{"id":532,"date":"2008-04-15T15:16:24","date_gmt":"2008-04-15T05:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/?p=532"},"modified":"2008-04-08T21:04:57","modified_gmt":"2008-04-08T11:04:57","slug":"what-does-it-mean-to-support-our-troops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2008\/04\/15\/what-does-it-mean-to-support-our-troops\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it mean to support our troops?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“We have to support our troops.”<\/p>\n

If you ever discuss attitudes towards wars, such as the recently conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, you will hear this expression – this self-evident truth – uttered.<\/p>\n

I have a terrible confession to make, that I fear may ostracize me from polite society. I don’t really understand why we have to support our troops, in particular.<\/p>\n

I hope people will take pity on me, and explain, as though to a simpleton, rather than treat me with contempt. I wasn’t around for the end of the Vietnam war, so maybe I am missing some lesson from there that is obvious to others.<\/div>\n

I mean, I get some of it. If you are going to send some of your staff members into a dangerous environment, you should support them with sufficient training, equipment and other resources to reduce that risk as much as practical. That makes sense to me, and it applies to all of our government’s staff, whether they be troops, police officers or sewerage workers.<\/p>\n

I also understand that we should extend the same basic level of respect to the individuals in our troops that we extend to all individuals, whether they be troops, software developers or sewerage workers.<\/p>\n

However, basic respect for people<\/em> does not extend to basic respect for ideas<\/em> – especially when they are expressed by politicians. Attacking the wisdom of a particular military strategy doesn’t automatically mean personally attacking the troops who carried it out.<\/p>\n

In my time, I have counted some military men as my friends. I have found some military men to be arseholes. Perhaps I am “a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom [they] provide”<\/a>, but that doesn’t mean they are not arseholes. <\/p>\n

I am grateful that people are different, and that some are willing to be the police offers and sewerage workers that I don’t want to be. I am similarly grateful that other people are willing to join the military. However, that gratitude has its limits that a simplistic “support our troops” message seems to ignore.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, I try my best to extend a basic level of respect to everyone – even the arseholes. I am glad I don’t have to choose a career in violence myself. But, I don’t see understand the sanctity of the mantra “support our troops” any more than we should “support our sewerage workers”.<\/p>\n

I remain open to an enlightening explanation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a terrible confession to make, that I fear may ostracize me from polite society. I don’t really understand why we have to support our troops, in particular.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[267,98],"class_list":["post-532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influencing-others","tag-military","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}