'Stop saying "Support the troops"'

If I were opposing teams I'd be getting fucking sick and tired of my players sitting around and getting cold during the interminable performaneces.

If I were an opposing manager, I would tell my players to go out and hit fungos and play catch in the outfield, and the pitcher toss warmup pitches on the sideline, while the song is going on.

 

My only issue with some people who believe in "support the troops" think that if you oppose a war, you oppose the troops.

This seems to go back to Vietnam, in which many who opposed the war there treated the returning soldiers like they were bad people.

What those opposing the Vietnam War forgot was most of the soldiers were drafted and didn't get a choice in the matter. Plus it's not the soldiers who decide to go to war. Congress does, and it's usually the President making the request.

To me, "support the troops" is best served as a reminder of this: It's fine to oppose a war and to criticize the people who decided to go to war, but don't take it out on the soldiers who are simply doing what they are asked to do, whether said soldier was drafted or voluntarily enlisted.

 

Did they?

 

The myth that keeps on mything.

 

I think it's perfectly reasonable to oppose the troops, as well.

Even in Vietnam, they ultimately chose to go there in lieu of other options. Now, on my sliding scale of opposition between LBJ and Winnie Cooper's 18-year-old brother who has neither the experience nor the maturity at that point to consider world geopolitics in light of his own fully formed worldview, LBJ gets the lion's share of the wrath. But it is not unreasonable to target Winnie Cooper's brother for some criticism. It's patronizing to the troops otherwise. They are human beings with a functioning brain. Nationalism doesn't give them dispensation from using it.

 

I don't think that's a myth. I have ex-military friends who were treated shabbily during that period. I wasn't there with them, of course, but I don't think these guys would lie about it.

 

I wonder if he has similar feelings for slogans such as "for the children," "for the poor" and "social justice."

 

I don't know. He didn't write about that.

 

Yeah, it's a myth. They were spitting on the returning soldiers as a form of long-distance kiss. :

 

Were they?

 

Shabbily by whom?

Lots of Vietnam-era veterans were treated like shit by World War II guys, who did the same thing to the Korea guys.

 

You can find plenty of evidence of it before Oct. 17, 1979, when all mention was wiped away by the history books.