Support the troops

The old line about supporting the troops has been wheeled out on both sides of the Atlantic this week. In the UK, the government fought off calls in parliament for an inquiry into the Iraq war, with Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett saying that to hold such an inquiry now would be to send a negative message to British troops in Iraq who deserve “our support”. In the US, after John Kerry warned students that failing to get a good education could get you “stuck in Iraq”, the Republicans fell over themselves to pretend that Kerry - a decorated Vietnam vet - had been saying that US troops are uneducated (perhaps revealing the real Republican view of their nation’s soldiers), when in fact he’d been referring to the President. In both cases the governments that started the Iraq war demand of their opponents: do you support the troops?

Two things to say about this.

Firstly, sending people to their deaths (or to suffer serious crippling injury) on the basis of falsehoods does not constitute supporting them. Sending people to their deaths in an illegal war of aggression does not constitute supporting them. Sending people to their deaths in a war designed for no greater purpose than to consolidate and extend US power does not constitute supporting them. Using those troops who’ve survived to emotionally blackmail anyone who questions your actions does not constitute supporting them. Blocking discussion of how to deal with the lethal situation that those troops are facing on the basis that it might harm your career does not constitute supporting them. Conducting yourself in this fashion does not reveal a high regard or concern for those uniformed angels you eulogise in mawkish political speeches. It reveals a deeply held contempt for them, their lives and their families.

It need not be pointed out that people generally oppose unnecessary wars on the grounds that they tend to cause a good deal of unnecessary death. Opposition to war is born of a belief in the value of all human life. Its very root cause, its raison d'etre, is concern for the troops and all the other potential victims. In a rational debate this would not need to be said.

This brings me to the second point. It should be understood that “support the troops” like so much of political discourse, is not an attempt at a logical argument or an appeal to reason. After all, the position does not stand up to a moment’s rational scrutiny, as I’ve demonstrated. Rational debate must therefore be avoided. “Support the troops” is a PR riff akin to McDonald’s “I’m loving it”. It is an appeal to emotion designed to imbue the speaker with a positive glow. On rational, intellectually or factual grounds, it’s the equivalent of ‘me good'.

Actually, its more sophisticated than that. Its the equivalent of ‘me good, you bad’. Because pontificating about your support for the troops is rather like saying you’re against terror, pro family, pro life etc. The vacuousness is shown by considering the opposite: ‘I don’t support the troops’, ‘I’m pro terror’, ‘I’m against families’, ‘I’m anti life’. Yet these contrary opinions are, either implicitly or explicitly, projected by the speaker onto their opponents (‘…if you don’t agree then….’), placing those opponents on the back foot and forcing them to apologise for themselves before they’ve begun to make their own arguments.

The aim is to drown out debate through shrill emotional sloganeering. It's straightforward political cynicism - an art taken to new levels by the US Republicans and our own New Labour. When you consider that lives end or continue as a result of what policies emerge from what essentially a faked ‘debate’, then you have the measure of the people who indulge in games like these.