Can you support the troops and not the war?

Re: Mark Denney, support for war’s false premise not same support for troops. Mariette Daily Journal, 8/17/06

Mr Denney,
You are not giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Any individual has the right to disagree with anything he wants to in this country. The problem is when persons in the leadership of the country make statements like: (Dick Durban) "... Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others—that had no concern for human beings." Or
(John Kerry) "And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women,.." And others.
When and individual disagrees with a policy or action, he is merely exercising his constitutional right to free speech. When a party leader makes statements like "Bush Lied and thousands died" it is no longer simply free speech. And before anyone screams, they DO have that right. The problem is that in the rest of the world, including the enemy locations, it is seen as disunity. Any disunity seen by the enemy emboldens them. Clearly, that has been shown to have been true in the liberal war of wars, Vietnam. General Giap has so stated in his memoirs.
Is it treason? Of course not. Is it something that helps the troops? NO. Does it harm the troops? I would say so, but if you ask the troops they strongly say it does. You don't have to be silent. You do have an obligation to chastise the national leaders that appear to speak for you when they make over the top statement.
Yes, Mr. Lanzotti is probably arrogant. I am and you are. We all have opinions. I like to think mine are right and obvious. Possibly not always. In this case, we can debate but I like to think that my opponents in the debate understand the fact that although you can support troops and not support the war, you must not damage their efforts. That is NOT support.
I appreciate the fact that you didn’t use the "Bush Lied" line. You say that most soldiers think they are avenging 9/11. I don’t necessarily think that polling is accurate but to some extent it is in fact, true that this war is revenge. Not against Saddam but against our enemies. 9/11 was a battle. Afghanistan was a battle. Iraq is a battle. The war continues.
No, Saddam did not plot 9/11. No, he didn’t, to our knowledge, fund that attack or train the terrorists. He did fund terrorism(ask the Israelis killed by suicide bombers). Newer documents even indicate he might have been involved is some peripheral way. The more important fact is that Iraq is a battle in the current world war against Islamic Fascists. If you think we are at war in a major way you understand that. If not, you have not yet been convinced. In my opinion, I think that most people will eventually be so convinced. The recent airline plot has shown some that the enemy is still out there.

Letter 25

8/14/06

Hi,
Just wanted to let everyone know what has been going on over here for the last couple of weeks. We just finished up a huge combined operation where the US and Iraqi National Police (INP) swept through several neighborhoods looking for weapons and wanted people. Well, not to say they didn't know we were coming, but there was a note in one house that said " To US forces, this house is clear, please don't break anything". I didn't participate in the house clearing ops, we established security around the neighborhood. We spent at least 12 hours a day patrolling and checking positions and telling Iraqis to put their helmets on. We received machine gun fire one day while we were out and one of our teams was actually attacked by one of the Iraqi checkpoints. The Iraqis thought the Marines were civilians approaching them in the dark of night. One Marine was lightly wounded in the attack, before the Marines were able t o regain control of the Iraqis. The guys responsible were thrown in jail by the Iraqi General. Now we are in recovery ops, basically resting for a couple of days from all of the fun we had and sending up reports and doing all kinds of paperwork, okay, not really resting. Here is a picture of me as we were getting ready to do one of our patrols. It was taken by a Combat Camera crew member who was with us documenting the experience. I have lots of photos of the time they were out with us and a couple of videos that I will have to share with you all. Just wanted to say hello and let everyone know what's going on in Iraq, I'm off to go eat chow, its the first time we haven't had to wear all of our protective gear to eat in 2 months.
84 days left,

Letter 24

8/6/06

Hey everybody,
Just wanted to say hello and hope everyone is doing well. Amy and Kayla are doing good, they are currently in Kentucky visiting with my parents for a couple of weeks, so hopefully most of you will get a chance to see them. I'm doing good, staying busy as always. We should be working on getting out of here and getting everything ready for our replacements, but with the ever changing situation here in Baghdad, we are going to know just about as much as our replacements do. We can let them know how these guys operate and which criminal organization or militia they work for but they are talking about moving us outside of Baghdad and even possibly further down south to Basra, near Kuwait. If that is the case, we will have to pack up and move again with just a few months left in country. There is another rumor that our replacements will be in Iraq at the end of September. Don't get too excited, it doesn't mean we leave at the end of Se ptember. They will have to go to Taji for a week for training before they link up with us, and then the RIP/TOA (relief in place / transfer of authority) is supposed to take about 10 days. So the current rumor is mid October. Of course everything is still subject to change, just letting you all know what I know. Things are going to be really crazy for the next few days to few weeks with a bunch of operations planned, so I will try to write when I can and reply to emails as the opportunity allows. Here is a picture of FOB Falcon (Forward Operating Base) taken from outside of the FOB, something that most people inside Falcon have never seen and a picture of our Team Chief directing traffic. Take care and I hope to hear from you all soon.

Oh! Woe is US!

8/1/06

So many people in the world complaining about the poor civilians being killed in Lebanon. I hate to see innocent people being killed as much as anyone but the questions is how to stop this killing. Per the UN and others of its ilk, we need a cease fire now. In fact, we should be negotiating with Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran about how to make the middle east better-read: how to get rid of Israel.
Israel is a democratically elected friend of the US. I am very proud that our president is allowing the Israelis time to clear some of the terrorist in the world. The question is not how to stop Israel from killing innocents but rather who’s fault it is. I heard reports in the last 2 weeks that Israel was dropping leaflets telling the civilians to leave that they would be bombing. I heard that Hezbollah was preventing that exodus to the point of turning all the people fleeing back to their dangerous homes. I have also heard stories about Hezbollah actually blowing them up to get the exact reaction they got. If these terrorist are not concerned about blowing up themselves they don’t have any qualms about killing 50 or so civilians. They certainly are trying to do that with the unguided rockets they send into Israel on a regular basis.
Remember how this started. Israel was invaded, a group of it’s soldiers killed and some kidnapped. That is an act of war in any country anywhere, anytime. If Mexico started sending random missiles into Texas and then invaded and killed and kidnapped, I would hope the president would retaliate.
This will never end as long as there are those out there that are willing to not only kill but die in order to advance their goals of completely eliminating Israel and once that is done spreading their 12th century culture around the world. As Newt Gingrich stated, we are in World War III. Western culture is in danger. So far few people understand the danger in the world. Not enough! It is not too late. The game is in the early innings. It has been going on with slowly increasing ferocity since the 1980’s. The violence will increase. Unfortunately, it will take another 9-11 or worse to have enough people wake up. At least, I hope that whenever that happens people will wake up.