[News] Meditations in a Time of Delusions and Lies 20: Don't Support the Troops

[Anti-Imperialist News]

From: Hilton Obenzinger <obenzinger at stanford.edu>


Meditations in a Time of Delusions and Lies 20: Don’t Support the Troops

Hilton Obenzinger

I write these meditations from time to time in an 
attempt to stay sane.  If you find them tedious, 
apply the magic of delete.  If you want to share 
them with others, feel free to do so.

March 11, 2007

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I don’t Support the Troops.

There, I said it.  I hope I don’t lose my 
job.  Or get hauled off to Guantanamo.

Perhaps more accurately, I don’t support the 
mantra of Support the Troops.  That particular 
tape loop joins other great, simplistic slogans 
and euphemisms like War on Terror and Axis of 
Evil and Cut and Run and Extraordinary Rendition 
and Surge, all of which are designed, in various 
combinations, to obfuscate or confuse or pander 
or strike fear.  It’s remarkable how so many 
Americans fall for such language, but that’s the 
way it goes.  Even people against the war in Iraq 
often frame their opposition in a kind of ironic 
use of the dominant language: Support the Troops, Bring Them Home.

Many others have commented on the manipulative 
use of such demagogic slogans to support the 
militarist mindset.  But I want to address why I 
don’t Support the Troops in particular because 
volumes of history stand behind those three 
simple words.  And that history is the war in Vietnam.

The myth circulated by politicians, rightwing 
ideologues, and much popular culture (e.g., 
Rambo) even before the Viet Cong and North 
Vietnamese entered Saigon in triumph goes 
something like this: We lost because we did not 
support the troops.  After years of 
demonstrations by spoiled middle-class students 
and other “nattering nabobs of negativity,” 
Congress eventually cut the funds to the war and 
the president  was forced to begin withdrawing 
troops because the American people didn’t have 
the stomach to do the job right.  If we had only, 
uh, stayed the course, the U.S. would have 
won.  But the military was stabbed in the back, 
there were no parades when soldiers came home, 
scruffy students yelled that grunts were baby 
killers, and hippie girls even spit in the faces 
of GIs as they stepped off the planes.

So, when politicians insist that they Support the 
Troops, even if they are against the war, when 
the Democrats gingerly frame all of their 
ineffective efforts to stop Bush’s militarist 
agenda as supporting the troops, they don’t want 
to be tainted by the (falsified) memory of Vietnam.

Screw ’em.

The U.S. lost primarily because of the resistance 
and sacrifices of the Vietnamese people.  But the 
great majority of Americans ended up opposing the 
war in Vietnam, and that opposition was one of 
the great movements for freedom in our country’s 
history.  Students and other young people did 
comprise an important part of the anti-war 
movement, but perhaps even more importantly so 
did African Americans and other minorities who 
were in open revolt at their racist treatment at 
home and the injustice of the war abroad.

Yet there was yet another crucially important 
component of the anti-war movement: GIs 
themselves.  Grunts refused orders, gung-ho 
officers were fragged, and soldiers put out 
underground newspapers, hung out at GI coffee 
houses organized by recent vets and others, and 
attended FTA shows near bases put on by Jane 
Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Barbara Dane and 
others.  THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT WAS THE 
TROOPS.  Soldiers came home and testified about 
massacres (John Kerry’s noblest moment), they 
threw their medals away, and many were sickened 
by the thought of any parades and joined 
demonstrations instead.  There was a great deal 
of bitterness, to be sure, but the troops were 
our families, our classmates, our friends, us, 
and everyone against the war sorrowed over the 
rotten deal they were dealt.  And, as research 
has shown, no hippie girl ever spit at a soldier 
– that story is, quite literally, a myth.

What the troops did find when they returned was 
what we see today.  Miserable treatment by 
military hospitals and the VA.  What today we 
recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder came 
to light first as post-Vietnam disorder, which 
was mainly ignored but brought to light to a 
great degree by vets and anti-war activists.  So 
many vets ended up homeless and miserable because 
they did not receive the proper treatment.  Sound familiar?

Soon after starting the war, the Bush 
administration announced that it was cutting the 
budget to the VA.  Such bald-faced hypocrisy 
seemed to go unnoticed.  But once again, on-duty 
soldiers and recent vets are making up an 
important part of the anti-war movement.  The 
horrible conditions at Walter Reed have actually 
been known for some time, but now a qualitative 
stage has been reached, and opinion has tilted to make a new scandal.

I won’t even talk about the misery of the Iraqi people.

We do not need to support the war machine to love 
our own people.  We can support our brothers and 
sisters, our mothers and our fathers without 
chiming in with the slogans of criminals trying to deceive us.

I support the soldiers who are disgusted, 
dismayed, and in revolt just like the rest of 
us.  But I don't Support the Troops.

Hilton Obenzinger
obenzinger at stanford.edu

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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