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From: Hilton Obenzinger <obenzinger@stanford.edu><br><br>
<br>
<b>Meditations in a Time of Delusions and Lies 20: Don’t Support the
Troops<br>
<br>
Hilton Obenzinger<br>
</b> <br>
<b>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.<br>
<br>
March 11, 2007<br><br>
------------------<br>
</b> <br>
I don’t Support the Troops. <br>
<br>
There, I said it. I hope I don’t lose my job. Or get hauled
off to Guantanamo.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The myth circulated by politicians, rightwing ideologues, and much
popular culture (e.g., <i>Rambo</i>) even before the Viet Cong and North
Vietnamese entered Saigon in triumph goes something like this: <i>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.<br>
</i> <br>
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.<br>
<br>
Screw ’em.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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 <i>WAS </i>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.<br>
<br>
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? <br>
<br>
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. <br><br>
I won’t even talk about the misery of the Iraqi people.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
I support the soldiers who are disgusted, dismayed, and in revolt just
like the rest of us. But I don't Support the Troops.<br>
<b> <br>
</b>Hilton Obenzinger<br>
obenzinger@stanford.edu<br>
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