Column: Playing the patriot card

by Dane Roberts

Daily Lobo columnist

National Security Notice: If you are serving in the United States Armed Forces in Iraq - or if you may be called up for future service in Iraq -- and have somehow stumbled across this article, stop reading immediately. This column contains opinions which are critical of your commander in chief, and may, therefore, have a damaging effect on your morale, which may, as a result, give our enemies in Iraq the upper hand. If, knowing this, you continue reading this article, you alone are responsible for the resulting failure in Iraq, not me.

Now that I've got that out of the way, let's talk about how ridiculous it is to fault war critics on the ground with damaging troop morale and therefore hurting the war effort.

Not that the Bush administration would ever do that. After all, Bush said in his Veterans Day speech that "One of the hallmarks of a free society and what makes our country strong is that our political leaders can discuss their differences openly, even in times of war."

But when faced with the perfectly valid criticism that Bush and company manipulated intelligence to bolster their case for war, Cheney pulled out the morale card: "The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out. American soldiers and Marines are out there every day in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures, and back home a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie."

And in the same Veterans Day speech cited above, Bush couldn't resist: "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will ... our troops deserve to know that whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less than victory."

So, the debate on Iraq is legitimate and you're welcome to express whatever opinion you have, as long as your opinion is that we should stay the course in Iraq until victory - whatever that means - is achieved. Feel free to voice your opinion. That is, unless you disagree with the president.

Is that confusing to you? It shouldn't be. After all, it's similar to Bush's position on torture: The United States absolutely does not torture prisoners, and he's so strongly against such practices, he will use his first presidential veto to prevent the passage of any bill forbidding torture.

The criticism-hurts-morale argument is a total sham. No one believes that critics of the war are going to self-censor just in case an emotionally vulnerable soldier, sailor or Marine encounters their words and starts feeling apathetic on the battlefield. The war proponents making this argument are not trying to protect soldiers - they are trying to make their critics look bad.

They are desperate and defensive. They know the original justifications for the war were canards, and they've moved to their first and last resort - trying to undermine the patriotism of anyone who questions their perfectly questionable war.

By their logic, any criticism of any war would be unpatriotic. Once soldiers are deployed, the only way to support them would be to cheer the war or stay quiet.

If they really want to talk about what hurts morale, they should start by doing a little introspection. How about sending troops to Iraq in insufficient numbers to secure the country? How about ignoring volumes of expert warnings on what might go wrong in the invasion and therefore being totally unprepared for what was to come? How about needlessly rushing to war, leaving troops without sufficient body and vehicle armor?

It seems to me that our men and women in uniform are professionals who efficiently carry out their orders regardless of what the critics or polls back home are saying. But I've never been to war, so I might be wrong.

Even if I am, blame should not be put on the critics, who are sometimes merely pointing out the obvious. Blame should be placed on those who created a war that is so easy to criticize.