Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
--Stephen Crane, "War Is Kind"
Over and over again, I hear the same brazen, abominable lie, and I don’t mean "lie" casually as in denoting mere misleading or stretching the truth. I mean lie, as in: one knows that something is not true, yet one says it anyway to further his or her own self-interests, at the great harm of those whose freedom is partly or fully dissolved by the liar’s maniacal pursuit of those self-interests.
I can’t speak for anyone else. I won’t speak for those who will say I’m overreacting. But it eats away at me. It overwhelms me with the anger of those who get proverbial shit thrown in their face and all they can hear is laughter. Again and again, I am filled with horrified bewilderment and wretched disbelief that those who would call themselves rational can say without trepidation that calling for our troops to come home means undercutting the troops.
Tell that to a mother, you bald-faced liars. Tell that to a mother whose son or daughter is in Iraq, who longs for them to come home, who cries every night that they may be safe. The mother who bore them. The mother who watched with pride or concern their every minute progression into young adulthood. The mother who lives first for her child(ren) and only secondarily for herself. The mother who is calling every second for her child to come home from that cauldron of scalding violence. Is she undercutting her own child?
Justify it to a father, a brother, or sister of an American soldier in Iraq. Tell them that the only way to support their loved one is to keep them in the path of the carnage of war. Are they longing for their loved one to return? Then tell them their longing is weakening their loved one and emboldening the enemy. Tell it to their husband or wife, girlfriend or boyfriend, too. Tell them it is un-American to want to hug their loved one, and look them in the eyes again. I dare you, cowards. I dare you to rise from that puddle of Narcissistic filth in which you're lounging in Washington and tell troops' family members that they are undercutting their loved ones.
The absurdity of it should be plain to see by now. It should have been plain to see the first time it was uttered. "Supporting Our Troops Is Keeping Them In Grave Danger." Why wasn’t this displayed throughout the bleak walls and halls of Oceania? Maybe it was too perverse for even Orwell to stomach.
I can think of 3,140 troops that the warmongers "supported." But they should be lucky. At least they weren’t "undercut." Their bodies may have been torn apart by shrapnel, their vital organs shredded by bullets, but they weren’t "undercut" because they were kept in Iraq and told to continue fighting.
I can think of 23,417 troops that the warmongers "supported." "Supported" them right into military hospitals, into amputation or paralysis, into disfiguration or depression. But they should be thankful. They may have had a limb cut off, but they weren’t "undercut." They may have had facial features mangled, but they weren’t "undercut" because they were kept in Iraq and told to continue fighting.
I can’t speak for what kind of world anyone else wants to live in. I won’t speak for those that want to live in a world of monstrous lies. But I want to live in a world where the realities of war are somberly acknowledged, not prepackaged in a relentless parade of bullshit. A parade led by that most inhuman, most ungodly, most joy-crushing, foul-smelling, soul-destroying lie: "Supporting our troops is keeping them in grave danger."
I want to live in a world where words have meanings, where you can’t just say whatever you want and expect your favorite response. You can’t say, "A is not-A," "A unicorn has two horns," and "Red is blue" and expect it to mean anything rational. You can’t say, "Calling for our troops to come home is undercutting them," and expect it to mean something rational.
You can, and should, call for troops to have the best armor. This is rational even if (no, especially if) you don’t support the war in the first place. One of the obvious reasons why people don’t support war in the first place is that it leads to many premature deaths and serious injuries, so opponents of the war feel that, if the war happens anyway, we should at least try to protect to the fullest extent those put in grave danger for whatever the war’s supposed purposes are. I would like to believe that everyone, war supporters and opponents, believe in equipping our troops with the best armor, but the fact is that this hasn’t happened.
You can say, "I support the idea to keep the troops fighting in a dangerous war zone and hope that they will be safe." There is no doubt that many war supporters truly want our troops to be safe, but as a result of their position they must face the inevitable logic that placing the troops in such a life-threatening context in the first place bars them from ultimately supporting them. When it gets down to it, they might argue that they support the troops within that context, but the meaning of that argument is as watered down as the argument of a remorseful Roman soldier who released a Christian to the lions yet hoped he would be safe.
