Do You Support the Troops?

While channel surfing for something worthwhile tonight, I keep catching glimpses of news specials (local and national) reporting the personal stories of troops in Iraq. As I type, NBC is airing Tom Brokaw's special on returning troops and their sugarcoated stories intended to make me sympathetic to the life of a soldier.

I don't know what's sparking this sudden interest in troops -- perhaps the holidays, perhaps all the hullabaloo about Dubya's recent refusal to pull out of Iraq -- but it makes me sick. Almost as sick as the phrase "I support the troops but not the war."

Uh, come again?

How come liberals don't have the balls to say, "Hell no, I don't support the war nor the troops because they make war"? Scared of being called unpatriotic? Scared of right-wing warmongers? Scared of social rejection?

Perhaps those who support soldiers while claiming to reject the war only mean to say they support the troops as human beings and are concerned with their welfare and safety. Fine. I understand that. But then why not say you care about the troops rather than you support them. Supporting means you're propping them up and it's implicit that you understand what they're doing in the Middle East and that you don't lay blame on them because they're just doing their jobs. Supporting them means you support their work and efforts. Well, their work and efforts allow wars to happen.

I think Donovan summed up the hypocrisy in saying one supports the troops but not the war in his 1965 song "Universal Soldier":

He's five foot two
And he's six feet four
He fights with missiles
And with spears
He's all of thirty one
And he's only seventeen
He's been a soldier
For a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu
An atheist, a Jain
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
And he knows he shouldn't kill
And he knows he always will
Kill you for me, my friend
And me for you

And he's fighting for Canada
He's fighting for France
He's fighting for the U.S.A.
And he's fighting for the Russians
And he's fighting for Japan
And he thinks we'll put
An end to war this way

And he's fighting for democracy
He's fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
Who's to live and who's to die
And he never sees the writing on the wall

But without him, how would Hitler
kill the people at Dachau,
Caesar would've stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war
And without him
All this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier
And he really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from here and there
And you and me
And brothers can't you see
This is not the way
We put the end to war


In addition to highlighting the ridiculousness of every soldier believing he or she is on the "right" ideological side of a battle, the lyrics emphasize that the troops themselves are wars. Mechanisms working in harmony make a machine -- in this case, the troops are the mechanisms and the war is the machine.

We put an end to wars by endlessly fighting them? Come on, you so-called peacemakers and pacifists, use your brains.

The cost alone should deflate support.