What Is Supporting The Troops?

Run time: 03:38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MntqBFS9SGI   Posted on YouTube: November 01, 2007 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: November 02, 2007 By DU Member: Plisko Views on DU: 1106

 
I made this video as a way of putting my thoughts together about what it really means to support the troops. We all know that if the mission is a good one that supporting them is to do whatever it takes to get the job done. If this mission is bad, however, supporting them may mean taking a much harder road.

Congress has to authorize a military operation but once the troops are committed, only the President can take them out of harms way. My question is what if the President ends up being negligent? At what point, if ever, does supporting the troops mean that the people need to trump the President's power over them?

I'd love to hear what people think.

Great work!

:party: WELCOME TO DU!! :party:

that was great - I wish my ignorant in-laws could see this.

Well said!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=t8xufsr2log

We are supposed to watch their backs!

Lyon I love that video! I've been wanting to see something like that for a while. Thanks. I think I'll be right at home here.

Rec!

Thanks. Send this off to Pelosi and friends so that they too might understand how the system works. Peace, Kim

One could argue that a General would be putting his/her job on the line for refusing to do so, but even if the President "orders" a General to say things are going well, the General does not HAVE to say things are going well. On it's own, it would not be a lawful order.

The exception would be that an order to lie would be given to protect the integrity and/or the security of a mission (large or small) or to aid in the mission's successful outcome. I am certain I open up a whole can of worms with that statement and I may well get flamed here but that is why I added the caveat "on it's own, it would not be a lawful order."

As a prior Marine I can tell you that from my own experience we never felt "unsupported" by those who opposed war, even the most vocal ones. In fact, we would quite often welcome the watchdog aspect of it. However, for us it became very different when the form of opposition either demoralized (very difficult to do)or insulted the troops (very easy to do) or far worse than that, encouraged the enemy and helped with their recruiting and motivational efforts.

In your post you asked what people think. Honest critique? Your video plays very well and you make your point passionately. Bravo. However, to those of us who know, you also passionately display your lack of knowledge about the military, the way we think and the way we define and live out things like "orders", "chain of command", and "mission". I assure you that when we take the oath we do not spend the rest of our time in the service as zombies or blood slaves and suddenly stop when we get out. We are a little bit smarter than you seem to give us credit.

And believe me when I tell you that we knew exactly how to get information out through back channels when we felt something needed fixing and was not being addressed.

I have been hanging around DU for quite a while. I check in every day and read, but I post very little. I welcome you and wish you well.

Thank you for giving me your insight into your military experience. I guess all I can say is that every military person I have spoken to indicates that your first duty is to the orders (legal ones of course). You don't tell your commander that what they want you to do is a bad idea. . . or if you do and the commander says go anyway. . you say yes sir. It has been described to me as a duty to go and die if your are ordered to. GI is often interpreted as "Government Issue." That is where the "blood slave" idea came from.

This is not to say that anyone is unintelligent. Please forgive me if I leave that impression. I was just trying to describe the idea of duty trumping ones own personal feelings. Everything I have learned about military culture has pointed to this. My purpose was to begin with the assumption that the troops can be ordered into a bad situation without being able to publicly protest about it. It's not that they suddenly start thinking when they get out. It's that we on the outside often don't know what they are thinking when they are in. If this is incorrect then I have some re-editing to do.

I agree completely that there is such a thing as illegal orders. But I think a president can order a general to accomplish a great many politically deceptive things without it being illegal, including putting words in his mouth. There are examples of that already. In my example, ordering a general to say a war is going well is not, in itself, illegal unless it is a very dire situation. It seems like there is a lot of gray area there where a General can believe he is fulfilling his duty by shuffling around numbers and statistics without thinking any of it is actually illegal.

Thanks again.

And I am glad to hear from someone with your abilities to reason and your depth of concern.

I live in a rural area and from many in this area, it's a daily crescendo of "Support our President. Support the Troops. Even if you don't support the war."

And the equation they imply is simple: "Support" and be loyal or else you are unpatriotic.

I have had far better conversations with the sort of person that was talking to me about Iraq yesterday. We were both pumping gas for our vehicles. He'd started the conversation - I was reluctant, as he had a VFW sticker on his pickup.

But as a Vietnmam era vet, he saw no reason for this war. And he is very upset over the fact that there is no apparent strategy or even mission set forth from the Commander in Chief.

Yet there are very high re-enlist numbers in this area. Some parents have told me that their child would not have re-upped except that they felt the newer service people deserved the "old hands" there to instruct them. That their child firmly believes that if newer people instruct the newest people, more will die. SO they go back to help new arrivals avoid death (perhaps)

How can they speak out? Isn't it true that if they send off a letter to the New York Times, and are critical in that letter of everyone from the President on down, that they could face serious consequences??

