In a front-page post, Armando wrote:
I and markos and other front pagers often do express support and concern for our soldiers. And we will continue to. Because the soldiers, out there putting their lives on the line for us, deserve our respect and support.
These very words could have been written by any Russian family about the Russian troops in Afghanistan and they would have been just as wrong -- understandable, well-meant, surely, but wrong nevertheless.
More below fold...
(I know how some here still cling to Godwin's law despite everything else, so I will refrain from any Wehrmacht analogies.)
Bluntly, I do not agree that you can support an army and not, at the same time, support the war that it is waging.
The fact is: this war is evil.
The troops that wage it are a tool, this is true. They did not decide to go to war. But if they are not the brain, they are, in effect, the arms and the legs.
You cannot attack the brain while encouraging the arms and the legs to go on marching.
If you support the troops, you support the consequences of their actions. Yes, some troops behave properly, but we all know by now that others are thugs (or sadly, have been forced to become thugs in order to survive -- such is war).
By supporting the troops, at the same time, you support the thugs -- and worse, you support their actions.
If tomorrow a US soldier kill an Iraqi child, what will you someday tell his parents? "He was a victim too"? It would be obscene.
Let's not address here the fact that, every time there has been an unjust war in history, some men (too few, alas) have chosen to desert, revolt, or better yet, serve time rather than become tools of evil, because that's not strictly relevant to my point here. But it must weigh in the balance, too.
If you think the war is evil, then it must stop. And to stop the war, the tool that wages it must be broken. There is no other alternative.
To support the troops is to support the war.
There is no passport on GOOD and EVIL. The fact that we are talking about American soldiers, not Russian ones, do not give them, or us, a pass. And candidly, I don't think tht anyone here is saying that.
Still, at the end of the day, the ONLY reason I can see why some here keep saying that we should support the troops is because they are OUR troops. Would we support them is they were Russians? I doubt it.
That is not enough!
This is not a time for compromise, not in the face of Armageddon. I'm not hyperbolic: as long as we breed enemies and plutonium, there'll be another 9/11 and then Bushco will nuke half of the planet. More than ever, we need clarity about good and evil. More than ever, we should not let misguided patriotism blind us.
I'd like to think that the folks here would not have supported the US Cavalry when it slaughtered the Native Amricans, or the harrowing exactions of the US troops in the Philippines.
We live in times that require clarity.
We must NOT support the troops, at any price.
This is not only to show the rest of the world that we, Americans, know the difference between GOOD and EVIL, but also to show the victims of our war that we do not support their aggressors, sometimes their butchers and torturers, just because they bear the same passports as we do.
If you want to show humanity, and atone for the evil that is being done in our name, every day, please consider instead supporting the victims of the war, in Iraq or even here -- such as the innocent families of our soldiers, who are not guilty and are not tools and do need our constant support -- but plase do NOT support the troops themselves.
Never the troops.