catapult magazine

Heidi_n_seek’s recent post on another thread reminded of me of one of my pet peeves. Here’s the quote:

My thoughts and prayers go out to the soldiers sitting in Iraq today instead of home with their families, serving their country. Whether you agree with the war, or whether you don’t….these soldiers need your prayers today and everyday.

I respect Heidi_n_seek’s position but I take issue with her when she says that whichever side of this issue you fall on, your attitude toward the soldiers should be essentially the same.

I see soldiers as mercenaries who work for governments. When I disagree with what the government is doing with its soldiers I don’t feel the need to make this stark distinction between "the bad government" and the "good soldier". If the soldier is ordered to do bad things and she goes ahead and does those bad things, then I’m against the soldier too, not just the government. I always feel worse for the suffering invaded people than for the well-paid, well-protected invaders.

Anybody offended by that?

I’m not offended personally, I guess, but I’m perplexed why you would find blame with an individual U.S. soldier when you keep talking about how social/political change is where it’s at? If you really believe that all problems are the result of political wrongdoing and/or can be corrected with political action, how can you blame individual soldiers for the political system that they’re caught up in? A belief in politics would logically lead to the idea that the "murdering" U.S. soldier is merely a result of the political entity (The Bush Administration) that brought it into being.

Or are you presenting the argument that the Adolf Eichmanns of the world must not be allowed to go free just because they were cogs in Hitler’s machine? Somehow the American soldier example seems different than that of Eichmann, but I’m not prepared to offer concretes as of yet…

yeah, it’s different because we’re not talking about Nazi Germany, but I do believe that people are responsible for their own actions to a certain degree. Of course there are things none of us can control, but I do believe that all people have some agency and some moral responsibility.

I don’t blame every American soldier for everything, but why not let your position on the soldiers depend on your position on government policy? If the policy is good, support the troops. If the policy is bad, don’t support the troops. Opposition to violence and war is eroded by the constant and unrelenting insistance on differentiating the good soldier from the bad policy. I’m opposed to the barbaric tribalism that makes our soldier into a cuddly teddy bear, and their suffering victims into faceless statistics and irrational lawbreakers.

Just so y’all know this doesn’t just apply to the USA, I’ll take a Canadian example. Canada is part of a US led NATO Mission in Iraq and currently has a few more than 2000 troops occupying the Kandahar area. Let me be clear, I always thought that the Afghanistan invasion was relatively justified in light of the Taliban connection to 9-11, relative to Iraq that is. On the other hand, I feel that this occupation is simply a continuation of centuries of Western meddling in this region. All that to say my feelings toward Canada’s presence in Afghanistan are unambiguously ambiguous. Similarly my feelings toward Canadian soldiers there are ambiguous. I’m not particularly against them and I’m not particularly in support of them. This approach makes sense to me, but I don’t think I’m in the majority.