I'm am so sick and tired of the "support the troops" mantra I could eat my liver...

[warren pease]

And of course it was invoked yet again by our Democratic "leadership" the other day as they caved yet again. Hell, they're only the majority party; what would you expect? But I've got bigger issues on my mind today.

Personally, and flame away if you must because I can certainly see the other side of the argument... Personally, as I say, I don't support the troops.

Never much of a flag-waver, the few drops of child-like patriotism I had left have long since evaporated, victims of decades of watching the ruling class do its perpetual hatchet job on the rest of world, with the gleeful and well-paid assistance of whoever's in political power, and using the US military to fight proxy wars solely to expand corporate America's bottom line -- over and over and over again, from Indonesia to Iran; from Chile to Greece. The list is depressingly long and shares one primary attribute: In all cases, the US has intervened against nationalist movements that advocate land reform, reestablishment of public services while reversing the damage wrought by IMF and World Bank "privatization" requirements, kicking out the elites, or at least redistributing their wealth and nationalizing their businesses and/or land holdings, and so on.

Rather than siding -- even once -- with the good guys, the US always comes down on the side of bloody dictatorships with a long record of murder, torture and "disappearing" members of the opposition, and who represent the kind of rapacious capitalism that's the organizing economic principle in the continual transfer of rapidly dwindling wealth from the lower 95 percent to the upper 5 percent of elites.

And to the raging murderous madmen in this administration, the "troops" are just replaceable killing machines whose sole purpose is spreading terror and death over whichever country of little brown people happens to have the desired oil reserves or a well-developed US corporate infrastructure that needs to be shielded from the peasants with pitchforks. And represents the best odds of rapid conquest.

The Lancet reported last week that a careful study of the calculus of carnage suggests that about 655,000 Iraqis have been murdered by "our troops" in some shape or form -- whether lined up and executed, bombed to pieces, randomly shot in the head or heart, "accidentally" wiped out at some wedding party or farmers market, slaughtered by grenades and surface to surface hand-held rockets, crushed under demolished buildings (with schools and hospitals favored targets), shot randomly on their way to or from work (what little is left in an utterly ruined country with almost no surviving infrastructure) or, perhaps saddest of all, murdered because they're of the wrong Islamic sect, victims of a sectarian and class war "our troops" unleashed and which there's no way to put the cork back in the bottle before hundreds of thousands more have died because one idiot's version of Allah is better than the other idiot's version. And the single, unbroken thread that runs through five years and counting of wholesale slaughter and systematic obliteration of the former infrastructure is the destabilizing presence of "our troops."

And we're not talking about some little jerkwater country with no real identity or reason for continued existence. We're talking about the Fertile Crescent, the birthplace of writing, where plants and animals were first domesticated and where farming first competed with and then replaced the hunter-gatherer model. From there, this "package" of domesticated grains and herd animals spread east and west, changing the way people obtained food, creating food surpluses, which then allowed the growth of non-food producing classes like scribes and artisans and, unfortunately, a warrior class -- modern US representatives of which stood by and watched as rioters looted or destroyed irreplaceable artifacts dating back more than 6,000 years, some of the oldest human creations anywhere in the world.

The ancient Mesopotamians probably had debates about "supporting the troops" back then, some resenting the fact that the warrior class spent its time sharpening spears and pikes while most of the rest of organized society did the back-breaking work that produced food for the spear-sharpeners. But as usual, you can imagine the right wingers winning the debate by manufacturing some external threat that, if left unchecked, would overrun their (town, hamlet, village, agrarian community, etc.) and eliminate their cherished freedoms, commit murder and mayhem, rape their women and steal their animals, and generally turn the cradle of civilization into just another sorry disorganized large-scale slum.

But back to the theme: This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. The primary, and perhaps only, objective of American foreign policy since the late 18th century has been to negotiate diplomatic solutions to issues of tariffs, trade, border disputes, preservation of peace (or temporary lack of war) -- with the advancement of US business interests always, always, always the only real objective of US diplomats, and with the US military ready and willing to act as the enforcement arm of the US corporate agenda -- the iron fist inside the velvet glove.

And that works some of the time, although there's a huge difference between deploying troops as a final, desperate measure and gleefully shipping them around the world to whatever flashpoint happens to need a little more fuel so it can erupt into the traditional mass murder crime scene we've all come to equate with the end game of American foreign policy.

But "our troops" aren't innocents. They're not particularly stupid; rather, they're representative of the range of intelligence and political awareness found in the general population. They are poorer than the US average for adult men in their age range, which makes them more susceptible to promises of economic betterment. And they're far more gung ho than the average American. They tend to believe that "Army of One" crap, as well as the ads for technical skills training.

