Supporting the Troops

This is the Left's definition of "supporting" the troops:

--We support their right to avoid service in Iraq.

--We support their right to be considered victims of the Bushtatorship perpetual war machine.

--We support higher taxes to equip them and train them for some theoretical military mission that is never the one they are fighting at the moment.

--We support their right to legal counsel when they are charged with war crimes--which they do all the time in the middle of the night. They do tend to use that equipment and training that we say they don't have to kill innocents. But that is the fault of the Bushatorship.

--We support their right to better education so they won't get stuck in Iraq.

--We support their right to higher pay although sadly that just makes them mercenaries in our view.

--We support our troops even though we think the so-called enemy has justifiable grievances.

--We support our troops even though the mere presence of our troops in Iraq is the real problem.

--We support our troops even though we sincerely believe they are just creating more terrorists.

--We support our troops even though we believe Moslem Arabs just aren't ready for democracy.

--We support the right of our troops to have their coffins filmed as they arrive in America.

These are the ways our Left "supports" our troops.

The troops themselves aren't fooled by this faux support. (Tip to Instapundit.)

It is all a progression. And it doesn't take many on the Left to move the terms of the debate. Most politicians just go with the flow and when they think the flow is where the Left says it is, these members of Congress just go along with the Left. Our press tells them that meekly following the Left is really an act of "courage." But the progression has moved steadily towards promoting defeat led by the Left and cheered by the press. And this is true despite the record of progress we have achieved.

First the Left voted for the war in Iraq and voted the money to fight it even as they sniped at various plastic turkey mistakes. And they said they support the troops.

Then the Left said the war was being fought incompetently and that we needed to fight it better (see plastic turkeys), but voted the money to fight the war. And Abu Ghraib showed that our troops were killing and abusing innocent Iraqis. But they support the troops.

Then the Left regretted the war altogether and said we should get out of Iraq because the President wouldn't listen to their suggestions, but they voted to fund the war. And we are just killing innocent Iraqis. Oh, but they support the troops.

Now the Left wants to end the war as soon as possible (as if our withdrawal would end the war) because Iraqis are dying in large numbers in a purely internal civil war. And the Left suggests hamstringing the war direction or cutting funding. But they support the troops.

We are in a race against time to win before the Left gets to the next stage.

The next stage will be to set lower and lower limits to our troop strength in Iraq by reducing funding levels. Limits on what we can do will be mandated, too. We shall see if the veto will withstand this effort. And of course, all this will be done by the Left because they support the troops and just want to save them from a losing war against freedom fighters who simply want to be free of our troops who were regrettably sent by the Bushtatorship to kill and torture innocent Iraqis. War crime trials against our troops will be necessary to support them. And spitting on them will really be just a form of tough love symbolizing the Left's deep support of the troops.

The Left supports the troops only as much as they think they have to in order to avoid offending too large a segment of the political center. The Left by its actions attempts to erode that political center in order to be free to lower their support for the troops in yet another concrete fashion even as they say the words "we support the troops" over and over like a religious chant to ward off the demons who might prevent them from ruling us.

Our troops aren't fooled by the words. They know--as I do--that their mission is just and good and that they fight with skill and honor under difficult circumstances. The Left may protest that some of their best friends are troops, but the Left despises the troops. Well, they despise our troops anyway.

True support for the troops would mean we recognize that achieving victory in the Iraq campaign is a good thing. Anything else is just political spin.

But in their plan, the Left knows that one day they can simply stop pretending to support the troops. After all, people forgot about the last time the Left spit on the troops. Why, the Left thinks, will it be any different in the future?

I think we will win this war despite the Left's plan to lose and use that loss to catapult them to total power. But don't be confused about what the Left's "support" for the troops really means.

UPDATE: One good thing about the moving middle that follows trends is that the Left will lose them when trends in Iraq look good (as polls have shown following significant events like elections in Iraq). It is a race between the Coalition winning in fact and our Congress faltering due to the belief we are/deserve to be losing. I think we will win that race. But it is a race.