Support the troops

Joel Stein's op-ed in the LA Times has been blasted by conservative blogs all across the internet. His piece begins with the words "I don't support our troops." My thoughts on his position are a bit mixed. He doesn't support the troops because he doesn't support the war in Iraq. Here are his words:

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition.

There's something to this--although his analysis is dangerously simplistic. I believe that there are many people who would not have gone into Iraq but, now that we're there, support a successful end to the mission and, of course, support those soldiers who will carry out the mission. On the other hand, I think some of the rhetoric against the war by many Democrats has been so harsh that it's very difficult to reconcile the comments with a position of supporting the troops. I have a hard time understanding how you can support the troops and not support what they are doing now. And I recognize that there is a huge difference between supporting what they are doing (something all Americans should do) and disagreeing with the decisions that led to their deployment (something we should vigorously debate).

All this brings me to another statement Mr. Stein makes:

The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.

The idea that the soldier pulling the trigger is ultimately responsible for whatver death or injury might result is ludicrous. Assuming the soldier is acting under command (which is almost always the case) the buck stops with the Commander in Chief. In other words, the commanding officers are "ultimately" responsible. The soldier is bound to follow orders and do everything within his ability to carry out the mission assigned to him. Any moral outrage should be directed towards those who give the orders--not the one's who are bound by law and duty to carry out those orders. Mr. Stein then assumes that all of our troops are "ignoring their morality." This is an odd statement. It presupposes that all the troops are (or should be) morally opposed to what they're doing. This in turn presupposes that they're all bound by the same moral code, which raises the entirely serarate issue of whether we are bound to a universal morality. His statement also seems to suggest that soldiers and not their COs should be the ones to decide what they do. This begs, as he acknowledges, ineffeciency. It also begs chaos--a state that would lead to an America left protected by a military armed more with moral autonomy than with might. But I suppose that this would be a liberal's dream: a military that favors moral pontification more than the use of force to advance American "imperialism"--as Mr. Stein calls it.

In response to this column, Michelle Malkin has proposed 25 ways to ignore Joel Stein and support our troops.