The whole "support the troops" concept reflects the worst in blind nationalism and is an indication that the propaganda has sunk in...not necessarily the propaganda of this war or this administration, but the propaganda of many wars and many administrations over decades and decades.
A few basics here:
1 You cannot be against the war and FOR the soldiers in it, anymore than you can be against the mafia and FOR the hitmen and drug mules. This war is illegal, and therefore those who actually pull the triggers and actually kill the people in a country we invaded are just as guilty as those aristocrats at the top who looked at their bid free contract potentials and started convincing the public that we needed to attack Iraq. They DO have minds of their own, and they chose to do the dirty work of a dirty administration.
2: Just following orders is no excuse. Look at Nuremberg.
3: They are not "defending our freedom". This concept of a "war on terror" is an overgeneralized, blanket confusion tactic that links Iraq with 9/11 and probably Iran too. They had nothing to do with 9/11..those guys were Saudi, but they are still our friends and are still collecting your gas money to this day. Iraq was NO threat to our freedom. As a matter of fact, terrorism is no threat to our freedom UNLESS we start restricting civil liberties to fight it at home such as warrantless wiretaps, domestic spy satellites, National Security Letters that land you in jail if you speak of them, torture..oh, wait. The only way to defend freedom is to do it like a true American....vote and protest and vote and protest and revolt if the first two don't work. The soldiers are NOT serving the country, they are serving the feudal lords and their pocket books.
4: Refrences to other wars designed to cannonize the current crop of soldiers, especially to ww2 are misleading. Different war, different government, different generation, different world. The two are unrelated. Honor those guys if you want, but piss in the faces of our current cowardly thugs.
5: Soldiering is a surrender of freedom, both literally and intellectually, to the ruling class of the state and cannot be respected in and of itself be it in peace or in war. Those who join are highly propagandized and of a lower intellect and class than those who influence policy and pull the strings of the political economic state. They are those promised meager jobs who are attracted by the possibility of obtaining rote technical skills in the hope of getting a lower middle class job at the end. They risk their life for it, and are usually screwed hard by the VA afterwards, and they usually discover that employers want university educated folks, not cholos who know how to repair radar and drive a humvee but cannot spell. Not only in America, not only in this century or millenium, but always always always have soldiers been used as cannon fodder by those born into wealth and power. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me...I feel sorry for but cannot support an entire class of fools who fly like moths into the flame and feed the fire.
6: Despite the heroism pap surrounding images of soldiers on your local news, most of them are hicks and do terrible things in war for amusement such as firing willy nilly into civilian areas, raping locals, burning villages, taking potshots at civilians..part of it is the militarization of their minds in boot camp, the euphemisation of what they do (killing a person becomes "taking out" etc), and part of it is the ugliness of basic human nature. It makes them feel superior to whomever they are invading to the extent that they can dehumanize them.
Fuck them.
A few basics here:
1 You cannot be against the war and FOR the soldiers in it, anymore than you can be against the mafia and FOR the hitmen and drug mules. This war is illegal, and therefore those who actually pull the triggers and actually kill the people in a country we invaded are just as guilty as those aristocrats at the top who looked at their bid free contract potentials and started convincing the public that we needed to attack Iraq. They DO have minds of their own, and they chose to do the dirty work of a dirty administration.
2: Just following orders is no excuse. Look at Nuremberg.
3: They are not "defending our freedom". This concept of a "war on terror" is an overgeneralized, blanket confusion tactic that links Iraq with 9/11 and probably Iran too. They had nothing to do with 9/11..those guys were Saudi, but they are still our friends and are still collecting your gas money to this day. Iraq was NO threat to our freedom. As a matter of fact, terrorism is no threat to our freedom UNLESS we start restricting civil liberties to fight it at home such as warrantless wiretaps, domestic spy satellites, National Security Letters that land you in jail if you speak of them, torture..oh, wait. The only way to defend freedom is to do it like a true American....vote and protest and vote and protest and revolt if the first two don't work. The soldiers are NOT serving the country, they are serving the feudal lords and their pocket books.
4: Refrences to other wars designed to cannonize the current crop of soldiers, especially to ww2 are misleading. Different war, different government, different generation, different world. The two are unrelated. Honor those guys if you want, but piss in the faces of our current cowardly thugs.
5: Soldiering is a surrender of freedom, both literally and intellectually, to the ruling class of the state and cannot be respected in and of itself be it in peace or in war. Those who join are highly propagandized and of a lower intellect and class than those who influence policy and pull the strings of the political economic state. They are those promised meager jobs who are attracted by the possibility of obtaining rote technical skills in the hope of getting a lower middle class job at the end. They risk their life for it, and are usually screwed hard by the VA afterwards, and they usually discover that employers want university educated folks, not cholos who know how to repair radar and drive a humvee but cannot spell. Not only in America, not only in this century or millenium, but always always always have soldiers been used as cannon fodder by those born into wealth and power. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me...I feel sorry for but cannot support an entire class of fools who fly like moths into the flame and feed the fire.
6: Despite the heroism pap surrounding images of soldiers on your local news, most of them are hicks and do terrible things in war for amusement such as firing willy nilly into civilian areas, raping locals, burning villages, taking potshots at civilians..part of it is the militarization of their minds in boot camp, the euphemisation of what they do (killing a person becomes "taking out" etc), and part of it is the ugliness of basic human nature. It makes them feel superior to whomever they are invading to the extent that they can dehumanize them.
Fuck them.
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