Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
Where are the Bush war supporters now?
 Mon Nov 10, 2003 1:48 am
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Where are ‘troop supporters’ now?
By DAVID NIBERT
http://www.springfieldnewssun.com
Many of us who protested the Bush Administration’s massive bombing in Afghanistan, and its all-out invasion of Iraq earlier this year, were criticized – and even physically threatened – by some in our community for not “supporting our troops.”
Our patriotism was called into question because we publicly challenged placing the lives of our young people in jeopardy, and expressed dismay at the death and destruction wrought by the U.S. military, when the reasons for those actions did not withstand reasonable questioning or critique.
For example, we questioned why war was waged against nations whose leaders the U.S. government helped install and supported – as long as they served U.S. corporate interests. Indeed, when corporate interests were challenged, the U.S. military and “intelligence” forces either covertly supported or ignored the machinations and abuses these leaders went on to commit. We pointed to that fact that these leaders were demonized only when they acted independently of U.S. corporate interests or threatened them.
As dissenters, we questioned the wisdom of spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on destructive military operations while tens of millions at home are facing increasing personal privation and loss of public services. And we challenged sending young people in uniform, most of whom enlisted because they sought economic and educational opportunity, into a war decried by most around the world.
Why was it, we asked, that the Bush Administration – which has resisted treaties that promoted global demilitarization, a more fair and equitable global economic structure, and a more environmentally sound form of economic development – was now portraying itself as the global moral authority?
The criticism of those of us who questioned and protested the war was based largely on polemical restatements of the Administration’s justifications for the war, disseminated by the “fair and balanced” reporters of Fox News and their competitors and too often accepted without question by either the media or our citizens. (Of course, it now appears increasingly that the pro-war campaign was based on contrived arguments and evidence that was thin at best and nonexistent at worst.)
We were told that the only legitimate response of patriotic citizens was to “support our troops.” This phrase was used to stifle calls to really support our troops by putting an end to the bloodshed – as well as to justify sometimes vicious intolerance of peaceful protest and free speech.
Now that the “war is over,” George W. Bush is enjoying an extended vacation, and Halliburton and similar giant businesses the highly profitable spoils of war, while people continue to die in Iraq. But as U.S. military personnel are still being killed by violence (and now also by disease) in Iraq, where are those who chanted “support our troops?”
Homesick soldiers are angered and demoralized by their lengthy and open-ended deployments and long for their families and homes – but where have their “supporters” gone? Indeed, where were their supporters last spring when the same administration that sent these service people to war also moved to reduce veterans’ benefits?
Where will their supporters be when some who survive the invasion and occupation of Iraq return with psyches scorched by the horrific experience of war? Will those veterans simply be dismissed as disabled or maladjusted – and when they resist this mistreatment will they be relegated to the ranks of the rest of us “dissenters?”
And where will their supporters be when tens of thousands of service members begin to experience the effects of exposure to depleted uranium and suffer other war-related illnesses? Will the government that sent them into harm’s way deny responsibility for those conditions, as was done in the first Gulf War?
Future historians are not likely to connect the Bush Administration’s use of the phrase “support our troops” with any efforts to bring about a safer or more peaceful world, or to build true democracy, here or abroad. The phrase will likely be used as the title of an awful chapter in U.S. history.
* David Nibert is a professor of sociology at Wittenberg University
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Mech on 11-09-2003] |
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