They also tend to believe the doctrinal American creation myth, which ignores the slaughter of native peoples, minimizes slavery, justifies western expansion with the phrase "Manifest Destiny," and, most importantly, hides the naked aggression with which US imperialism deals with the rest of the world, hiding behind positive though nonsensical concepts like "spreading freedom," "exporting the American dream," "preventing the spread of (insert current despised social system here)" and "making the world safe for democracy."

And who gets to do all this spreading that our bottomless arrogance tells us the world is just salivating for? The troops we're supposed to be supporting.

I've always despised militarism, particularly the "SIR, YES SIR" horseshit and bouncing quarters off the bedspread and straight shirt button alignment and all the rest of that phony "character building." I've despised the rifle range, close-quarters combat, and training on 43 ways to kill a guy with just a credit card and a set of keys. I hate black ops; I hate overt ops.

I really hate the fact that the US came out of WW II with the world's only functional A-bomb and, when the USSR exploded their first test model in 1949, rather than calling it even and shutting down further R&D, the US went nuts and used the Soviet bomb as the excuse for massive military buildup, further research into fission-based killing systems and so on to our current inhuman arsenal. Google NSC-68 for a quick education on how the US designed and built the mechanisms of the Cold War, and conned the US taxpayer into paying for it.

Anyway, I keep getting off-track here, but my point is: Somebody has to pull the trigger, align the bomb sites, push the button, aim the tank turret, position the Semtex, ambush the wedding party, fuel the jets, chauffer the latest four-star yes-man, maneuver the Blackhawks into position for the kill, and generally try to screw up anything they can get their hands around or weapons sights locked on.

Somebody's got to keep volunteering to keep doing BushCo's killing. Somebody's got to disable their conscience long enough to avoid crippling cognitive dissonance, at least for one more trip to the killing fields. Somebody's got to scream "SIR, YES SIR" when another demented drill sergeant inspects the plush desert accommodations. Somebody's got to sign the paperwork and step across that line (if they're still doing that with all-volunteers), and get the cheese-ball recruiter his bonus.

Without "our troops," BushCo's adventuring would be impossible. Without "our troops," BushCo would have to farm the whole thing out to Blackwater, which might not be all that bad an idea from BushCo's point of view but would sure break the rest of the treasury.

As they used to say, "It's not just a job; it's an adventure." Well, it's not an adventure, either. The job description of any member of the military anywhere in the world is, simply: "Kill or be killed at the whim of the Commander Guy." Any nonsense about an army of one or advanced training or preparation for life in the technical world -- just lying hogwash designed to lure the suckers into the maw of the world's mightiest mass murder machine.

Finally – and this is the one that always makes readers insane – the higher the US body count, the better chance the Iraq disaster will end sooner rather than later. War must have serious real-world consequences if it's to penetrate the thick skulls and wandering attention spans of average Americans. Body bags – or “transfer tubes,” as the Department of Official Euphemisms and Bubbly Happy Talk has dubbed them -- tend to do the job rather well.

So flame away if you feel like it. It’s taken me five years to get reconciled to this position, and a flame post isn’t likely to change that in 30 seconds. However, you’re most welcome to try.


wp

[David__77]

1. Yeah, I don't know what "support the troops" means...

That would mean supporting their actions I would think, and this I cannot do. I think that it's really best to support the troops who refuse to wage a criminal and immoral war of aggression.

[HereSince1628]

2. Me too, with fava beans.

They've got me eathing myself from the inside out.

[EFerrari]

5. Me, too, and I hate fava beans. n/t

[paparush]

9. And a nice Chianti - fpthpftfpthfftt!

[booley]

3. This is like saying wife beating supports women

Or firing gay people for being gay supports gay people..

It's an oxymoron. But it's also a great slogan becuase it provides a position while simulatenously shutting down any contradictory position.

Yeah, Liberals could spend days explaining all the things wrong (factually and morally) with the "Support the Troops" mantra.. how it's used to demean and hurt the troops, it's dishonest, it demonizes, ect ect..

But that's the problem, isn't it? We would spend days explaining it and meanwhile the cons have this handy dandy little slogan that doesnt' require them to think. While we expend lots of energy , the cons (in both parties it seems now) can save thiers by not worrying if thier position is right or not.

I don't want to be a cynic and say that outright that any attempt to be do the right thing is going to hurt us. But we might need to think of alternative strategies (and no, I am not saying I am smart enough to know what those strategies are right now)

[Zodiak]

7. How about knocking their teeth through the back of their heads

with a balled fist?

Do you think that might get the Republicans off of the talking point bullshit?

Sock on in the mouth when they spout their crap and you will see very few of them trying that verbal bullying shit again.

Sorry....this is a bad day, and I am raging mad at these murderers in our midst.

