Thoughtful column on Cindy Sheehan and the war protest from Mary de Juliis of the Muskogee Phoenix. In concluding, she does a nice job of summing up how I feel about the whole issue, as well:

I am not antiwar. As long as it is possible for people like Adolph Hitler to come to power and persecute people, then there is a possibility for a need of military action. We need military presence here at home to protect ourselves from attack, so closing all the bases under Base Realignment And Closure makes absolutely no sense to me. I’m not sure why we need all those military bases all over the world, as I don’t see the strategy of some of their locations. But I’m no expert.
I am antiwar in Iraq because we were lied to about why we are in Iraq, our troops still don’t have enough protective equipment, there were no weapons of mass destruction and Iraq wasn’t responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Center. The first report I saw on CNN was that Marines had successfully secured 20 oil sites. It hasn’t been about taking democracy to the Iraqi people. The Downing Street memos, the massive number of soldiers returning wounded and with missing limbs and more than 1,841 American soldiers’ deaths, those are some of the reason’s I am against the war in Iraq.

I think that “I am not anti-war” part is important, because it points to a few things those who believe in the Doctrine of Presidential Infallibility (DOPI) fail to grasp:

• You don’t have to be a hippie peace freak to oppose this war. In fact, you can actually be a chest-beating, war-mongering maniac and still be uneasy about this war.
• Supporting our troops does not equal supporting Bush. When Bush’s policies are the biggest threat to those troops, supporting our troops means opposing the president.
• Supporting our troops does not mean supporting the war. Supporting our troops means insisting that they be deployed responsibly and only for just cause. It means making sure that they have the equipment, the logistical support, and the strategic guidance necessary to ensure their success. And it means not placing them in any more danger than is necessary.

I’m not an anti-war type, either. Never have been. In many cases I not only feel war is justifiable, I feel it’s a moral imperative. World War II stands as the archetypal example for Americans, I suppose, but I was pretty sympathetic to our rationale for going into Bosnia, too (even if I’m not sure we did a very good job of it).

But I believe you fight when you have to, not when you want to. I believe soldiers and their families, friends, and communities have the right to know the truth about why they’re being asked to give up their lives and their limbs and their loved ones. I believe if you have to fight, you fight smart, not stupid (call this Rumsfeld Corollary). I believe you don’t sell out your soldiers by trying to fight on the cheap. Sending them into harm’s way without sufficient armor, that reserves you a warm spot by the fire in Hell. I don’t believe being Commander-in-Chief makes you a soldier or a war hero yourself, especially when you were a draft-dodging fortunate son as a youth (and since I vividly remember all the things our right-wing citizens said about Bill Clinton a few short years ago, I know that on this point we can count on full bipartisan agreement).

Does any of this add up to a coherent, defensible policy recommendation? Well, heck – things are so hutzed up right now as a result of the arrogance and incompetence and corruption of this administration that I’m not sure there is a good solution. We’re down to trying to figure out which of our options sucks the least. But I will say this. Spooning Cool Whip on a cow pie don’t make it a pumpkin pie, and saying grace over it damned sure as hell don’t make it Thanksgiving. Bush is probably never going to make me happy over our Iraq mess, but I can’t help thinking that the first step toward some kind of solution would be the acknowledgment that it is, in fact, a mess.

There’s a little camp on the road out to a ranch in Crawford, Texas that would make a decent place for such an acknowledgment….

:xpost: