<p>Hereshoping: Nice try. This is an attempt to see the Iraq War and how the soldiers are treated through the prism of Vietnam. It’s a bunch of baloney. As in an earlier post below, regurgitated here in all it’s longwindedness, many who have been against this war recognize how poorly Vietnam vets were treated. It’s just not the case with Iraq. And wouldn’t your concern be more adequately directed at getting out of harm’s way our poor soldiers who are going out on the streets of Iraq every day without knowing around which corner an enemy will be or under which bag an IED is placed – for no worthwhile purpose?</p>
<p>"A lot of the concern about not supporting the troops, as I have understood it, is that we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam. There were soldiers who came home from that war and they were spat at, reviled, treated horribly by people who felt they should have shown moral courage by going AWOL or otherwise resisting the draft and their duties. These people went through the grinder of Vietnam and came home to find themselves abused. I have always thought that a lot of the POW-MIA movement grew out of the guilt some people felt this happened.</p>
<p>Anyway, it is a rather crass and gross misrepresentation of people like me who were against this war from before the beginning to say that we all are liberal pansies or disloyal or inadequate patriots. Or even that we are pacifists all. </p>
<p>The media, I felt, has fed this perception, that people are either anti-war or behind this war. I am not anti-war. I am anti-stupid-war. It didn’t take a genius to see that fighting in a Muslim land where there are ethnic and religious divisions and no history of civil society or democracy – it didn’t take a genius to see this was going to be a difficult if not impossible nation-building exercise. To say the least.</p>
<p>I was 100% for the troops. I wanted them to stay home and not be sent on this fool’s errand. If I see a soldier in an airport I am in, I am friendly and respectful and wish them well. One time I got into a long discussion and did fess up to being against this war, but I didn’t rub it in the soldier’s face. There’s nothing he could do.</p>
<p>Anybody who upholds this dichotomy of either you are for this war or against the troops should stop calling themselves educated. You, many of you, are on this board to send your kids to avoid the kind of shoddy thinking that that implies. Maybe you need to go back to college, if you can’t see beneath that rhetoric. And by the way, I am not pointing at anyone in particular, so much as the posting of this title as if it should be that a difficult concept to sort out (though it’s not entirely clear what the original poster was exactly trying to say). It’s not. "</p>
<p>Stop the shoddy analogies, hereshoping. They cloud the real issues, and only some rarified kooky faction really believes them anyway.</p>