'Supporting the Troops' Redux

Following up on Mahmood's alternate-reality scenario....

Most of the Iraq war debate is dishonest, but the arguments over who's "supporting the troops" is the most fundamentally mendacious feature of our public discourse. Let's break this down.

In 2002, most of Congress -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- vote for the war resolution that gives the president the power to invade Iraq if he sees fit. This essentially makes going to war in Iraq legal. The instrument with which Congress's and President Bush's new policy -- invading Iraq -- is to be implemented is the U.S. military, a volunteer organization under the Department of Defense.

Today, Republicans routinely demonize Democrats who advocate for any sort of pullout (timed or otherwise) as not "supporting the troops." Democrats, on the other hand -- and probably as a result of this knee-jerk reaction by pandering neoconservatives -- declare their support for America's troops as often as possible. But the idea of supporting the troops is meaningless. The armed forces consist of people who are there voluntarily, and they take orders from those who might send them to war -- the commander-in-chief and his enablers in Congress who make his actions legal.

Troops are needed for war, regardless of whether the mission is noble or selfish, inevitable or by choice. We now have liberal politicians who are using their "support of the troops" as a rationale for pulling them out of Iraq. The logic is hilariously circular: I want to give the president the authority to send our troops to war, so I vote for the resolution. Now I believe (or say I always believed) that this war is wrong, therefore I will point to the instrument of the policy I voted for and use that as a reason for reversing that policy.

I find this "supporting the troops" rhetoric to be hypocritical not only because it's meaningless (some troops will have to die in some wars, whether justified or not; even opponents of the war wouldn't deny troops armor, and in fact that's never in history been a point of contention until this war), but because in civilian life, most Democrats don't like the kind of people who voluntarily join the army anyway.

They're disproportionately conservative, patriotic, and strongly support aggressive defense measures. They're disproportionately white and rural ("hicks," a city person might put it). They're relatively uneducated.

Pro-war Republicans are just as illogical, but their fallacy is the sunk cost: I voted for this war, and since I support the troops that are carrying out this war I advocated for (whatever that means), and since we've put so much effort and sacrificed so many lives so far, I believe they should finish the job.

So how should principled opponents of the war advance the debate? They should go back to the original antiwar arguments before the invasion -- none of which invoked "our troops," because any serious, necessary war must be waged regardless of casualties. The best arguments against the war in the first place revolved around Iraqi casualties, destabilizing the region, and inadvertently boosting terror networks around the world. All three fears have been borne out, with some estimates of Iraqi casualties topping 600,000 (which makes the 3,000+ American deaths seem paltry by comparison).

True opponents of the war would be more concerned with the death and destruction being wrought in our name, rather than the damage being done to our armed forces. I have two friends who are either in Iraq or on the way there, and I'm not diminishing their contributions or the casualties of American soldiers. I am saying that an honest debate would center on the effects of the war on Iraq and the war on terror and not the troops who were sent to implement the war strategy. Anything else is posturing.

Of course I "support the troops" -- I can go to the supermarket and buy a yellow ribbon! Give me a break.