I'm tired of hearing people accused of not supporting the troops just because they question the actions of the current crop of politicians to own the White House.  Listen up, people: disliking what our government is doing does not mean hating the troops, or thinking that our country should have lost the war.

     Sure, there are some people who really would like to see lots of Americans come home in body bags, maybe out of a misguided belief that this would make our government change its policies.  There are a lot fewer of those wrong-headed souls than the media would have you believe, though.  Most anti-war folks were probably happy that U.S. casualties were so light; certainly all the ones I've talked to are.  (I'm still looking for reliable figures on Iraqi casualties, though; most anti-war people seem to care more about them than the pro-war people do.)

     I have a friend who's serving on a ship within striking distance of Iraq.  I'm not going to tell you his name, or the name of his ship, and even if I knew exactly where it was I sure as hell wouldn't reveal that either.  He knows I think this war is a serious mistake, yet that doesn't make him feel like I don't support him.  He and I agree that it's all right to hold different beliefs and still be friends.  I'm sad that so many people on both sides seem like they can't reach across the same sort of barrier. It's really not that hard.

     Of course, I know that not all pro-war people think questioning the government is the same thing as failing to support the troops; probably the majority of Americans are level-headed enough to know that the world is not all only black and white.  The problem is that so many pro-war people in the government and in the media are quick to react to any dissent by swinging the club of "You must not support the troops" or worse, "You're giving comfort to the enemy."

     I've read a piece by Andrew Sullivan (Yes, I do read stuff from that end of the spectrum too) where he went so far as to accuse liberals of extending Saddam Hussein's regime.  He is indignant about how "millions of free men and women marched to keep it[Saddam's regime] in power."  Do Andrew Sullivan and his fellow ideologues on the right really, truly, believe that all those people turned out in protest because they thought Saddam Hussein deserved to stay in power?  Only they know for sure, but I'm pretty sure that most of them really are not that stupid.  The people who marched against the war did so not to keep Saddam Hussein in power but to try to stop the United States from unilaterally diving in and making a mockery of the international community.

     Even if the marchers somehow extended Saddam's regime, they certainly didn't extend it as much as the last three presidential administrations who winked at Saddam's cruelty.  And yet it is somehow the fault of anti-war marchers that he lasted this long?  That's a digression, though.  The main thrust of Sullivan's piece seems to be that Saddam's regime was so evil that it was wrong to opose any effort to overthrow it.  I agree that his regime was evil, and I do not use that word lightly.  However, I still think it wasn't right for the politicians in our government to decide that they, and they alone, had the right to determine what was done about Saddam's regime.

     I believe that nations need to act together to police themselves; it should never be up to any one country to intervene in another country's affairs.  Yes, the United Nations should have taken a harder line with Saddam.  And yes, I think that some nations had partially selfish motives for their stands on the issue.  However, the US government acted stupidly from the start when it insisted that all other countries had to toe the line or else.  Just because we have a bigger military than anyone else, does not mean that we have the right to push everybody else around.  Had we started in a more diplomatic manner, and not spent the last few years thumbing our noses at the international community, we might have had a true coalition willing to send real help to get rid of Saddam.  That would have meant fewer grieving families in the US and the UK; but I guess the politicians didn't care that much about a few American lives.

     A truly international effort, handled correctly, might have resulted in Saddam leaving power without as much destruction and loss of life.  It certainly would have resulted in less damage to our economy, not to mention our reputation.  It also would have gained the Iraqi people their freedom, as certainly as the US's unilateral efforts did, and probably in not much more time.   Most likely it also would have meant that our troops (remember them?) would have had an easier time of it.

     War is always evil, even when it is the lesser evil.  I salute the men and women who went in there anyway and did their duty, faithful to their oaths; I just wish the politicians had supported them better, and been more faithful to their own oaths.  I'm scared of what's going to happen to the Iraqi people's freedom now that our politicians are in charge.  At least it's better than Saddam, but it could have been much better still.

     But now we'll never know.

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