[PARAGON]

Originally Posted by MarineHawk

Fair enough. From my own perspective though, I believe that, when our country goes to war, for those who really care about our troops and/or about the security of our nation, it's the time when we most need to give our C-in-C the most support at least on that mission.

I assume most of the people who are attacking Bush in these circumstances don't realize what damage they are doing. I also assume that, if they did, some of them might stop.

One of the few real similarities between this war and Vietnam is that the enemy(ies) are very much encouraged by our internal divisiveness brought on by the left. This helps their morale, makes them braver and more hopeful. It also hurts our troops’ morale. Morale in combat really is one of the few most important variables in determining outcome and how many of one side’s troops live or die or get injured. This is why the idea of supporting the troops but deriding the mission does not work. No Soldier, Marine, Sailor, or Airman wants to risk his or her life to fight and win a stupid, evil war. I experienced this first hand. In 1991, our morale, and thus our combat effectiveness, was extremely high, mostly because the nation was, with the exception of a very small minority, very united behind the mission. This really fueled our ability to deal with hardship and fear. We believed we were fighting for something important. Once enough citizens start saying (ultimately to our troops) that their mission is stupid, you kill their morale, and ultimately make their job much more difficult and deadly.

I'm not partisan on this issue. I thought that the GOP's worst hour since Watergate was in April 1999, when only a few Republicans would just come out and unequivocally support the war in Kosovo. Most of them were playing politics and stating the same old "support the troops, but not necessarily the mission" crap. McCain (who I'm not terribly fond of as a politician) was to his credit one of the exceptions. As much as I really hated Clinton, I just wanted the GOP to say, on Kosovo, we support you without qualification whether or not we would have made the same decision. The failure to do so back then was compounded by the fact that we had a weak President, who, out of fear of unpopularity, actually told our enemies that we would not use ground troops under any circumstances—thus iolating one of the most basic rules of warfare--don't tell your enemies your limitations. If Clinton, having no intention of using them, had deployed two armored divisions in Macedonia, before he began the bombing. Milosevic would have caved in five minutes. Perhaps Clinton would have done this if he had had a blank check from the GOP. It would have made us stronger and our troops safer.

The same is true now, except that the consequences are much, much more severe. If we lose in Iraq, we're screwed. If we win, al Qaeda is screwed. Reasonable minds can differ on whether or not we should have gone into Kosovo or Iraq, but neither one are evil wars whereby we are slaughtering innocent people for our own gain. There are, at least, legitimate reasons for both campaigns. Thus, there’s no reason to believe that, by supporting those either of those wars (or at least not attacking our C-in-C) that we are facilitating the path toward an evil Hitlerian state. It just means we will win the war more quickly. It really has an effect. The growing dissension on this war is simply encouraging our enemies and weakening our forces. It's bad for the country. Sure, anyone who wants to attack Bush on the war has the right to do so. I just think it’s not necessarily wise to exercise that right no venomously. Even worse, few Dems will ever concede that, of which I am convinced (partly because I agree with him), that Bush thinks he’s doing the right thing and that then simply disagree with his policies. Instead, they accuse him of all kinds of evil motives. This makes any constructive debate impossible.

I wish the Dems would just say: "Bush we disagree with every domestic decision you have ever made, but we will support you in this war [that they voted for when it was in their political interests] and will help you win it as quickly and decisively as possible." It's what the GOP should have done in 1999, and it's what the Dems should do now. As a byproduct, if they had been taking this posture, IMO, they would have won a lot more elections in the last few years.

x2

Very well said.


Also,

It's not a matter of want to silence. It's a matter of one should have respect to silence one's own self out of respect of the men and women, not only in combat, but those supporting them and those that are their family and friends.

I still hold that it is a hugely bold and at the same time ignorant stance to assume one has the knowledge to properly voice their dissention to something as large as war. We elect officials to make decisions that are important for the welfare of our country. They make those decisions based on information that only they have at the time and we, as citizens do not deserve to receive as it will undermine security. For one to assume you can intelligently argue the rights and wrongs of entering and/or the direction of a war without real facts, is simply zealous to the point that one's own words become more important that the actual facts.

This is what's happening with all of the war dissenters. Not only do they have short-term memory loss, they are jumping to conclusions without any real facts and doing that in the media. This in turn gets blasted in front of the troops, their family and friends and it undermines moral. It gets shown all over the enemy's airwaves and emboldens them because they realize all they have to do is make it costly, not win the war, just make it costly and the US will leave when the next election comes. That's the way it worked before.