What it Means to Support Our Troops

One well-intended, but misconceived notion:
"The troops only concern is the mission. So if you don't support the mission, you don't support the troops."

This is perhaps one of the most mismade quasi-syllogisms I've ever seen. Premise #1 is probably wrong, but it depends upon how one interprets what the mission actually is (Bush has changed the definition of the mission several times as the situation has devolved). Premise #2 also depends upon what the mission is. And the conclusion, following these two undefined premises, becomes meaningless. The only way for the syllogism to work is to define the terms or to assume they take their most abstract meaning--that the mission is whatever the President happens to have directed them to do most recently (to be honest, though I attend to these matters, I have a sense, but am not entirely clear as to what that is). But, then it follows that, in order to support the troops, one is obliged to support any foreign policy the President determines to adopt. The problem with this awkward caravan of reasoning is that it works just as effectually for those Iranians who defend Ahmadinejad's foreign policy or for supporters of any dictator or war criminal you may wish randomly to select. The American dream of America transcends these nations, must transcend them if it is to have any particular value beyond the "petty ephemeral babble of politics and national self-seeking" in which all other nations so shamelessly and exclusively engage.

Policies incompetent or corrupt in nature deserve criticism and ought to benefit by it; nor will the wise and courageous among men neglect their charge to provide it. If the President has any use, he will distinguish smoke from fire, and he will leave the smoke to disperse itself, but he will transmute this fire, at his own forge, into his own new-hammered sword wherewith to smite his enemies foreign and domestic.