As I said in the other thread, this attitude scares the holy hell out of me. I felt it was worthy of its own thread, because I am really curious about the rationale behind this view and an examination of the potential consequences of surpressing dissent.
I am not a lefty. I consider myself quite conservative on many issues and am rapidly becoming fed up with the radical left. I think this is a damn fool war that Bush has gotten us into. On the other hand I thought the ‘war for oil’ protestors of the first gulf war were morons who were utterly incapable of complex thinking. I wished Clinton was more assertive in his use of the military several times during his presidency. I say all this in hopes that you will hear my argument without dismissing me as part and parcel of the peace at any price crowd.
I feel that it is the duty of every citizen to voice their dissent if they feel that their government is carrying out an unjust war. This extends to any conflict, including the ones that I believe are vital to our nation’s interests. The Constitution guarantees the rights of assembly, petition, and speech for damn good reasons. The voice of the people is the ultimate check on the powers of government. If I don’t agree with those protesting I feel free to mock them, counter-protest, or simply consider their arguments and reject them. I do not feel free to insinuate that their protest is unpatriotic.
Conservatives seem fairly unified in believing that during wartime we should all get behind the President. The argument is that by dissenting we risk sending the wrong message to our enemies, and increasing their resolve, and thus the danger to our troops. I don’t know if this is true, and frankly I don’t care. I consider the danger of surpressing dissent to be far greater than the potential (and nebulous) danger of the old ‘aid and comfort’ line. I had thought this argument died with Vietnam, but Bush seems fond of this logic, as do many other conservatives.
Carrying the conservative argument to its logical extreme leaves Kerry unable to challenge Bush on his conduct of the war because that might transmit the wrong message to our enemies. A president that didn’t have to fear public protest would be more likely to use the military in increasingly unwise ways. Dissent prevents tyranny and is inherently patriotic. I would rather some yahoos hit the streets with goofy signs, than have a president who is insulated from the voice of the people.
So I guess what I am asking can be broken down into several questions:
How many conservatives here think along the same lines as Starving Artist?
For those who do not, are you as troubled by this reasoning as I am?
Is dissent against a war unpatriotic? Does it depend on the war? Where is the line drawn?
Well, the ‘no blood for oil’ protesters against the 1991 Gulf war may have not been totally wrong. For example, there was an atrocity story told on October 10, 1990 by a girl named Nayirah who claimed to have seen Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait City and taken the incubators back to Baghdad. She was, in fact, the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, and her story was created by a Washington PR firm. She had not been in Kuwait at the time of the Iraqi invasion. Bush (the father) later referred to this story in a speech. I am by no means saying that the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq was justified – it was purely militaristic imperialism, an effort to seize the Kuwaiti oilfields. But at least some of the information used to justify Desert Storm was not wholly true. I do not believe that the ends justify the means here, and I always believe it is wrong for a government to fabricate information to convince its people of an idea.
I accept dissent against a war provided that it is not fomented by an enemy; for example, say a group called Americans United For A Sovereign Iraq* was organized by the Saddam regime to oppose the 2003 war. I also think that protesters should not be grouped together as a single entity, and there should not be a ‘full package’ that everyone who opposes a war must intellectually purchase. If a small group of protesters holds an absurd line, it does not make all protesters invalid. Let’s say that the Americans United For A Sovereign Iraq believe that Saddam should have been allowed to keep WMDs to protect himself against Israeli or Iranian invasion. That is absurd – but certain statements by some protesters (particularly celebrities) are used by conservatives to reduce the whole notion of dissent against the Iraq war to absurdity. Dissent on Iraq, or any given war, includes a range of separate beliefs, and no one person who opposes some aspect of the war should be thought to hold all the beliefs that ‘anti-war protesters’ are held to have.
