http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/com ... t-opinions

Joel Stein:
Warriors and wusses

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.

Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach."

The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.

I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.

After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.

I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.

I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.

Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

I'm sure this article will generate some controversy, but I think there are some strong points that he made here, especially when you consider the US has a volunteer army.

Also, I thought that the associated poll was quite funny at the end:

Your Opinion
Can you oppose the war in Iraq and still support U.S. troops?

Yes, the U.S. has a volunteer army, but they were not the decision-makers in going to war.

No, if you believe the war is wrong then all participants involved share the blame.

I don't know. Why did you hire Joel Stein again?

I agree with the guys arguements. I do agree with the war, and support the troops because of that, but if I completely disagreed with everything about a specific war, I would have difficulty supporting the actions of those fighting in it. I guess it is really dependant on how you define "supporting."

I define "support" as not wanting any more of them to die.

And Joel Stein is an idiot. The guy is a regular on the E! channel, for God's sake.

Yeah well, that's just, ya know, like, your opinion, man.

That is a pretty broad usage of the term "support" though. I don't want Barry Bonds to die, but I would love to see him lose a limb or develop a terrible drug addiction. I think support would be a bit more then just caring about their lives. Most people do not acutally support the troops, they just hope they return safely. They are different things IMO.

Troops are generally in the 18-24 age range, which is very young. I think he's asking a little much of them to be making moral decisions on the battlefield. Shit, I'm 27 and I'd certainly shit my pants if I saw a bunch of insurgents shooting at me. The administration decided to go to war, and these troops were forced to go.

I wonder if this author would've written this if he'd spent just one day in their shoes. I don't support this war at all, but I have no problem saying that I support the troops. I can't even imagine what it's like to be thrown into a war zone on the other side of the world, and be able to function amid all kinds of chaos.






I'll make it more broad and say support means I don't want anything bad to happen to them at all.

Blame the President, VP, administration, whatever. I'd even put part of the blame on the American public (there was at one point majority support for all this). Not the troops though. And by troops, I don't mean generals and the very high ups. I mean the children and young adults we've sent to fight. We've asked enough from them and their families. This guy is a complete asshole for asking more from them.

Regardless of the content of the article, its written in an "US Weekly" style of journalism that basically renders it pointless. To me the article itself is basically a waste of ink.

Is this guy the slightest bit aware of what would happen if someone adopted his view of morality in the middle of a gun fight? Sorry about not laying down the cover fire guys... oh, and enjoy getting carried home in a coffin. It's not like an executioner saying "I can't kill, it's wrong". They don't fight, they are responsible for the deaths of their friends.

Almost everyone I know in the military joined for educational reasons, money for college or training for a career. They know the risk they were taking, but they had no other choice.

We should support them (i have helped pack care packages for Iraq war soliders 3x @ work) before, during, and after thier tours with our thoughts, prayers, and tax dollars. They will need our help more than ever when they return and calling people who have to obey orders immoral killers isn't going to help them get back to a normal life. Everyone involved in this war has lost something (including our nation as a whole), the ground soldiers more than most. We owe it to them to help them get back thier lives and not shower them with useless criticism.

If I pay taxes, I support the troops. And I want them to come home. And I hope the president and everyone in his cabinet loses a limb.

Does this guy really think the Chinese came up with the idea to make these "Support the Troops" things?

Support is a pretty broad term. I don't support the war in which they're fighting (in the case of Iraq, anyway), but I don't want them to suffer because of the decisions of thier superiors. They're doing their job.

I heard it was an Arab who runs a gas station where they're sold, and then he gives the money to the Iraqi insurgency.

I was talking to a very anti-war friend of mine who said that supporting the troops and being anti-war were impossible. So I said "fine, don't support the troops. Support the human beings." He thought that was a good compromise.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Y'see, when you boil it down, Stein's saying that if you support the troops, then you're not supporting the troops; however, if you don't support the troops then you are, in fact supporting the troops. So Stein does, in fact, support the troops. Except he doesn't. I'se like, Wha?

*That Joel Stein the citizen might actually believe what Joel Stein the comedian says is not relevant. It was Stein the comedian who was clearly the "I" in the op-ed.

That's kind of dodgy too though. When I'm "Supporting the Troops", it's just a patriotic abstraction for me, and most other Americans, whether they carry magnets on their bumpers or not. If I have to think about them as "human beings", then I'm forced to remember that some of them are fucking dickheads and that I really don't support them, and might actually hope that they catch some lead.

It's much easier to just "Support The Troops" and not think about it further.