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3 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Dying
in vain or for George W's
daddy? By Julian Delasantellis
troops embarked to Afghanistan to
battle the Taliban after September 11, 2001, and
even more so as the "war on terror" shifted west
to Iraq in 2003.
Anyone schooled in
symbiotic analysis can see the contrast between
today's war slogan and those that came before;
whereas the previous ones exhorted the country to
support the war, and so by extension the troops,
for an external reason, the purpose of
this
war seems to be the troops themselves. Like a
clever Zen koan, the logic here
continuously chases its own tail; the exhortation
is to support the troops so as to support the
troops.
How this catchphrase came to
dominate public discussion will provide a rich
research trove for future PhD candidates in
political science, going through old newspapers
and electronic-media archives to find its actual
first use. Suffice for now to say that in the
1980s, a national feeling of guilt settled over
the US centered on the veterans of the Vietnam
War.
For conservatives, this sentiment was
interpreted to mean that the Vietnam soldiers were
not "supported" in their efforts to win the war.
The war could have been won, should have been won,
in actuality was being won, but then the
treasonous activities of home-front anti-war
protesters denied them the victory just within
their grasp. Then, according to the apologue that
spread across red-state conservative America like
a brush fire, on their return home, these brave,
proud warriors, disembarking from military
transport aircraft in their dress uniforms, were
nearly universally spat upon by the unkempt,
disheveled, fetid and feculent hordes that
represented the US anti-war movement.
Vietnam veteran Jerry Lembcke, in his 1998
book The Spitting Image, says this cultural
archetype is a myth, that he could find no
reliable documentation that these perfidious
expectorations ever actually occurred. What we
would now call the conservative blogosphere rose
to contest these charges, but not even they could
come up with any authenticated photographs or film
images of these alleged events actually occurring.
But the feeling that the Vietnam-era
troops had been given a raw deal was not limited
to the political right. In both the center and the
left there was the feeling that more could have
been done for the returning troops. Medical care
for them by the US Veterans Administration was
said to be substandard to the point of being
non-existent; initially, the medical condition now
recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder was
frequently dismissed by doctors as just indolence
or cowardice.
The economic dislocations of
the mid-1970s, particularly the hollowing out of
the industrial sector after the 1973 oil shock,
meant that jobs were scarce for the returning
vets, making their reintegration into the civil
economy and society ever more challenging; those
who failed to do so frequently descended into
life-long struggles with alcoholism, drug abuse
and homelessness. Perhaps most biting was the
feeling expressed by many returned veterans that
the culture they had returned to was uncomfortable
with their presence among them; a common staple of
television police or medical shows of the period
was the show's protagonists dealing with the
"crazed" Vietnam veteran, in need of medical
attention to deal with his psychoses, or police
action to deal with his crimes.
So across
the US political system, a consensus developed in
the 1980s that the country had treated its Vietnam
troops and veterans poorly. Next time it would be
different: we would, even if we opposed the war,
"support the troops".
That's easier said
than done. At no time in the current Iraq war have
Americans been asked to do any real sacrifice of
income or lifestyle, as happened at the home front
during World War II. Indeed, it seemed that all
you needed to prove your patriotism and devotion
to the cause of freedom was to sport an under-$5
made-in-China "support the troops" car ribbon
magnet on the bumper of your gas-guzzling
sport-utility vehicle; many commentators noted the
cognitive dissonance of displaying your commitment
to the defeat of Islamic radicalism while driving
a vehicle whose continued fueling acts as a
transfer-of-wealth process from ultra-patriotic
middle America to Mideast nations funding the
terrorism that the supported troops are sent to
counter.
Still, the phrase "support the
troops" continues to resonate powerfully across
America's heartland; in a land that respects and
cherishes all manner of religious diversity (as
long, of course, as it's Christian), "support the
troops" has taken on the role of a sort of
contemporaneous ecumenical catechism.
Google currently returns 1,360,000 hits on
the phrase "support the troops", everything from
official Pentagon and White House support sites to
hundreds of sites that give instructions to
home-front America on how to send the troops candy
and toiletries. In contrast, the attempt to
popularize the anti-war catchphrase "Support the
Troops - Bring Them Home Alive", has failed
miserably; it only returns a measly 364 hits.
In and of itself, the "support the troops"
canon is rather innocuous. Like any endlessly
repeated liturgical incantation, it begins to lose
its power the more times it's mindlessly repeated.
The problem has come with the defenders of the new
faith expanding the liturgy's areas of application
and interpretation to enlarge its, and their,
influence.
Maybe e pluribus unum
(out of many, one) is the country's semi-official
motto; perhaps a better choice for modern-day
America would be "nothing succeeds like excess".
If one person says he supports the troops,
you just know that a second person is going to
come along and say she supports the troops even
more, a third will say that the first pair's
support of the troops ranks them as mere "support
the troops" pikers compared with him.
It's
not enough to support the troops anymore; you now
must support every aspect of the troops now, their
actions, their sentiments and, especially, their
mission. Like the purported slivers of the True
Cross, the troops now seem to ennoble and sanctify
everything associated with them, especially the
war itself. Out in Middle America, the war's
supporters in and out of the Republican Party have
found this to be a highly effective way to deflect
the vaguely formed amorphous anti-war sentiment
the public reports to the public-opinion
pollsters; really to support the troops, you must
support their war.
The July 30 edition of
The Weekly Standard had an article by William
Kristol, one of the neo-conservative ideologues
who started advocating for war with Iraq well
before September 11, 2001, that shows how this
ploy works.
The anti-war left hated what the
troops were doing, fighting the enemy in Iraq,
and they hated the troops' goal, victory in
Iraq. So "supporting the troops" meant feeling
sorry for them, or pretending to - something
anti-war politicians and media did with great
hand-wringing and hoopla. With the ongoing
progress of the "surge", and the obvious fact
that the vast majority of the troops want to
fight and win the war, the "support the troops
but oppose what they're doing" position has
become increasingly untenable. How can you say
with a straight face that you support the troops
while advancing legislation that would undercut
their mission and strengthen their
enemies?
Like an old-time rocker
playing tried and true favorites so as not to
disappoint a baby-boomer concert crowd, Kristol
also goes on to
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