That is the subject of the column headlined "Warriors and Wusses," written by LA Times columnist Joel Stein, which appeared in Tuesday's Times. "I'm sure I'd like the troops," writes Stein, likening them to gutsy gamblers he would "want to hang with ... in Vegas." "I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops," he says, telling them to continue to "load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of."
"Blindly lending support to our soldiers ...will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there," Stein continues. "Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops." The real reason for them "is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices."
He says that the blame for the situation in Iraq should not fall on the shoulders of the American people who "failed to object to a war we barely understood"; nor should anyone blame the representatives who voted for the war, for they were "deceived by false intelligence." Stein even calls blaming the president "a little too easy." "The truth is," he says, "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."
"When you volunteer for the U.S. military," he says, "you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-stein24jan24,0,4137172.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
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