Reading a Joel Stein article in Time magazine led me to this piece he wrote which got quite a lot of attention and controversy early last year. It’s about what a cop-out it is to be anti-war but to say you “support the troops.”
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.
It’s written from an American perspective and a bit awkward because he’s writing about something which is deadly serious while being known mainly as a humourist. (Truth be told, I don’t think a lot of the humour in the piece works and in fact, weakens it significantly.)
But I’m glad to find somebody who’s enough of a “hero” to say this. (Hero, by the way is another extremely overused phrase in our society which, like “support the troops” is a major cop-out position. To me, the people who died in the World Trade Centre attacks were not heroes and I would argue that 99% of the firemen and policemen who died weren’t either. They were brave. They were dedicated. They were selfless. But they weren’t heroes.)
Anyhow, if you’re against the war in either Iraq or Afgahnistan, the only way the words “support the troops” should be part of your vocabulary is if you say “I support bringing the troops home.”
(Now, where’d I put that “rant” tag?)
Here’s the full article:
Warriors and wusses – Los Angeles Times
[Edit: 2013-08/26 – here’s another article I came across making similar points about the many problems with “Support The Troops”.]
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