[crossposted at
Preemptive Karma]
During our years of schooling most of us at one time or another were required to write essays in which we had to regurgitate our beliefs on a topic. This morning on CSPAN, a series of callers did their best to imitate those essays. And the topic was patriotism.
Predictably, call-ins ranged from the It's My Country, Love It Or Leave It to the its incumbent upon us to criticize everything rants.
So what does it really mean to be a patriot? Clearly there are varying degrees of ideas that fall within the ranges of the notions outlined by the CSPAN poles. It occurs to me that many of my fellow citizens however confuse dissent with disloyalty. The Republican Party has worked hard to take advantage of this conflation in an effort to demonize those of us who have spoken out against the war in Iraq.
The logical conclusion of the notion that the leftist dissent against the war is disloyalty is
"the Left wants us to lose" the war in Iraq. A prime example of this belief set was outlined by commentor "Thomas" on my blog post
If you don't agree with the Iraq War, it's your fault we're losing. Thomas says:
Meyer is using a vapid analogy to say several things. We are in this war together as a country. Like it or not, we voted and determined, as a country, to engage in this war. Even putting aside the issue of the pre-war intelligence we all owe it to our troops to fully support them in the battle they are engaged in not in re-fighting the decision that sent them there.
What many Republicans fear is that the Left is not engaged in serious criticism of the war but rather in revisiting the decision to go to war itself. They appear to R's to be hypocritically both gloating over the losses at the same time they wring their hands over them. They suddenly pretend to speak for the troops they ignore during peacetime.
The losses we have suffered are not militarily out of line with what we would reasonably expect from this type of engagement. The left warned of many, many more losses just in the "hot" or conventional aspect to the conflict. Do you recall the dire warnings from the left that Saddam would uses WMDs against our troops? They were dramatically wrong.
Now we are engaged in a unconventional struggle in which the actual target of the enemy is the mind of the American public. Militarily the enemy has no chance of defeating us. They are targeting the Will of the American public. The left wants us out, the hard left wants us our regardless of the consequences. In other words they both support the goal of our enemy. The only question is the internal one of motivation.
The Left, in Meyer's analogy is the whining woman who is determined to ruin the vacation. It may be a vapid analogy, but its actually more pleasant than the blunt truth - the Left wants the US to lose (and celebrates US losses) to validate its political position. Its too bad that Meyer did not put a child in the back seat who could cry "Are we there yet?" every two seconds.
There are a number of shaky premises here that Thomas uses to build his point, which I'll address momentarily. But the thrust of what he's saying is clear: Leftists speaking out against the war are only doing so for political gain. There is no possible way that their points have any moral or ethical merit..because dissent is disloyalty.
What Thomas likely doesn't consider in reaching this conclusion is, if the left is using the foibles of the war for political gain...then the right is doing the same thing. If the right can stand up and tout the war (and surround themselves with soldiers and flags for photo ops) as a plank for their electability...then why is it bad for the left to demonstrate that the war is going poorly and was the wrong thing to do so therefore new leadership is needed?
Additionally, the country as a whole didn't vote to engage in this war. Our senators voted to give the President authority to go into Iraq based on very specific criteria..which the President didn't meet. Bush abused the authority given to him on Iraq by the Senate. Had Bush followed through on the promises made to the Senate when given that authority we might not be in this mess.
The best way we can support our troops is to be honest with them. Our nation has been ambivalent about this war from the beginning..and now that the premises for going to war have turned out to be nonexistent, support is eroding quickly. We can't keep flag waving and cheering a policy that isn't working and that's damaging our nation. Our troops know this as well as every other American citizen. Support the troops, indeed.
Several leaders on the left have developed plans to disengage ourselves from Iraq. Many on the left believe that the only reason we're in Iraq is to control the oil resources. That's not a good enough reason to send our soldiers into harm's way. Many believe that the right is attempting to smokescreen their actual reasons for going to war in order to retain power and line the coffers of their campaign donors. "Weapons of Mass Destruction" was an excuse to get us there..and waving the flag is an excuse to keep us there.
Many of my fellow citizens who embrace conservative ideology seem to believe that patriotism is demonstrated by an unfettered and unwavering flag salute and a hearty "Hoo-Yah!". In my view this is nothing more than theatre.
Patriotism is working to make your country a place where you want to live and raise your family. It's taking pride in that place you've built and working to sustain it for future generations.
Dissent is how we voice our disagreement when we believe our nation isn't heading in the right direction. The right did it often under Clinton..even when our soldiers were in harm's way (remember the right's charges of "wag the dog"?). The right had no problem working to undermine those policies of Clinton that they believed were damaging the direction of the country..even when soldiers were in the battlefield.
Under Bush...the right hypocritically wails about the left's same dissent under which the President has put us in a vastly more shaky circumstance then Clinton ever thought of.
Dissent is not disloyalty. In fact...dissent is the highest form of patriotism. It's speaking out even when its unpopular to do so.