He opnely doesn't support the troops

[hifigator]

www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/09/18/supporting_our_troops/



He has an interesting take. On the surface, it might appear that he is being reasonable, but as I alalyze the article further, I think it is nothing but more politicizing under a guise of legitimate "concern."

Thoughts?

[strummer8526]

I refuse to read a threat with "openly" misspelled in the title. Let's all move along. Nothing to see here.

[hifigator]

Sept 23, 2008 13:56:58 GMT -5 strummer8526 said:

I refuse to read a threat with "openly" misspelled in the title. Let's all move along. Nothing to see here.

Oops. Hopefully we all know that was a typo, not a spelling error.

[hoyatables]

Thanks. I look forward to more of your "alalysis."

[hifigator]

OK, enough avoiding the issue. In fairness to me, I don't have my right contact lens in today. It was bothering me, so I took it out. I can see fine at a distance, but it's very blurry up close. So I would expect a few more keyboard errors. All that aside, what is your take on his somewhat unusual position?

[The Stig]

I'll be honest, my first emotion when somebody says they're in the military is sympathy. I genuinely feel sorry for them. They've become the playthings of politicians (from both parties) who are more interested in increasing their power in Washington than in making sure our soldiers' service is worthwhile. They don't get to control the causes they fight and sometimes die for.

Let's be honest, our troops in Iraq have been put into a hellish situation. Their daily mission is to walk into potentially hostile territory on foot and wait for somebody to shoot at them. They don't know who is friend and who is foe, they don't know where the enemy is, and they don't know when they're going to get shot at. So in that context, it's not surprising that some of them (an extreme minority) go overboard and commit crimes and atrocities.

We shouldn't pretend that the crimes and atrocities don't exist, but we also shouldn't project the crimes of a very few upon all American troops. The vast majority of American troops do their duties and genuinely try to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. I think we can praise the good deeds of the many while separating and condemning the few who commit crimes. You can't paint with a wide brush and say that "all American troops are heroes" or "all American troops are criminals" because neither is true.

I think it's also worth pointing out that our military is doing something that it wasn't designed to do. Our military was designed to fight other militaries, not to act as a police force. That's been the source of a lot of problems. Somebody near the top of the chain of command just assumed that our military could do everything, from fighting enemies to rebuilding a country. That's not the way things are, and as a result our soldiers aren't getting the support they need in a lot of cases. I was just talking with a returning soldier (I can't remember if it was Iraq or Afghanistan, but the same problems exist in both) who said that they would walk into a town and, with the best intentions, ask the local leader what he needed to have done. They would expect him to say something like "clear bad guys out of those hills over there," since the soldiers are more than capable of solving that problem. But instead, the leader would ask them to get his sewer system running, and our soldiers would be helpless, since none of them knows how to fix a sewer system, and the US hasn't sent anybody over who can do that job. They result is that they wouldn't be able to help the local leader, and the local leader would see them as useless. So despite our soldiers trying to increase cooperation with the locals, they would end up with bad feelings on both sides.

So all and all, I do feel sorry for our troops. They're in an awful situation through no fault of their own.

[Bando]

Steve Almond has totally lost my vote for president.

Robble, robble, robble.

[HoyaSinceBirth]

I think you had it right the first time hifi. I think that was reasonable.

[strummer8526]

I think politicizing is when one party attempts to claim ownership of "patriotism" and "military support." One party attempts to exploit images of Walter Reed (unsuccessfully, but regardless...). The other actually admits that in order to continue paying for military health care, we may have to bump up taxes a bit.

This article is not politicizing at all. It's accurately capturing the conflicted feeling that many people have about "supporting the troops," b/c thanks to this administration, supporting the troops has become synonymous with supporting a lot of things that maybe we don't all agree with.

[hifigator]

strummer, fair enough. And even though you and I don't agree on the issue, your viewpoint is a reasonable one. Stig, I think you make great points. In talking to a couple of friends that have returned, they make a couple of the same points. You never know who is an enemy. In fairness, at first most Iraqis were hesitant to trust us as well. The good news is that that is changing daily. I have been told that the difference between being over there just three years ago compared to now is like night and day. That much is good thing that we can all agree on, I hope.