The Duluth News Tribune, 2010-07-18, had two somewhat opposing views about "Support the Troops".
David McGrath wrote "Empty gestures often equal hollow support". He is concerned that "Support our troops" is sending a contradictory message to young people "between embracing soldiers and embracing wars."
The Duluth News Tribune disagrees in "Support the troops? Absolutely". Children can tell the difference between "paying tribute to military members… isn't the same as endorsing war." But, the writer then qualifies that with "as long as parents and other adults take the time to explain."
Unfortunately, too many adults aren't making the distinction, or at least aren't making it clear, in their own behavior. When they use phrases such as "defending our freedom" and "serving our country" to describe military members, they shut off any discussion of how our freedom is being defended and what service is really being done for our country. And this is the discussion that a democracy really needs.
We too often, as citizens and as writers, do not strongly question our leaders' motivations in waging war. We take without qualification their definition of "the enemy" and "protecting our country". One of the greatest smoke screens was to rename the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Have any of the wars waged since World War II really been against an enemy that had any serious chance of invading the United States? Or have these wars been grand geopolitical games played by "leaders" who really didn't know much about the countries and the people involved?
Coincidently, before I read these articles I had borrowed from the library "The Limits of Power, The End of American Exceptionalism" by Andrew J. Bacevich. I had only gotten through the first chapter Saturday night, but almost every page had insightful and powerful statements about the American follies and hubris in its recent wars. After a description of Reinhold Niebuhr's prescience about the current world situation, Bacevich writes, "Realism in this sense implies an obligation to see the world as it actually is, not as we might like it to be. The enemy of realism is hubris, which in Niebuhr's day, and in our own, finds expression in an outsized confidence in the efficacy of American power as an instrument to reshape the global order." (p. 7)
Before you jump to the conclusion that this is another "liberal rant", the jacket describes Bacevich as a "conservative historian and former military officer". See Wikipedia for more details. He also writes for The American Conservative, his latest article being "Will Iraq be forgotten as well?"
I am with McGrath that we should provide veterans with "a good job…, tuition for college, financial credit…, and the very best health care for veterans."
