How Do You Support the Troops?

Liberal logic. We all know what that means.

It’s the logic of those who protest against big corporations and then watch CNN, buy electronic gadgets from Apple, computers from HP, software from Microsoft, cars from Toyota and Honda and BMW bought with Complete Auto Loans – learn more, gasoline from BP and Shell, etc., etc.

It’s the logic of those who say that laws banning guns will prevent criminals from having guns, and then smoke marijuana.

It’s the logic of those who point to a $3 million per year business that gives 10% of its profit to charities as “greed,” but praise liberal billionaires who give 0.003% of their personal income to charities as “generosity.”

And the list can be extended.

But conservative logic is better, right? Conservatives are not so blind to engage in those blatant self-contradictions, right?

Think twice.

How about this one: We support the troops. And therefore, we vote for a candidate who will send our troops to fight in a meaningless prolonged war with no clear goals nor hope of ending, and die in meaningless skirmishes with local insurgents, skirmishes that serve no purpose whatsoever in defending America’s liberty, or American interests, or save American lives.

Today, three American special forces soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.

Not in combat. If it was in combat, that would be fine. A soldier is not afraid of death – he wouldn’t sign up to be a soldier in the first place if he was. But the death every soldier imagines is death in combat, in the heat of the battle, after he has taken with him a bunch of them enemies. Of course, surviving is the best option. But, if death is the fate of a soldier, it better be the death of a hero, on the battlefield, where it matters.

Teaching math in college, I had many retired servicemen in my classes. Half of them came from Iraq; Marines, Army, Air Force. I liked having them in class; they provided a nice balance to the unruly, immature, undisciplined adolescents coming out of the public schools. They knew how to obey with dignity; and they knew what things were important and what not. This young Hispanic guy, a former Marine, told me once: “I knew people die in combat, and I wasn’t thinking about death while we were fighting. It was when it all ended but we still remained there and did nothing except patrol the streets, when the thought scared me.”

Meaningless death vs. meaningful death. For most of us, there isn’t a big difference. You have to have donned the uniform to understand the difference.

The three soldiers did not die in combat. They were killed by an Afghan police chief who invited them to talk about security in his area. In other words, to talk about policing the streets.

Soldiers don’t police streets. There’s police for that. For a soldier to police the streets means that he has to assume duties that are not his to start with. Like checking papers and breaking into private homes. No different that Nazi occupational forces in Europe in 1942. “Kommen Sie hier! Ihren Pass! Wie heissen Sie!” Our soldiers are American soldiers, not Nazis. They know they are given a task that shouldn’t be theirs in the first place.

And what is worse, they are given a meaningless task that may lead to a meaningless death.

The three soldiers died a meaningless death.

And that is the third such incident this week when Afghan forces open fire on foreign troops. Our soldiers are living a nightmare.

And war-loving conservatives at home “support” the troops by voting for candidates who will continue the nightmare.

Unlike many libertarians, I am not a pacifist. I believe in the necessity of force, and I believe in the use of force. Not only defensive but offensive also. (Not preemptive, though, that is anti-Christian.) And I know that a nation – even a Christian nation – has to go to war, sometimes. We want peace but we know war is sometimes inevitable in the world before the Final Judgment. Christ’s government and His peace will increase on the earth, and it has increased for the last 2,000 years.

But believing in the inevitability of war is not the same as sending soldiers to die meaningless deaths in policing a hostile population. And conservatives who support the troops must learn to tell the difference.

It is liberals who love to occupy foreign nations. It was Clinton who established the practice of large scale policing the world, with his meaningless war in Yugoslavia. Bush continued it. Obama continued it. None of that policing the world benefits America. And our soldiers’ deaths are becoming more and more senseless and meaningless.

So you support the troops? Vote to get them back home. There is no combat in Afghanistan anymore. And there is no combat in Iraq. And there is no reason to create a new war in Iran. If you vote for a candidate who promises to keep your sons dying meaningless deaths out there – even if the candidate has an R behind his name – you are not supporting the troops.

Supporting the troops means helping that little girl see her Daddy again. And not having to say that he died a meaningless death.