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Originally Posted by theknife
that the annual cost of this war might be cheaper than a plasma tv to the average household is a consolation that escapes me completely
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Sorry, that was the first thing that came to mind when I was writing. Maybe a better comparison would be the cost of a year's worth of gasoline for a two car family. To the average family, sending $135 a month overseas for a war effort means foregoing the little luxuries for a while: maybe driving a little less, maybe waiting to buy that new TV. You might not be consoled even if you knew that money was being spent to improve the lives of millions of people, as well as buying better armor and equipment for our troops to make them safer, but you're not going to starve for the want of $31 a week.
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"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu.
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I don't know that any self respecting American would dare demoralize or endanger the lives of our troops. But I know there are a few self hating Americans, and once in a while they do make a lot of noise.
Here is one example. I'll bet these are the kinds of people whom the American Legion are interested in silencing, and I see nothing wrong with that. People who want to put an end to the war in order to save the lives of those troops and bring them home safely, on the other hand, have every right to make all the noise they want.
Everyone wants consensus, that's what this whole discussion is about. You can't force people to agree with you, but you can make concessions for the sake of unity as long as being right all the time isn't the most important thing for you. The war is loosing support here at home, and we're comming to a consensus as a result. So the real issue isn't whether we get out of Iraq but when. We all want the occupation to end as soon as possible, that much is certain. There's no reason to stay there a day longer than we have to.
I don't see this as a war on dissent so much as a disagreement on the timetable for an already agreed upon withdrawal. The problem is that most people don't know what has to happen for a peaceful retreat to occur. I'm not a military strategist, and neither is anybody here as far as I know. Likewise, most people don't know what kind of shape Iraq would be in if we left too soon or stayed too long. The fact that a majority of Americans want an immediate withdrawal means squat because, God love 'em, they really don't know what they're talking about.
At any rate, I won't support a hasty pull-out any more than you supported a rush to war. I think that if we've learned anything from this whole thing it's that getting all in a hurry to do something never yields the desired results. I always say 'there's always time to do it right.'