Supporting the Troops

Rowhouse Logic:

A whole new generation of veterans is coming home from Iraq. They joined the military for a multitude of reasons: love for their country, their desire to serve, to pay for college, to escape poverty, September 11th, to improve themselves, to house and cloth their families, and on and on.

They are coming home from a brutal war, having witnessed and taken part in countless days of destruction and horror. They are coming home from a war whose justification is in question (unquestionably wrong if you ask me). That can only make the horror of war all the more dreadful.

They went because we sent them, and they did what they were trained to do. How will they be treated? Will their physical and psychological wounds be treated properly and paid for in full, or will they be forgotten – dismissed as too inconvenient and expensive? Can we make this a real issue and actually do right by these men and women we sent to fight and die in our unjust war? Can we get it right? Just this once? Please?

- And yeah – I know a lot more are going.

Comments

[eRobin]

This is such a difficult issue for me. On the one hand, the people returning from war deserve everything you talked about (which they won't get - you can be sure of that. Most of them won't even want to ask for it.). The problem for me is that the soldiers are used by the powers that be as a cudgel against anti-war people. Any time we raise our voices - even with the proviso that we support the people who fought - the soldiers and the public are told that we hate them. And a lot of them want to believe that. So the conversation goes nowhere - or worse. That's what happened aroud the Kevin Sites' video and, to a smaller degree, the website Fallujah in Pictures. Also at Abu Ghraib - except that was a little different because BushCo stepped right in to demonize the individual soldier, which was convenient for his purposes. Still, the right wing noise machine was on task shouting down anyone on the left with "You hate the troops! They didn't nothing wrong!"

So while I understand that soldiers are pawns of the people who start bad wars, the debate on the ground doesn't allow us to move past that fact.

[denny]

if you ask me the left has moved too far to the center in general. this is hurting. i'll add that i think the fighting spirit is gone. it showed its face a wee bit during the build-up to the elections and is there now in the folks who refuse to accept the stolen elections. but there is a big difference between the rank and file and the leadership. there is also a difference between the full time activists and those that do little but vote once every 4 years. i'm talking about the spirit of haymarket. i'm talking about the spirit of the i.w.w. that is the fight we need, that is the spirit we need.

the war is wrong. the war was based on lies. we've been made a nation of war criminals. war criminals. we need to go on the attack and stop being defensive. the anti-war movement did not lie to create a war. many of us were doubtful long before the war... many millions protested... and yet, anyone who pays taxes, anti-war or not, pays into the war effort.

i don't care if i'm demonized. fuck that. i'm not opposed to the mostly working class soldiers who are pawns in the continuing game of the rich. my problem is with the capitalist system that keeps them poor and limits their options. my problem is with unjust wars. my problem is with this war and war crimes. my problem is with the consistent pattern of lies and the spinning of reality. my problem is with the u.s. foreign policy of the past 50 years... in short, my problem is with the SYSTEM, the structures that set this situation up.

the fact is we all have choices. not all the choices are the same, choices dependo on wealth as well as awareness of context which limits/expands options. my choice is to do the best that i can to create my own noise machine and to work with others in my community to build and refine it. there are millions of people in this country that should be helping with community efforts that include such building a voice and a way to magnify it. if liberals go back to sleep (much less likely since bush was elected) then they deserve the country they create with their apapthy. that is where we are at now.

it's not just about voting or getting out the vote. it's not just about weblogs (i have one too). it is about building a community of resistance on the street in our neighborhoods, towns, and cities.