The role of dissenters in wartime is primarily to cause the administration that is waging war to consider carefully their policies, when it is informed, rational, intellectual dissent. If a war is truly unjust (such as Vietnam is now widely agreed to have been), the administration may be made to reconsider their policies, as was done in Vietnam. If it is basically just, but there are some elements worthy of dissent (as Iraq could be considered in the future, though it may also be declared unjust), dissent and criticism can help the administration to make positive changes to their war effort. The sincere effort to protect civilians whenever possible and the attempts to respect the religious beliefs of Iraqi citizens may have arisen due to popular support for these things. Dissent on certain other aspects of the war may lead to a policy change (e.g. regarding American corporations in Iraq, or disclosure of information that may better explain why no WMDs were found).
For this claim to be accurate, you have to assume that countries never ever start wars to no good purpose. That’s insanely naive. Countries do become killers, and when they do, someone has to stop them.
Absolutely. It’s precisely in time of war that voicing dissent is the most needed, and unfortunately the rarest.
Possibly, though it depends what you mean by “patrioc”. You could state that you’ ve a patriotic duty to make sure that the values your country is supposed to stand for are actually respected.
Anyway, for me patriotism isn’t a positive value, at the contrary. Precisely because it leads to the kind of dangerous reasonnings you’re pointing at
I don’t think a line can be drawn. It’s entirely a case by case issue. For instance there could be a situation where your moral duty could be not merely not to support your troops, but plainly to actively support the ennemy or join him. Thinking otherwise could only mean that :
-Either you assume that your country can’t possibly be wrong, ever. Which is a laughable statement.
-Or you don’t care about what is right or wrong, and think that minor issues “evil” vs “good” are less important than the latitude of your birthplace and the color of the patches on an uniform.
I think the OP answered its own question very well.
Indeed, I find those who suggest everyone shut-up and line-up behind the President for a given war a FAR greater threat to the US than any foreign enemy. They remind me of those who call themselves “Christian” yet advocate intolerance. Somehow they clothe themselves in righteousness that utterly blinds them to the very tenets they profess to espouse or want to protect.
The United States is “advanced citizenship”. The US is all about avoiding the issues of submitting everything to the whim of a king or dictator. Our founding fathers expressly setup the very foundation of the country to avoid the pitfalls that comes with allowing a king or otherwise dictatorial type to call the shots and suppress any dissent to their opinions. Those who would seek to suppress dissent against the government are, arguably, the “lesser” patriots. They utterly miss what this country is about at its core and chipping away at it undoes what they state they are claming to defend in an insidious, rot it from the core approach.
That said I think most Americans, with the lessons of Vietnam pretty well digested by now, realize that castigating those who serve in the military is wrongheaded. Agree or disagree with why our soldiers are wherever they are it is important to support them and more importantly not blame them for being there. If someone has issue with the war their issue is with the politicians…not those who are doing their sworn duty.
Some may rightfully claim that more US soldiers will die without all US citizens standing shoulder to shoulder in unanimous support for the politicians driving it. This is a difficult one as overall I think there is something to be said for that stance. Certainly if an enemy sees dissent in the US they may be emboldened to hang on and continue fighting rather than surrendering (which equates to more US soldiers dead). Nevertheless, in the end, I think for our soldiers to be asked to fight for something that has real meaning and value worthy of putting their lives on the line the US must tolerate and allow dissent.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” – Voltaire (or paraphrased by Evelyn Beatrice Hall…dunno the Straightdope on that one)
I don’t want to make too much of this, I find a lot to nod my head to in what I’ve read so far.
But your paragraph here kind of carries the implication that this such is common amongst (presumably American) dissent/anti-war movements. I can only attest from some years of involvement with such that this is not so. Blaming soldiers for their predicament is dumb as well as heartless, had I heard such sentiments stated, I would have contradicted the speaker. So would everybody I’ve been involved with in those times, without hesitation.
It is a common practice to insinuate lack of patriotism, as I’m sure you know. This sort “They hate our heroes” stuff is dished out. If I had the resources, I could probably find statements roughly akin to that in every printed language on Earth. Press releases from whoever was in power about whoever was giving them shit about what they were doing. In Russian, about how they dis our malchiki in Afghanistan. You get the idea.