[warren pease]

14. Yeah, explaining an "unapproved" position requires some time...

...while orthodoxy will generally fit on a bumper sticker. The GOP realized a long time ago that if it won't fit on a t-shirt, it won't fit between our ignorant, uneducated little ears either. So they learned to keep it short and simple and, since GOP positions are generally in perfect sync with those of corporate TV "news" executives, they're always allowed to mouth these kindergarten platitudes as unchallenged truths.

Opposing points of view, however, require explanation precisely because they're NOT unchallenged truths. And that's where the phony "marketplace of ideas" we think we live in breaks down.

For example, some AEI "expert" comes on PBS News Hour and says that the entire history of US intervention around the world has been motivated by the high moral purpose that has characterized US foreign policy for the past 220 or so years and always seeks to elevate undermine some despot and improve the lives of the common people. That kind of crap goes unchallenged because that's the version of the American creation myth we've all learned in school and it serves to boost our national pride and suppress an alternative history that's very much at odds with the myth.

So somebody else gets on the News Hour from some left-of-center think tank -- one of the two or three still eking out a marginal existence in the D.C. ghetto, while the wingnuts are rolling in money and spin their fables from walnut paneled offices down the street from the Capitol. And she has the gall to point out that the US has intervened at least 13 times post WW II in Latin America alone -- mostly CIA, but some direct military action as well -- and each time the intervention has been motivated by the need to protect US corporate interests against some nationalist movement that seeks to elevate the common people by redistributing the land and, horror of horrors, nationalize some industries too important to be left to the profit instincts of the usual corporate weasels. Well, Washington goes fucking nuts when that kind of talk emerges from the Third World and either props up the existing brutal right-wing dictatorship the people are rebelling against, or finds some out-of-work wingnut generals who can be counted upon to round up and murder the nationalist leaders, dismantle the movement they represent, and return control of the country to its rightful owners in US corporate boardrooms.

Well... You can imagine the scene. Viewers will write scathing letters; Congress will again threaten to cut PBS' funding; Lehrer himself will probably apologize to his loyal viewers; the wingnuts will scream liberal media bias; and so on into predictable la la land.

Such are the consequences of speaking the truth when that truth runs directly counter to prevailing American mythology. Which is a very long, roundabout way of addressing the issue of why "support our troops" has become an unquestioned, morally correct position for members of either party, and why my OP required about 1600 words to make an intelligible case for my contrarian position.


wp

[Bluerthanblue]

4. 'supporting firefighters' doesn't mean going around setting fire to

other peoples houses.

no flames from me Warren- Not wanting soldiers to die, doesn't mean continuing to fund our military presence in Iraq-

[Critters2]

10. Good point!!! nt

[porphyrian]

6. Support our Constitution!

You won't hear the bastards saying that.

[acmavm]

8. The 'support the troops' line is ALL THEY GOT to keep

everybody in line.

And from what I've read and seen about Falluja, the attack and rape and murder of that 14-year old and her family, and numerous other war crimes, I'm getting sort of sick of the troops myself. And I fully agree with everything you said about their ancient history. What would ever make a nation as arrogant as ours is to make the majority of the people think that we should be allowed to do whatever we want to this world and the people in it.

I agree with every last word you said.

[arikara]

11. You said it well

and I agree with you wholeheartedly. No flames from me but I will give you a :hug:

[endarkenment]

12. As SportDaTroops has become Fundawar I agree.

This mindless nationalist idiocy has become the central argument, even here on DU, for why we have to continue killing large numbers of Iraqis in an illegal and immoral war and occupation. I have had enough.

[Straight Shooter]

13. The bushbots wouldn't have gotten far if their slogan were "Support The Military."

It just doesn't have quite the same sentimental oomph, you know what I mean?

I've got to tell you, I've spent most of my life in a mental fog regarding the U.S. as the world's biggest bully, and that's the hardest part to convince people of, even if you stand there and name the list of all our aggressions, covert and overt, against other countries.

No big surprise that September 11, 2001, shares an anniversary with September 11, 1973, when Pinochet was installed and Allende was murdered, with the complicity of our CIA because our government feared Chile following the same path as Cuba.

Pinochet after the coup. Take a look at this little fascist we supported.


I have great respect for those who are willing to wear a uniform and protect their brethren, if that be their motivation. The gung-ho warriors who revel in the so-called glory of war, frankly scare me. One of the greatest problems with the military is the demand of total subservience, that they must always obey orders even if it goes against their conscience. That rule was deliberately installed, so that we would have this heartless machine to do the bidding of its owner, our government.

Sorry for my rambling. You've written an excellent post. You should turn it into a book, and include drawn-out examples to support your position. People need to understand the consequences of the military might of the U.S. coupled with paranoid shortsightedness. The problem is not the troops; the problem is those in charge of the troops.