Decius wrote:

I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

This article has gotten the talk shows all riled up. Its inceditary. If you're really a pacifist and you think war is immoral, obviously you'd offer that those involved are immoral. My problem with pacifists is that there are times when you have to fight. We didn't ask for 9/11, and the people who got involved in the military in its wake largely sought to defend America from aggressive foreign threats. There is an arguement that pre-emptive war is immoral, but this wasn't a choice those involved with the armed services at the time made, and today, I think, walking away from the situation after creating the security vacuum we've created there is also immoral. Eventually, you do get to a point where continuing to support the armed forces is a tacit approval of the things they are doing, but the U.S. is a long, long way away from that point today. If you buy the conspiracy theories about "blood for oil" I suppose I can see reaching this point, but I don't. The strategy in Iraq is hard to understand and there are questions that can be raised about its correctness, but it shouldn't properly be an invitation to fill in the blanks with worst case scenarios. If we just wanted the oil it would have been cheaper to buy it.

The above is a good summary of what has now become an intelligent, though essentially apologist's prayer for unreasonable US behaviour. It needs no response because it puts forward no reasonable case. The psychology though is interesting. The US is afraid. And it responds with threats, violence, repression and accusations.

"9/11" is a brand. A brand of fear. In terms of psychological impact on an overconfident US population it was devastating. In terms of deaths and injury, compared to the events that the US justifies and perpetrates in its wake, it was a minor event. Yet it stands as some inconceivably horrible event justifying almost any act of repression or violence. It is your Holocaust. Excusing everything and anything just by naming it. "How could you do this terrible thing?" we ask. "9/11" you reply, as if in answer.

More publicity stunt than act of war, the Trade Centre attacks were appalling. But how you respond matters. The strong face up to what happened, look at the causes, and move to solve the problem. The weak lash out, blame others indescriminately and absolutely, tearful and afraid, crying out that this was not their fault, they didn't start it. Now, they say, we are justified in all and any acts of violence and retribution - because we were attacked first. Wrong - the violence began long before the Twin Towers, and some of the blame lies at our own feet.

The people of the US have been so comfortably secluded from the rest of the world for so long that they have become among the most fearful in the world. And fear is a sickness that generates its own reasons for inexcusable actions.

RE: I don't support the troops