Now that you are all mushy
The SisB/LostWarriorPoet exchange wasn't over for me. There are commenters. One asks a question I had to think about for a while. Before reading that comment my position was easy and unchanged.If you don't support the mission you don't fully support the troops and maybe you shouldn't. I didn't support invading Iraq as the next step in the war against Islamo-fascism. At the time it seemed to me that we should assist the Iranians in overthrowing their despicable government next. With a free (or at least closer to free) and stable Iran in the Middle East all sorts of good things become a lot easier and the cost to us to achieve that would seem to be much smaller. All of that said, once the President decided with the lawful, almost unanimous support of the US Senate and resounding support of the House to lawfully invade a country that had been openly and daily violating their surrender agreements with us.... I support the mission and the troops sent to fight for it.
All this drivel about "Bush lied" and "no WMD, no right for war", etc., etc. is just drivel to me. Two presidents ago Saddam illegally invaded his neighbor. We, along with our allies, kicked his aching butt back over his own border. We probably should have kept going then but the commanders and foreign policy wanks at the time advised the President that if Saddam agreed to certain things it would be better not to continue the war into Baghdad. Saddam agreed and our soldiers came home triumphant. Saddam then almost immediately set out to violate those terms. That is the ONLY reason we needed to legally invade. We had the right to do it initially and we retained the right to do it if he violated the terms of the agreements. Nobody but nobody claims that he didn't violate those terms repeatedly and continuously.
So where does that leave us. One can argue that invading Iraq wasn't the smartest thing to do but one cannot, IMO, argue that doing so as the President did, with the support of Congress, was illegal under US or International Law (if there is such a thing generally). One cannot argue that deposing a terrorist supporting, mass murdering, warmongering, oppressive thug and trying to build a democracy of sorts is immoral. So our troops are engaged in a legal and moral mission. So long as that is true they and their mission have my complete support.
Simple.
Now to the comment that made me step back.
Reasic said...Leave aside the specific examples. If I thought the troops were, in fact, sent to engage (and I use that phrasing intentionally) in what I truly believed was an immoral war what would I do? I start by assuming that the Congress gave their support to it. They were dumb enough to give us McCain-Feingold and SOX recently so I can believe it would be possible under the right circumstances to get them to vote for an immoral war if there was enough pork spending in the bill.
Sis B,
I respect your decision, however, I think bt brings up a good point. If the mission and the troops are always tied together, in terms of showing support, is there never a mission that is unworthy of support? If that were true, our President could technically invade Mexico and Canada, nuke Cuba, and we'd be left to support it, lest we do not show support to the troops. I think the two must be separate.
...
Now what does your humble blogmaster do? I don't support the troops until they are home. I fight to replace the morons who voted for the immoral war with people possessing enough stones to cut off the funding immediately. I fight to replace the President with someone who will bring the troops home. I pray that as many of our troops as possible will return home safe and unharmed but I don't support their mission. And once we get the troops out of that immoral war I support them with all of my heart and means.
I had to think about this one for quite some time. How can I support the troops if they are engaged in an immoral war? I can't. I can support additional funding for the VA to care for the wounded. I can support additional funding to help their families while they are away in battle. I can love them and hope for their safe return but I cannot support them fully while they are engaged in an immoral war.
I don't think that has been true of any war the US has engaged in and I hope and pray that it never will be. There have been some wars that I thought were stupid and we shouldn't send our warriors. At the end of the day they were moral so I could support the troops in their mission even though I didn't think it was smart to send them in the first place. I would hate to think that I could not always completely support the brave souls who volunteer to fight and possibly die to protect my freedoms. I do, however, believe that scenarios could exist where I would have to refuse my support. I will fight hard to see that those scenarios don't become reality.
One final thought. Maybe it was stupid to invade Iraq. At this point I don't care. We did it. We broke it and now we have to fix it. The only analogy I see between Iraq and Vietnam is what will happen if we again listen to Kennedy and Kerry and quit. Millions of innocent people would die in the aftermath just like Vietnam. Pulling out and letting the chaos that would surely ensue rain down upon the innocent women and children of Iraq when our warriors are telling us they can fix it would be many things: bad foreign policy, unfair to our warriors, selfish, and yes, immoral.
God Bless our Troops.
posted by mailgeek @ 3:38 PM
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