There can be several different motivations within an anit-war movement and these are often lumped into the same thing.
People who really are unpatriotic, people most would in another context say were merely off-balls, some “thou shalt not kill” folks, and some with political motives.
If you do make a mistake of lumping everybody together, if you’re for the war they are traitor scum and if you’re against the war they are wise, courageous patriots.
Yes, and so World War II was a just and righteous war. Most wars were not like that, and many wars were fought over something absurd and not worthy of causing the ends of thousands or millions of lives. For example, wars to protect the honor of the august House of Hapsburg; wars to settle disputes between two slightly different religions, or between two very different religions; wars (well, just the one) fought to avenge the loss and pickling of Captain Jenkins’ ear.
Disputes of this sort could conceivably without the use of force, though in certain cases with unthinkable consequences (like an Austro-Hungarian Republic!) It is true they ultimately come down to money or resources, though I think even these are secondary to religion, ethnicity and nationalism* (including communism, fascism and absolute monarchy) as the causes of wars.
Occasionally, there is a war that really is absolutely just and necessary, like World War II. But that does not mean that all countries that do bad things must be invaded, or that diplomacy can never work because it didn’t work with Hitler at Munich. It is unlikely, since the advent of nuclear arms, that we will ever again encounter a war as purely justified as WW2 was. On the other hand, in the current global situation where most conflicts affecting developed countries will be asymmetric conflicts with developing nations, the rules for justification of the use of force may change. In wars of ideology, unfortunately, diplomacy can be starkly ineffective.
*: Maybe ‘bad forms of government’ would be better there. Being proud to be an American is one thing; being proud to breathe every breath for Stalin and the USSR is another.
Even in the middle of WWII there was an active dissent. You will remember that there was an election in 1944, Roosevelt and Truman v. Dewey and some guy whose name is lost to history. In November 1944 things were going pretty well in Europe, Paris had been captured and the Allies were closing on the Siegfried Line on a broad front. In the Pacific things were not so good. There had been terrible casualties and the national debt had reached an astounding amount. The end, however, was in sight although it seemed a lot closer than it was – the Battle of the Bulge and Okinawa were in the future.
Despite all that there was an active political campaign in which the GOP claimed that FDR had not only mismanaged the war but had connived with Churchill to maneuver the US into the war. There was the usual belly aching that FDR was at heart a socialist and intent on the destruction of free market capitalism, that Social Security marked the beginning an over-weaning welfare state and that ONE World Government was just around the corner.
In the midst of what looks like a half-hearted effort to eliminate Osama and the boys and an over extended effort to make Iraq a colony those who think that there is an obligation to close ranks behind the President might look to the example of their own party in 1944.
Bad policy is bad policy and bad execution is bad execution and each of us who thinks our government is following bad policy and that our government is poorly executing its policy have an obligation, a social covenant , to stand up on out hind legs and say so. Because there is a claim that this bad policy and bad execution has put us in a precarious position is no reason to abandon that duty to speak out.
(Oh come on, you knew someone was going to say it.)
Regarding the OP: couldn’t agree more. “America” is not a monolithic entity, it is a nation of individuals. And in a democracy, no one gets to duck responsibility for the behaviour of the state. Thus if you as a citizen feel that your state is headed in the wrong direction you should speak up about it, not muzzle yourself in the state’s favour.
This idea that speaking out undermines the efforts of the military, to me, just emphasizes the point of John Kerry’s “global test” rhetoric…what he actually said, not the albatross that was hung over his head afterword. It is those who actually send the troops in harm’s way, that is the government, who are responsible for the troops’ safety. So if you’re in charge of the military, you need to be damned sure that once those troops are in combat you can say, both to your people and the world, “Yes, this war is just, we have not sent our troops to kill and die in vain.” Demanding that citizens shut up in the name of supporting the troops just absolves the government of its own responsibility to support the troops and not send them into unjust wars.