It seems a fair question in light of an endless array of facts.
(SALEM, Ore.) - As we approach the anniversary of the allied victory in WW1, November 11th, 1918, I look around my nation hoping to see what we have learned since that bloody trench fighting in France that claimed millions. During one single battle at Verdun in 1916, almost 900,000 French and German soldiers died. France and England pleaded with our government to help. Eventually we did and the Germans were soon brought to their knees.
As a nation, we used to be reluctant to participate in war, and both of the first two world wars are examples of a trend we once followed, yet seem to have recklessly abandoned. Our political intelligence is frozen in time, like the memories of those who died defending this nation. The war in Iraq is a detriment to our soldiers, they deserve better.
Yet many of the right wing's loudest politicians and pundits say that people who don't want our nation embroiled in the bloody fighting overseas are against the soldiers, "anti-troop" is the term they like to throw around. It falls among other rhetorical mistruths spread by politicians in the past, "Love it or leave it" they used to scream.
Being against the war in Iraq doesn't win many popularity contests. To the contrary, it can bring scorn and ridicule. But my fear is that if attitudes toward those who disagree stay long enough, if the lies designed to protect the Bush Administration are repeated frequently enough, then anti-war people may start to believe they are anti-troop, and the ultra conservatives will have thus turned peace lovers into troop haters. It happened once before didn't it?
Who is this about after all?
Combat vets usually don't want to put down something they had to participate in. Who can blame them? What a position this country has placed them in. I've been with them, I've ridden shotgun in a HUMVEE through combat zones in Afghanistan and I understand how much soldiers and Marines and sailors and airmen have to sacrifice to just get by. Those who serve earned my respect, but the people who didn't have no right to keep voting these men and women back into war. I personally wish all of the hardcore Rush Limbaugh fans would volunteer to be shipped to Iraq to show us just how patriotic they are when it really hits the fan.
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I honestly do not see how supporting the continuance of the war in Iraq equates to supporting people in uniform. If we don't have needless war they live, if we go to war our troops die. Whether the right wing admits it or not, the things President Bush has asked of his countrymen are far beyond what any person should ask of another. Conservative? Hardly.
When you add the horrors of the war in Iraq with the shortfalls in the VA's system of care, particularly for those vets suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the only thing that stands out is the inequity.
"Ask not what you can do for your country, you have already done that, now ask what it can do for you"
These Iraq and Afghanistan vets are in our care for the next several generations. In my opinion they deserve to modify and reverse that famous statement of President John F. Kennedy. It is a sad perspective for a country that leaves its veterans behind in war after war.
Another former Marine like myself, Josh Rushing, was a Marine Corps media spokesman when the Iraq invasion began. He has directed the documentary posted below titled, "SPIN: The Art of Selling War". it is an investigative documentary that looks at the standard justification for going to war by the American administrations of past and present.
Video
Do Ultra Conservatives Really Care About Our Troops?Salem-News.com