This was a blog post of mine from a few years ago. It may get me flamed but it may give some insight to the motivation behind my last post. I wrote it the day after the initial push into Iraq started. Enjoy. Ha! :-)



Last night, while discussing the war, I was reminded of a conversation I had a little more than four years ago.
In March of 2003 on one of the first few days of the Iraq invasion, I was sitting in the snug at Sean Donlon’s watching the news with an old friend of mine. Often the two of us joke about how we served in the Marine Corps together some 26 years ago. It is technically true because we were in the same Battalion but the joke is that the Battalion was 1st Battalion at Paris Island where I was a recruit in boot camp and he was a Drill Instructor in another platoon. I would see him in the chow hall and on the grinder but we did not know each other at the time and never served together after that. We didn’t become friends until shortly after we both separated from the service. It turns out we are from the same hometown and we have been best of friends since.
As we sat there sipping beer and intently watching the news for any update or progress report on the initial push toward Baghdad we were approached by two women and a man, all in there twenties. They had overheard portions of our conversation and knew we were Marines of some sort.
As everyone knows, during the weeks previous to the invasion there had been a great deal of debate and discussion on the news and endless arguing from one side or the other. The guy in the group that approached us politely asked us, “What do you think about all this?”
“It appears to be going well so far,” I replied.
“No, I mean what do you think of us going in there?”
My friend, trying to watch a news report at the same time, gestured toward the TV and answered, “Well, it seems pretty complicated but right now is not the time for us to analyze it.”
Seemingly surprised by that answer one of the women asked, “Would you go?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Would you go over there and invade with them?”
Still not really understanding what she meant, I smiled and said, “Well, we are a little too old for them to take us. Not too old if we had stayed in but having been out for a while we are too old for them to take the time to retrain us on all of the new equipment.”
Sounding a little exasperated at my lack of understanding she said, “No, I mean would you go over there and invade with them or would you, like, go to Canada or something?” (She really did say “like”)
We were both a little bit stunned and looked at each other and laughed. I just smiled and simply said, “Yes. Of course we would go.”
Apparently not noticing the dismissive tone of our laughs and smiling she persisted and said, “Really? I can’t believe that.”
My friend stopped smiling and in the most polite tone of voice summed up our feelings perfectly by saying, “Honey, I’d carry their water.”
“You would what?”
“I’d carry their water,” he repeated.
“What do you mean by that?” she said.
“I mean, if my phone rang tomorrow and they said “we need you” I would pack my trash and get on the bus. Even if the need was to simply carry water up to the guys doing the fighting.”

That, folks, describes perfectly the feelings of those of us who have served in the past and are not there with them now. It doesn’t matter if we are for or against the war. It is not because we want to go kill people or die ourselves. It is simply because good, no, Great Marines are doing the job and we would do anything, and I mean anything to help them in any way we can. In our hearts we walk with them on patrols, take chest thumping pride in their successes and weep with them in their losses.

There is a poster out now that shows a picture of a Soldier down on one knee and the print reads “The task ahead of you is never as great as the power behind you.” Of course this is referring to God.
For every Marine on the battlefield there are a 100,000 “old guys” like my friend and I standing behind God standing behind them saying, “I’d carry their water.”

Semper Fidelis-God, Country, Corps.

Yes there are high re-enlistment numbers in all of the services! I was one of them. My guys looked at me like the "old guy who came back"!

I am done with my service now.

But, if you read my last post you may understand that whether we believe in it or not, we all shoot in the same direction and when you are faced with that situation the only thing that matters is the guy next to you.

I wrote that blog entry at the beginning, went over later and I am still a fan of what I wrote before I left.

My only wish is that more folks who spend there time here at this site (I log in every day) could spend an extended period of time there. Not to change their opinion or to put them in harm's way, but to give them a better understanding of what is actually happening. We all piss and moan about the MSM. Believe me they are not getting it right!

My brother is there now. Believe it or not, he calls me more now than when he was here in the states. He is an old guy as well, so he gets access to a phone more than most of the people over there. I guess it is good to be the SGT Major! The last call I got from him he was 100 times more upbeat than the previous 40 calls I got from him. So, who knows.

I won't argue that here.

Just please, everyone, don't disparage the guys/gals and don't encourage the enemy. Everything else is really ok.

I really don't see any disagreement between our perspectives so I'm not sure where things didn't work for you in the video. You are talking about loyalty to other Marines, about commitment, about honor. That all begins with orders that are followed. This is all 100% in line with what I think I was trying to say.

What I'm not seeing here is the idea that a given deployment may still be irresponsible and it may be costing lives because of some politicians vanity or greed. In such a case then a very different kind of support would be needed from the civilians wouldn't it?

As I read your blog entry it seems to bypass completely the question of whether the mission is right and jump straight to the loyalty part. That is as it should be from everything I have learned about the military. The orders are the orders. You and your friend don't seem worried about that, you just want to be there helping the others once the orders are followed. Doesn't that bring us back to the "blood servitude?" Don't you want to be over there with them because the other Marines are being forced into that difficult situation as servants of the President and you want to back those guys up and help keep them alive as they go through it? Would it or would it not be support if the citizens got active and changed things so that those other marines were able to be drinking at the bar with you at home rather than you guys carrying water for them somewhere else?

Maybe a better question is this: Is there such a thing to a Marine as loyalty or sacrifice that should be saved for a better day? Or is it wrong for a civilian to try interrupting that loyalty, even if they believe it is being misused by a politician? To hear people talk today, interrupting the chance for a member of the military to be loyal to their orders is a sin in itself no matter what the situation.

That is a hard idea for me to get my head around because the standards for the civilian leadership who control the military seem to be getting lower and lower. George Washington is the only man to have ever ridden at the head of an army marching into battle while serving as a US President. He was putting down a rebellion at home and when they heard he was coming they shit their pants and gave up. We've come a long way down since then. . .


I hope I don't seem like I am trying to challenge you on this. . . I am just trying to understand what you mean.