Say What?
Swiped from Unfogged:
There are a couple of short YouTube clips here. Summary:
Obama says that the war has “wasted” over 3000 young American lives. Apologizes.
Soldiers says that they don’t like it when people say they “support the troops” but don’t support the war. Soldiers think that means their comrades died in vain.
Guess what? Those lives were wasted, and their comrades died in vain. The fact that it’s massively depressing and terrible to contemplate this fact can’t be allowed to mean that we’ll act as if it’s not a fact. One of the oft-noted and truly perverted things about war talk is that we let more soldiers die in vain so that we don’t have to admit that they’re dying in vain.
They way I see it, when you enlist you are giving your body to the military. Alongside the obvious risks to life and limb, you are trusting your superiors, your commanding officers, and the government you’ve sworn to protect, to make good decisions about where and how you are deployed.
I can understand how within the military, support for the current objective is necessary to ensure high morale; I can understand how high morale improves fighting condition and may make soldiers more effective; I can understand how more effective soldiers have better chances of survival. However, we should not take from this that support for the war is necessary for the safety of our troops, or that not supporting the war is not respectful of the 3125 soldiers who have lost their lives, or the 23,417+ wounded.
(Numbers as of February 3rd 2007, source)
In the second video, when the soldier says that he wishes “skeptics [would] come over and see what it’s like first hand, before criticizing”, I have to disagree. There is no worse place to gain an objective perspective on a war, than at the receiving end of an improvised explosive device.
I also disagree with their claim that it is not possible to support the troops but not the war. In fact I believe those two things are (currently) the same. When I say I support the troops, I mean that I want them to be used effectively and appropriately. When I say I don’t support the war, I mean that I don’t believe our force is being used effectively or appropriately. You know what the best thing you can so for a soldier is? Not need them to fight.