My blog has been rather quiet for the last few weeks. I’ve been out and about visiting universities, my parents, and generally being sick.
During that time we ended up going to war with Iraq. Oddly enough it was on March 20th, if you count the “Decapitation Strike” as the start of the war, so I guess I would win the pool. In the end we decided that because they didn’t start out with “shock and awe” that it was too hard to tell when the war actually started and declared the pool moot.
Anyway, this leaves me in a bit of an interesting position. I don’t support the war and I do believe that Bush and his buddy Blair could have done more before going to war. However, the time for complaining and writing my senators is over. There really isn’t anything that can be done at this juncture. Men, women, and children are going to die because of this war. Some of them rather needlessly. It’s hard to say whether the world will be a better place after this war or not. It depends on how much it expands, and how much support we continue to gather for it.
I have come to the conclusion that it is not mutually exclusive to support our troops and be against the war. Our troops are deployed by the commander in chief of the United States armed forces. They don’t have a choice in their deployment. I feel that those who are not supporting the troops are a little ungrateful for the sacrafices they do make day after day.
So how does one support our troops and not support the war? Well, when people ask me, I make it very clear the situation that most of the troops are in. Secondly, when people make verbal attacks on our military, I ask them if they mean that against the military or against the administration. Usually it’s the latter rather than the former. Thirdly, I pray for the troops. That they might return home to their families quickly and that they might help the peopel of Iraq end the horrible suffering of this war.
It seems like it can’t work at first glance, but I firmly believe it can. I support our troops, but I think that our administration is perhaps a bit misguided and shortsighted with some of the decisions they have made regarding foreign policy. I can’t say that I know everything, so maybe they have some “smoking gun” that I can’t see, but from my perspective, that’s the way the world is.