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Warriors and wusses
By Joel Stein
01/24/06 "Los
Angeles Times" -- -- I DON'T SUPPORT our troops.
This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if
you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on
his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is
unwilling to urinate on.
I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for
anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and
signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang
with you in Vegas.
And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were
for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading
Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up
on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the
Chinese are making money off of.
But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying
you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the
pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition.
It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to
avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but
to remember to throw a parade afterward.
Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them
overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who
sent them there — and who might one day want to send them
somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate
isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just
service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel
cake.
Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the
troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by
the cast of "Laguna Beach."
The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt
we feel for voting to send them to war and then making
absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer
shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.
I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our
dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.
After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to
blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our
representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And
certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely
understood.
But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is
that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible,
whether they're following orders or not. An army of people
making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army
of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of
people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack
Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.
I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our
country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting
in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up
ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.
But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much
know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico
and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool
of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get
lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other
times it's Vietnam.
And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just
hang out in Germany.
I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money,
did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for
his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone
remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up,
and I'm listed in the phone book.
I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they
did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating
people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All
I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they
need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate
return. But, please, no parades.
Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.
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