We've heard it time and time again (but only when the president is a Republican, of course): when you criticize the war, you're hurting the troops. Is it true? No, says Fox News military analyst
Greg Kelly in the New York Times (yes, free registration required):
In this election season, however, an almost equally absurd caricature of the American warrior is emerging - that of a hyperpolitical, ultrasensitive creature whose morale rises and falls with every modulation in the debate back home over the progress of the war in Iraq ...
In all of [my service], the morale of the units I served in or beside was never determined by politicians, pundits or the press. High or low, the spirits of our men and women in Iraq stem from more mundane concerns. They ponder the same problems that Americans have back home, only with their quiet moments occasionally punctuated by unthinkable worry: Do I like the people I work with? Who will be killed next? Why is the e-mail system down again? Would I rather be mutilated by an improvised bomb or captured?
An excellent piece demonstrating elegantly why the Right is full of it when they whine about you "hurting military morale" by exercising your capacity to think and debate.