I’ve noticed something a little curious since March of
2003. Every time I talk to somebody for the first
time who does not support the war starts out by saying
“I support the troops, but . . .” Now is it just me,
or is it not implied by your antiwar stance that you
support the troops? If you did not support then you
would say something like ‘Who gives a shit about the
war? They can all just stay there and die for all I
care.’ I want the war to end because I don’t want any
more Americans or Iraqis to die, period. So why is it
that we all feel the need to say that we ’support the
troops?’ Have you ever stopped to think about what
you mean when you say that you support the troops?
I’m sure most of us mean that we don’t want them to
die. I know that’s what I mean when I say it. But
what else does it mean? Does it mean that you support
what they do? So you support the torture of innocent
Iraqi prisoners? Do you support the bombing of
civilian targets? Do you support the male troops who
routinely rape their female colleagues? (Some reports
say that as much many as one quarter of female
American troops have been raped or sexually abused by
fellow troops and commanding officers.) Do you
support the brainwashing of our troops? Do you support
the fact that many of the troops still believe that
they are fighting to spread freedom, or to avenge
9/11? During the recent congressional debates over
the war Republicans said over and over that we can’t
cut off funding to the troops because they will be
stuck without the tools they need to defend
themselves. Does anybody truly believe that if
funding for the war is cut off that all 170,000
troops, and 140,000 private contractors, will just be
left in Iraq to be killed? If you do believe that
then you’re a fucking troglodyte. Of course we won’t
leave them stranded in the desert. So this leads me
back to my original question; what do we mean when we
say ‘Support the troops?’ Do we mean that we support
sending over more weaponry so the troops can ‘defend’
themselves by killing ‘insurgents’ or ‘terrorists?’
How many of these people that we kill are actually
insurgents or terrorists? Every time I hear a report
about an American raid on a terrorist or insurgent
stronghold the Army reports that they killed or
captured 30, 40, or 50 terrorists. Meanwhile the
Iraqi authorities (the ones that the US put in place)
report massive civilian casualties in these raids
(which the Army just calls ‘collateral damage.’) I’m
not gonna bother with the obligatory caveat that I
know the troops are brainwashed, that they believe in
what their fighting for, and blah blah blah. Every
time we do this we dilute the debate. We implicitly
agree (although not intentionally) that the troops are
fighting for a just cause. If they weren’t fighting
for a just cause then why would we support them? The
troops are NOT fighting for a just cause. Many of us
will say that the troops are just doing their job,
which they are. But, I’m sure that the family and
friends of many German SS guards in WWII, even if they
opposed Hitler’s policies, said that their spouses,
friends, fathers, and husbands were just doing their
jobs, just following orders, and that everybody has to
support them through these troubled times. I’m sure
they were just doing their jobs. This is where we can
see just how insidious the ’support the troops’ mantra
is. It makes us loose focus of what is really at
stake in this war. What is really at stake in this
war is not just our national security, not just our
energy needs, but the moral heart of this country. We
are headed down a long and dark road, and if we don’t
turn back soon, if we don’t stop talking about war in
these childish terms (ie: support the troops,
collateral damage, we have to fight them there so we
don’t have to fight them here) we will be led into one
disastrous death fest after another. Do not let the
powers around you control the language you use. First
they will control the language, and soon after that
they will control your thought. When you control
language you control the debate, the nature of the
debate, and the framework within which it is
discussed. I do not like to simplify things, but in
this war NOBODY deserves to die. No Iraqi, no
American. EVERYBODY deserves to live, and EVERYBODY
deserves a chance at redemption.

Brian Lehrer