Not long ago, Barak Obama made his first big public mistake in his presidential run. In a visit to Iowa Obama said, “We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.”
It didn’t take long for his opponents to take hold of that statement and brand Obama as one who does not support the troops! And in an even shorter amount of time, Obama issued apology after apology hoping to reconcile and make sense of his statement.
These three words, “support the troops,” are ones I don’t quite understand. For the most part, this phrase has been co-opted by the Right so as to imply that anyone who stands in opposition to this war stands in direct opposition to the men and women in our armed services. While this viewpoint is losing momentum - as is the support of this war - the phrase still carries weight and still moves people to think in a very particular way; hence, Obama’s apologies.
So help me out. How do you define and make sense of these three words: support the troops?
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Welcome to the blog of Joe Hays, minister for Christ's Church for Brooklyn. We are a loving community of believers who seek to be the hands and feet of Christ, in service to our neighbors in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn and beyond.
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