Why I am hesitant to “support our troops”

This is a more wordy response to an argument that started on twitter (perhaps the worst place to argue anything worth arguing due to the 140 character limit) about me being against “supporting our troops”. To sum it up, I am against blind support of our troops, and because of this, I am characterized as ungrateful because said troops “protect my freedoms.”

My beliefs re: our troops are far more nuanced than this. For starters, I am against the pre packaged catch phrase of “support our troops” mainly because those who say it (and this a generalization, not an attack against the original person I was arguing with) do anything but support our troops. I also have a problem with the pre packaged catch phrase of “protecting our freedoms”, but I will get to that later.

First. Who most often says they support our troops? Fucking politicians. Well fuck them. If they supported our troops, they would:

1. Not cut veteran’s funding.
2. Not close VA hospitals.
3. Not spread outright lies of “imminent terrorist threats” to gain support for unnecessary and illegal wars.
4. Not attempt to cover up PTSD and other illnesses caused by battle.
5. Not attempt to cover up the lack of resources allocated to forces currently serving overseas.
6. Not force them to serve against their will by stop loss policies, increased tours, and decreased downtime. (Same link as above)

They would also combat the high suicide rates, unemployment, and homelessness that are far more prevalent amongst veterans than the general population. Perhaps they would even have their own children enlisted - but one must remember that is the poor men and women who fight the rich man’s war.

A response to my opinions against the government is that essentially the government and the troops are separate. They are not. Unlike many countries, the armed forces answer to Congress, headed by the Commander in Chief aka the President. However, it is not the President who initiates wars or deals with funding or day to day operations - that is in the domain of Congress. It is the Congress, which we elect, that decides what the troops will do and where. To separate the armed forces and Congress is naive at best. It is Congress that wages wars, it is Congress that cuts funding, it is Congress that has only 1% of their own children enlisted. It is also Congress that panders to the ignorant to “support our troops” (blindly, of course) and it is Congress that profits off of war mongering. 

Now, regarding blind support of our troops. It is against my conscious to support a military that wages illegal wars - but that is not to say I don’t support and respect individual soldiers. Although I am a pacifist by nature and very anti-nationalist (to the point where I’m a closet anarchist), I respect that some people have such a strong love for their country that they would die for it. It’s unfortunate however, that our Congress takes advantage of such strong emotions and misuses and even abuses its own military. I have a few friends who have served (which is far more than the average person, considering only 1% of the country is or has served), one who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, who has PTSD. You bet your ass I support him, even though our beliefs differ on the wars and politics in general.

But just like how I can’t support any religion due to the bad apples ruining the bunch, I can’t support the military either, because of the many bad apples in it. Urinating on corpses, torture, Abu Gharib, abuses in Guantanamo, drone strikes against innocent families, general mistreatment of the dead, burning Qu’rans, ect. The amount of awful shit our military (and by extension, our sacred troops) has committed is inexcusable and I simply cannot blindly support our troops because of it. You can sift through it all here, courtesy of Wikileaks and the brave troops who have blown the whistle against their own government.

Part two. “Protecting our Freedoms” is a load of fucking bullshit. Yes, once upon a time (which ended with World War 2) the military did indeed protect our freedoms. The “War on Terrorism” (and any war on a vague thing/idea like the “War on Drugs”) is a house of cards. Terrorism exists, yes, but the enemy is both everywhere and nowhere. The enemy is ourselves. Every drone strike that kills an innocent family makes us terrorists, just like the Taliban or Al Queda. We call it collateral damage, but semantics aside - an innocent family has died and an entire village terrorized. The survivors of such attacks will one day grow up to be terrorists themselves - let’s face it, if your whole family was killed, would you seek revenge?

Our support of the terrorist country of Israel* certainly was a major factor in 9/11 and our resulting War on Terror - had we not supported Israel both financially and militarily, we might not even be having this conversation. Al Queda and the Taliban are not stupid - they attacked the root of the problems their fellow Muslims, the Palestinians, faced. We were and remain a major factor in Israel’s continued assault on the Palestinians, we provide them money, equipment (like fighter jets that cost twenty million a piece), training, and we share intelligence. The terrorists know this, so why go after Israel (which they do, unsuccessfully) when you can go after its backer?

Back to the “protecting our freedoms” nonsense. If Congress really gave a shit about our freedoms, then why are they stripping them bit by bit, starting with the Patriot Act and then moving along to NDAA, SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA? Why are they attempting to disenfranchise minorities and women; and make sure that gays, the poor, minorities, and women remain second class citizens?

The current attacks on women’s freedoms in particular, such as trying to ban access to contraceptives and abortion (a sensitive issue, of course) is just as bad as the ideas we are fighting - Islamism. In fundamentalist Islamic countries women are stoned to death for minor infractures of their laws. The attack on women in this country, essentially rendering us to an 1850s lifestyle, is not far off from what we are fighting against. The truth is our real enemy, the ones we really should be wary of, are the fundamentalist Christians who are taking over our Congress and our military. That’s really who the enemy to our freedoms is. They are the ones who want to remove the freedoms we enjoy (most notably, freedom of and freedom from religion), render the free speech of our internet useless, and create a militarized police state. Of course, they are not alone in this, they certainly have secular supporters as well, but they are the driving force in turning our country backwards a few hundred years. 

Of course I am grateful for my freedom to write this (for now), my freedom to not have a religion (for now), and my semi-freedom to be an openly gay person… But just because I enjoy these freedoms does not guarantee my blind support for the troops who “protect” it. To truly support the troops, and not in the artificial way like throwing a yellow ribbon sticker on your car bumper, one must see the very deep problems within our government and the armed forces. 

*My criticism of Israel does not mean I hate Jews. Jews are a people who subscribe to a religious belief, and Israel is a nation that just so happens to contain a lot of Jews (as well as Christians, Muslims, and religious minorities). Israel also happens to be an excellent example of the abused turning into the abuser, due to their actions against the Palestinian people. The historical context of the formation of Israel the nation (the Holocaust) does not excuse its actions, if anything, it makes its actions even more despicable.