Support our Troops or Support the Resistance?

Support our Troops," or Support the Resistance?

By Marta Rodriguez of the New England Committee to Defend Palestine

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on, the American antiwar movement continues to respond to the atrocities of their government with slogans like "support the troops" and "bring the troops home." So far these slogans have made no dent in the willingness of the U.S. population to permit saidatrocities, or in the willingness of those troops to commit them.

One of the main problems with these slogans is that they make what happens to the troops take precedence over what is visited upon the Iraqis and Afghans by way of the invasion. The "support the troops" slogan adds insult to the many injuries visited on those occupied by the U.S. because it lends legitimacy to the actions of an army that has existed to violate other people's borders and enforce their enslavement.

Antiwar organizers often point to the economic draft that affects the poor and members of nations that have already been colonized by this country as a reason for using these slogans. They frequently remind us that the freedom of the Iraqis and Afghans requires the exit of those troops. But economic draft or not, once those soldiers engage in the butchery and genocide required to serve U.S. interests abroad, the circumstances driving their decision to join the armed forces are made irrelevant by the fact that they become the victimizers of the people they occupy.

My country, Puerto Rico, has been occupied by the United States since July 25 of 1898. One of the odious realities of our condition as a colonized people is that thousands of our young have been inducted into the United States armed services to help do to others what has been done to us. Puerto Rican young people are now among the trained thugs that are brutalizing the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. This government's all the more abhorrent and worthy of contempt for wasting their lives in wars of plunder against people that haven't done anything to us. The problem is that neither the economic draft nor the colonization of those young men and women negate their capacity to consider certain facts which they did not: like the fact that neither the Iraqis nor the Afghans have ever done anything to harm or threaten the people of Puerto Rico; like the fact that they didn't even do anything to harm or threaten the U.S. That was readily apparent in spite of the propaganda promoting these wars. By joining this country's armed forces, those individuals decided that any job they might get as a result of their training was worth the lives and freedom of the people they help to occupy. That makes them culpable for the war crimes this government perpetrates to enforce its occupations.Another problem with those slogans, is that by treating the troops as something that we should stay away from criticizing, we're letting the government frame the discussion of its wars for us. The government accuses war protesters of "betraying" the "poor" "brave" young men and women who are now "in harm's way," and we're quick to fall all over ourselves in our efforts to prove them wrong. Some of us claim that "we're not unpatriotic or disrespectful" of "our" "fine men and women in uniform," that "we're just against these wars," while others do our best to convey that it's not the troops we have the issue with but the government. Thus, the government sets the tone for our discourse, and a discussion which should be about the butchery and abuses experienced by the Iraqis and everyone else under U.S. occupation is reduced to an argument over who cares more for the troops, us or Bush.

I saw this article awhile ago I found it interesting and provocative. i think it takes on new meaning after Falluja and the torture stories/photos

I don't know the original source, since you haven't included a link, but this reads a lot like some of the stuff Hanity types commission to spatter all liberals with, something Sullivan would just looove to use as bait on some left leaning message board or another.

Aside from the wacky comparison between the "occupation" of Puerto Rico and the Occupation of Iraq, this is Target Brand anti-war stuff. Sort of uninteresting eighth grade sloganeering.

The Iraq occupation and resulting horror is a tragedy, and to compare it to Puerto Rico, whose most oppressed resident is dozens of times less likely to die than the safest Fallujan, trivializes the nightmare Chimp created in Iraq.

bombings nuclear waste rapes by the navy . any way i posted because i wanted to play devis advocate and see what every body thought