PrintMarch 13, 2008
Some refreshing candor from a liberal
Yesterday, I highlighted David Mamet's brilliant essay on why he is no longer a liberal.
Oakland resident Kenneth J. Theisen an organizer with the "World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime" group reveals in this Op Ed what Mamet was running away from:
In the recent political battle around the Marine recruiting station in Berkeley there has been much confusion around the concept or slogan of “supporting the troops,” but opposing the unjust wars of the Bush regime. Many who oppose the Bush regime wars also say they “support the troops.” Let me say it straight out—I do not support the troops and neither should you. It is objectively impossible to support the troops of the imperialist military forces of the U.S. and at the same time oppose the wars in which they fight.Thiesen maintains that support for US "hegemony" in the world should prevent people from supporting the troops. He also actively opposes the recruitment of men and women into the military.
The United States has over 700 military bases or sites located in over 130 foreign countries. The hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in these countries are not there to preserve or foster freedom and democracy as the Bush regime would like to claim, but to maintain U.S. imperialist domination of the world. The United States now spends more on its military than all the other nations of the world combined.
If you “support the troops” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other more than 100 countries in which they are located, you also objectively support U.S. hegemony in the world.
Finally! A liberal who has decided to speak the truth. For most of the left, "supporting the troops while opposing the war" has been a cover for what has been an anti-military bias referred to by Mamet in his piece the Village Voice and a belief that has been part and parcel of leftist thought since the 1960's.
If there any doubts that the left simply uses "support the troops" as a fig leaf, consciously employing the theme because they recognize what damage their hatred of the troops did to the anti-war cause back during Viet Nam, read Kyle-Anne Shiver's piece today in AT about the upcoming "Winter Soldiers II" gathering to take place this weekend.
Can we call them unpatriotic now?