If you support our troops’ continued fighting in Iraq, you do so despite them, not in aid of them. Not for their own good. To be consistent, you must feel that the cause of the Iraq War is great enough to justify withdrawing your support of them, because keeping someone from harm is the best way to support them, and placing them in harm’s way is the best way of not supporting them.
This is why we rightfully say that troops who are going into battle are making a sacrifice. Troops make sacrifices in any war, but if the purpose of the war is to keep us safe, they are sacrificing their safety for the sake of ours. A war is not some benevolent token of support from the civilians to the soldiers, as some in Congress would have us believe. Rather, it is an order to our soldiers to support us, to protect us from harm against threats to our security. That's why we appreciate them so much. That's why we have celebrations when they come home and holidays to honor veterans. So for anyone to assume a self-righteous air of "support" for them while putting them in grave danger, and at the same time lie that calling for our troops to come home safely is "undercutting" them, is truly an egregious offense.
See how it works? "Support" actually has a meaning. Until recently, when someone uttered the sound that corresponds to the written word "support," most of the people who heard it associated it with ideas: "give aid to," "be there for," "help keep safe." They surely didn’t associate it with "send into grave danger," "increase risk of being killed or wounded," or "keep from coming home."
I will conclude with the remarks of Senator Russ Feingold last Friday, opposing escalation, since he says it more eloquently and valiantly than I can.
It’s pretty clear which course of action I support. I think it’s the course of action that the American people called for in the November elections. It’s the course of action that our national security needs, so we don’t continue to neglect global threats and challenges while we focus so much of our resources and our efforts on Iraq. It’s the course of action that will support, that will actually support, our brave troops and their families.
Mr. President, We must end our involvement in this tragic and misguided war. The President will not do so. Therefore, Congress must act.
[snip]
...Congress must use its power. It must use its power of the purse to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq. Mr. President, let’s not be intimidated by the intentionally misleading rhetoric of the White House and its allies when they try to prevent any discussion of any real action by Congress to end the war. This isn’t about "cutting off funds for troops." It’s about cutting off funds for the war. Every member of Congress agrees that we must continue to support our troops and give them the resources and support they need. By setting a date after which funding for the war will be terminated -- as I have proposed -- Congress can safely bring our troops out of harm's way. That’s how you get ‘em out of harm’s way. By getting them out of there.
[snip]
The argument that cutting of funding for a flawed policy would hurt the troops, and that continuing to put U.S. troops in harm’s way supports the troops, makes no sense. By ending funding for the war, we can bring our troops safely out of Iraq.
[snip]
...let’s have this debate. And let’s do it openly and honestly. Let’s not pretend anyone wants to deny our troops the equipment and resources they need. Let’s not suggest that opposing the President’s strategy is unpatriotic, and that it would give aid and comfort to the enemy, that it would somehow weaken the resolve of our troops.
Those claims are outrageous, they are offensive, and they are untrue. Do my colleagues believe that the American people gave aid and comfort to the enemy when they rejected the President’s Iraq policy in November? Are the overwhelming majority of our constituents who oppose this war trying to undermine the troops? Of course not, Mr. President. So how could anyone suggest that Congress actually acting on the will of the American people undermines the troops or emboldens the enemy? Our troops are undermined by a policy that places them in harm’s way unnecessarily. And our enemy – our true enemy, al Qaeda and its allies – is emboldened by a U.S. strategy that neglects global challenges and instead just focuses on a single country. It is unfortunate that those who wish to defend this strategy would resort to these kinds of charges.
Let’s do the job of the Senate and have full, open debate and votes on fixing our Iraq policy. Let’s not pretend such a debate would harm our national security. And let’s not tell ourselves that it’s up to just the President to fix the horrible situation that his failed policies have created. It’s our responsibility to act, too. Congress made the tragic mistake of authorizing this war over four years ago and now Congress now Congress also has the job of bringing it to a close so that we can refocus on the terrorist and other global threats that have been neglected way too much over the past four years.
Support Our Troops = Bring Them Home Now