To those who believe that in order to support the troops, we must support the mission, I happen to think that's incorrect. I'm sure the good German people in the early 1940's supported their boys as they fought their way across Europe, but you probably wouldn't have blamed the more enlightened of them if they didn't support the mission.

How dare you compare what we are doing in liberating Iraq to Nazi Germany!

          I'm not.  What I'm saying is, throughout history, boys have marched off to battle on missions of all kinds–some righteous, some not.  Some are battles of conquest.  Some are battles of liberty.  Some are in response to a back-room deal that their government made with another government.  Some are the prideful choice of their leader.  One thing they all have in common, though, is that once in the armed services, one has little or no choice but to fight, and sometimes, to die.  No one asked the privates in World War I if they agreed or approved of the decisions to send them over the top, row after row, division after division, to be mown down like blades of grass, fighting over mere yards of territory that changed hands on a daily basis.  Meanwhile the Generals would use words like "attrition" to describe the condition; "attrition" meaning "we'll accede to the butchery of as many of our boys as necessary, as long as at the end of the day we've butchered more of our enemies' boys." 
          I believe that under most conditions, despite one's feelings about the mission, it is absolutely the right thing to support the troops. I thought it was unconscionable that the American Left treated returning troops from Vietnam so badly. Many of those who disrespected soldiers were able to get deferments from the draft because their parents could afford to send them to college. Those who were not so fortunate, a disproportionate number of whom were poor and minorities were sent to fight and die in the jungles of Southeast Asia. It wasn't their fault that the mission was, to put it mildly, questionable. Governments, no matter how much folly goes into their decisions, will always try and convince their citizens that the mission is just, the mission is noble, and the world will be a better place for the sending of their soldiers into Harm's Way. This hasn't changed since war itself began.
          Something that has changed since the Vietnam War is the way war is covered (or not) by the media. Vietnam was the high-water mark in bringing the horror of war home in all of its bloody gruesome details to the American living room.  The film reporting also played a huge part in the public awakening to a conflict in which an abstract theory was presented (The Domino Theory) that made sense on paper, but remained a remote idea until dead American boys started appearing on the nightly news.  It was only then that people who might have previously supported their government's abstract theories started saying, "Wait a minute–our boys are 6,000 miles away from the United States dying for what? It sure doesn't seem like our country's in danger."
          The military and our government learned a valuable lesson from Vietnam, although it's not the one that's going to bring us peace any time soon.  They learned that if they don't want the American people to get all upset about war, by all means don't show them pictures of dying American soldiers.  Have you noticed that we haven't seen any film, or still pictures for that matter, of dead American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan? They won't even show us the coffins for gosh sakes! Yeah, I know that seeing American soldiers dead on the side of an Iraqi highway is a horrible and sickening sight, but isn't the danger obvious in not allowing these images to ever be shown? As long as dead American soldiers are just a number, with no untidy images to make them real, then Americans are one giant step removed from what this is really costing.  Unless we personally know one of these kids who have lost their lives, the whole business stays in the realm of the abstract.  The government doesn't even want us to see the coffins, because they want to keep us as detached from the actual cost as possible for as long as possible.  As long as it's just a number, and it isn't our kid, or our brother or sister, or our husband or wife, we can stay in the abstract, and hear about the "brave soldiers who are making the ultimate sacrifice for freedom," and we don't have to dirty up our minds with unsightly images of the pain and the suffering and the blood and the shattered limbs that these men and women are actually living and dying through.  The government knows it's only a matter of time between the showings of these images and when the real protesting begins.
          I realize that these soldiers are volunteers; nobody made them go into the military, but many of these young men and women are National Guardsmen who had no idea what they were getting themselves into when they signed up. Furthermore, their tours of duty have been extended far beyond what they signed up for.
          I want to support the troops by working as hard as I can to bring them home. If the idea of supporting the troops includes supporting this mission in Iraq, I hope and pray that before it's one of our sons or daughters, or one of our husbands or wives who get blown to bits by a roadside bomb, we will realize that instead of supporting the War on Terror, we are supporting the overthrow of the right-wing dictator of a secular Arab regime. This pre-emptive action unleashed a civil war that our young men and women in the armed forces were caught in the middle of. The War on Terror is for all practical purposes on hold until we can find a way to slither out of Iraq with as much dignity as we can muster, while over 4200 of our brave soldiers will only be coming home in pine boxes that Americans are not even allowed to see.





          Whenever someone brings these issues up, they are immediately accused by many on the right of not supporting the troops, or being unpatriotic, or being "blame America firsters."  Sorry, but it's simply not true.  Support of the troops would mean, in my view, sending them on the mission that was advertised in the first place which was supposed to be the War on Terror instead of having them fight and die for an Imperialist administration bent on remaking the world in their image of free-market capitalism.
          Being patriotic means supporting and upholding what is best about our country, not perpetuating what is worst.  As far as "blaming America first," I'd like to think that I'm in the "blame America also" camp.  There's nothing evil about that.  I certainly don't believe that you can lay all of the world's problems at America's doorstep.  Being critical of the government is an obligation that too many journalists have seemed to forget.  When a nation's citizens stop being critical of their governments actions or policies, no matter what they are, or how many people suffer because of them, then the government has the people right where they want them.  This is what has been happening in Israel for quite some time, and it is happening in our country today.
          My point here is if you didn't vote for these guys, you should be angry; but if you did vote for them, you should be outraged, especially as a Christian.  If you are a Republican, for whatever reasons, that's fine.  Just remember, you're a Christian first.  Just as you were outraged by Bill Clinton's immoral behavior, so you should be even more by this war which is costing us human lives that can never be returned to their loved ones.  What we the people did instead was give this administration a ringing vote of confidence that we in fact endorsed this tragedy by re-electing them.  I've heard it said over and over again by my "favorite" talk-show hosts: Americans did vote on the war in Iraq by re-electing George Bush.  As Christians, we need to let our leaders know that we will not be repeatedly lied to by anyone–and we won't be placid sheep meekly accepting whatever they tell us.
          At a little Christian college located outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the students, faculty, and alumni did just that in the spring of 2006.  Calvin College is a Christian liberal arts college affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, and is home to the largest collection of John Calvin's works in North America.  Michigan was a tightly contested battleground state in the 2004 election, and, in a practice common with all political leaders over the years, President Bush's handlers chose Calvin College as a suitable place for the president to give a commencement address.  Nothing unusual here–just a safe way to spend a little political capital.  Or so they thought.  For the first time, the very people the Bush administration counted on to be good little Christian soldiers took out an ad in the Grand Rapids Press that said this:
"By their deeds ye shall know them," read the paid advertisement, quoting the Bible. "Your deeds, Mr. President–neglecting the needy to coddle the rich, desecrating the environment, and misleading the country into war–do not exemplify the faith we live by.  Moreover, many of your supporters are using religion as a weapon to divide our nation and advance a narrow partisan agenda. ...We urge you not to use Calvin College as a platform to advance policies that violate the school's religious principles." More than 750 alumni, students and staff signed the ad.  Sean Hannity, on Fox News's Hannity & Colmes, while interviewing two of the signers, called them "friends of the terrorists."

What a shock–you found a liberal Christian college...

Over 85% of the Calvin College students and faculty surveyed voted for George W. Bush.