A thought on wars and cheerleading

When Iraq War supporters accuse critics of Bush's Iraq policies of failing to "support the troops," they are repeating claims similar to those often made in wars.  It seems particularly vapid from most Iraq War supporters because as, Jules Witcover observes, most of them are asked to do very little in concrete terms to support the troops (Politics at the pump Baltimore Sun 07/27/05):

... in this war in which sacrifice seems confined to those who fight it and their families, President Bush continues to ask little of average Americans except to keep going about their business as usual. ...

A good part of [Bush's] exercise has been his ability to convince a pliant public of the false view that the enemy he attacked in Iraq more than two years ago was the same one that caused the unforgettable havoc of 9/11.

So, as those cylinders on the nation's gas pumps spin higher and higher prices for the stuff that drives the guzzlers, uncomplaining Americans keep digging deep, or routinely insert their credit cards at the pump in what may seem a less painful way to pay the tribute exacted by the Middle East oil producers.

And through it all, the president keeps telling us not to worry, and to invest our Social Security payroll taxes in the stock market.

Actually, the opinion polls show that much of the public is no longer convinced about the phony claim about an Iraq-9/11 connection.  And, of course, a substantial portion of the public never was.

But his point about the Republican way of war is a good one.  Since most people are not being asked for sacrifice in the Iraq War, it's relatively easy for Republican war fans to convince themselves that a "Support Our Troops" bumper sticker is actually doing something important for the war effort.

Conversely, it's relatively easy for them to claim that the troops' morale is being damaged by anyone who criticizes torture in the Bush Gulag, or who says it was a terrible thing for Bush to take the country to war with bogus claims of  weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

So this comment in a paper by Anthony Cordesman - a supporter of Bush's stay-the-course policy in the Iraq War - on the morale of combat troops:

Here's the link: http://www.csis.org/features/050628_IraqisForces.pdf. At the time I'm posting this, the Web site of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is down for maintenance.  Cordesman:

Regardless of the quality of training and equipment, and the political and ideological conditions shaping a war, men who are thrust into combat or high risk operations only function well if they have proven leaders they feel that they can trust. Their primary motivation also ultimately comes to be how they feel about the other men in their units, how important the approval of their peers is in crisis and combat, and how confident they are that their unit will do everything possible to support and protect them.

Nothing about whether good Republican white folks who wouldn't dream of volunteering to fight in Bush's War in Iraq are sporting patriotic bumper-stickers on their SUVs.