"I Don't Support Our Troops!"

I have mixed feelings - believe it or not - about this column by Joel Stein in today's LA Times:

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Stein does *not* support the troops, and makes no bones about it.

Needless to say, I don't agree with Stein's opinion. But at least he's honest enough to give it. This is completely different from the lip service many leftists in academia, for example, pay to the troops, while trying to bar ROTC units from college campuses.

Over and over we hear from liberal Democrats that they can't get their message out, and that's what's behind their dismal showings in the latest round of elections. The truth of the matter is that the liberal message is getting out, in spite of their best efforts to fool the public that they're something that they're not. It's hard for an impartial observer to look at the NSA spying "scandal" and come away with the sense that the Democrats, if they were in charge, would do as much to thwart the Jihadists.

So, I thank Stein for breaking the silence for the left - and reminding us why they have no business leading the country in a time of war.

Extra! Hear Hugh Hewitt's radio interview with Stein here.

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Thanks for the link!

Mark in Mexico