath. You hate the people you claim to speak for. You're the embodiment of the perverse characterizations the right-wing wants Americans to think progressives are.

You are part of the problem, not the solution. You should post on a right-wing site, instead. You'd be a star, citizen 1. They'd eat you up with a spoon.

...and to divide us.

drift,

No wonder we are "drifting" towards a failed imperialism. no wonder we can't get our acts together. Too many of us still can not see through jingoism sold as patriotism.

Until folks like you finally understand that our troops are part of the problem, nothing will change. Calling me names will not help either.

Let me repeat, our troops are perpetrators of war crimes (together with their civil and military leaders). Bring them all to justice.

Don't support our troops. They are committing war crimes.

citizen 1, the useful idiot of the right-wing, spouts off his delusional claptrap again.

Nothing to see here folks, pay no attention to deranged man muttering to himself...

That slogan is meant to put liberals on the defensive.

Don't support our troops. They have enabled, and continue to enable, an illegal, immoral and unnecessary war of aggression.

Don't tell me they are just following orders; they have a higher duty to refuse to follow illegal orders - orders of war crimes. See Lt. Watada, he is the kind of troop I support; see other war resisters.

Don't tell me our troops are victims of hopeless economical opportunities. Don't confuse victims with perpetrators. The victims are the one million killed Iraqis. The victims are several more millions of displaced Iraqis.

STOP SUPPORTING OUR TROOPS!

They should be brought to war crimes tribunal, together with their civil and military superiors.

STOP SUPPORTING OUR TROOPS!

Supporting our troops means not putting them in harms way to serve a corporate agenda. Young men and women join to defend out country... not Exxon!

A correct interpretation of "Supporting the Troops" is having a President/Congress that maintains a large and strong military kept busy with constant peacetime exercises while masterfully using effective diplomacy to assure we never actually need to fire a shot intended to hit anything. Lots of jobs. Lots of training. Lots of respect around the world. No wounded, neither ours nor theirs. No PTSD.

Dennis Kucinich calls his version "strength through peace", though I don't know that he would buy the large military part. We can't support volunteer troops by downsizing and defunding them, however. We support them by paying for having the best, ever ready, and always, always, always, a diplomatic solution (negotiated from strength)to spare the live shooting.

Just think how it could be if every single time some politician used the term "support the troops" their hypocrisy was thrown right back at them by the media reporting theise ghastly statistics. Not sure how many people even know these things. Best kept secret---etc.

Not a whole lot different than those who vociferously champion the rights of fetuses, but then when a child is born, turn their backs and essentially say, "you're on your own." Limited compassion, or hypocisy? The disconnect human beings are capable of is sometimes dizzying.

"Support the troops" doesn't mean "Support the veterans" or "Help the wounded". It means "Support the War" and "Obey the Leader".