Whose Troops?

Now that war on Iraq has begun, we are told that we must rally around the flag, the president, and most of all, "our troops." Anyone who expresses doubts about the war's aims, strategy, or tactics is decried with the accusation that they "don't support our troops." "Support our troops" is the slogan of warmongers, designed to sow confusion by equating opposition to the war with betraying U.S. troops. It is based on the assumption that anti-war sentiment should disappear as soon as a war actually starts.

This slogan is nothing but hypocrisy, because the people who raise it care nothing about the men and women in the U.S. military unless they are sending them to die. The military is made up of mostly working class men and women, disproportionately people of color. Blacks and Latinos make up 44 percent of the army, for example, while they comprise less than 30 percent of the general population. Apparently, there is plenty of room for affirmative action when it comes to producing cannon fodder.

On March 26--less than a week after the war began--the House Budget Committee approved a proposal slash of $844 million from veterans' health care. If the U.S. government really wanted to support its troops, it could spend some of the $396 billion military budget on providing housing, health care, education, and a living wage for soldiers and veterans.

It should be blatantly obvious that George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld do not care about the men and women in the U.S. military--they are sending them to Iraq. But there are other reasons why those who oppose the war should not accept the "support our troops" slogan.

If these were really "my troops" they would be at home with their families, not fighting a war for oil from which they will receive no benefit. But these troops are not "mine" in the same way as they are George W. Bush's. They are the troops of the U.S. government, sent to carry out the aims of that government, aims that I do not support.

Those who say "support our troops" really mean "support the U.S. war agenda"--and that agenda has nothing to do with the interests of ordinary people in Iraq or here in the U.S. This is a war to dominate the Middle East and secure oil profits for a tiny minority of people. The people who are orchestrating this war are the same people who are driving budget cuts and attacks on civil liberties down the throats of working people at home.

The cry of "support our troops" is being raised so shrilly right now because Bush and Rumsfeld have nothing else to hide behind. Their initial claim to legitimacy--that this was a war for the liberation of the Iraqi people--has fallen flat on its face because the Iraqi people are fighting back against U.S. occupation.

Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld promised that U.S. troops would be welcomed with cheers and flowers. Instead they are being welcomed with bullets and resentment. Yet, who should be surprised? The U.S. launches a barbaric war that looks to all the world like the Crusades, and somehow everyone is shocked when the Iraqis refuse to line up quietly to be slaughtered and colonized. If you were living in Iraq, what would you do?

I believe that Iraqis have a legitimate right to defend themselves and resist occupation. In this situation, how far will support for "our troops" extend? Until the next My Lai? The next Hiroshima? I do not support U.S. troops when they carry out massacres. I hope that U.S. soldiers in Iraq will be disgusted by what they are being ordered to do and refuse to do it. I want soldiers to organize against the war, disobey orders, go AWOL, refuse to fire on civilians, refuse to participate in slaughter. The only time I would proudly declare my support for U.S. troops is when they deliberately disobey the orders of their superiors.

Such a rebellion in the armed forces is actually within the living memory of Washington hawks like Cheney, Rumsfeld. and Powell. It happened in Vietnam. The memory of Vietnam scares the bejeezus out of them, because it stands alone in history as a time when the U.S. military brought all its titanic destructive power to bear on a tiny peasant country in Asia--and could not win. Ultimately, it could not win because U.S. soldiers realized that they were fighting a war that did not benefit them, and that they had more in common with the "enemy" than with the man in the White House.

What gave U.S. soldiers the courage to stand up to their commanding officers and refuse to fight? They knew there was an anti-war movement of millions in the U.S. that had their backs. The troops in the U.S. army have both an interest in stopping this war and the potential to do so. Our task is to organize the strongest possible anti-war movement to back them up.

Laura Durkay is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.