Blind to the big picture

Rupert Lees: Blind

Result of an AP-Ipsos poll: “Support the troops, but oppose the war.” The sentiment is easy to understand: “The military is our sons and daughters…” – but it is just sentiment with no rationale to back it up.

The American people want to believe that Haditha and Hamdaniya, i.e. deliberate killings of civilians, are just isolated incidents. And perhaps they are, but how many more do we need before we stop calling them ‘isolated’?

“Support the troops, but oppose the war.” How is it ‘support’ of young men and women to send them far away to an inhospitable country that is teeming with insurgents and where guerrilla warfare is a fact of everyday life? What kind of ‘support’ are they getting when they come home without limbs or with emotional wounds that go untreated? What kind of ‘support’ are their families getting when they come home in flag-draped coffins?

What kind of ‘support’ is it to send the troops back to Iraq for a second, third or fourth tour of duty? Each time they go back, the likelihood of them snapping and committing atrocities is greater. It happens to every army in every war.

“The military is our sons and daughters and, of course, we wouldn’t systematically engage in something that defiles American values.” – Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Open your eyes, Kathleen. I find it terribly distressing that such a stupid statement could come from the mouth of the director of such a prestigious institute. But, then again, perhaps the definition of ‘American values’ has changed since 2001. This war in Iraq is defiling my American values every day. Sending troops over there to be blown up by roadside bombs defiles my American values. Killing innocent people, whether deliberately or ‘collaterally’, defiles my American values.

It is nothing more than a government and media-generated illusion that the troops are protecting freedom and democracy, it is an absolute lie that they are protecting the US. Every death, whether American military or Iraqi civilian, is nothing more than the waste of a life.

The US cannot win the war in Iraq. Democracy cannot be imposed. The US went into Iraq on the basis of false intelligence and lies. If you oppose the war, the only way to support the troops is to bring them home and stop sacrificing them to the greed of the few who are making fortunes out of the occupation of Iraq.

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