What certain Republicans have done to our “troops” today is disgraceful. They are treating our “troops” as if they were a tissue to be used to blow a Republican snout and then be discarded in some “waste” paper basket. Or maybe toilet paper? Certain Republicans are wiping the ass of Iraq with our “troops” and then flushing them down the toilet of the underfunded and mismanaged Veterans Administration.

And I said “certain” Republicans because not all Republicans are culpable in using our “troops” for their ass wiping and nose blowing schemes, just the insane and greedy neo-con Bush and Cheney Republicans. Unfortunately, there are far too many Republicans who have sided with these traitorous, murderous scum.

http://politicomix.blogspot.com/

http://www.realcities.com/mld/…..819699.htm

I particularly like his suggestion to appoint a commission of Mothers to find out the truth instead on the usual suspects that sit on Government commissions.

What a great idea!!!

Consider Mrs Rumsfeld asking if the soldiers who were seen by Bush and her husband at Walter Reed were specially chosen (and the woman who took her to the support group where that was asked was promptly banned from Walter Reed). That’s a political use of the soldiers.

Consider the troops on bases being told they must attend events where Bush or Cheney appear.

Consider the soldiers who are asked to appear at GOP events in uniform.

Consider the military access to blogs being limited to those which are GOP-acceptable.

Don’t forget how the right savaged Clinton for avoiding service during ‘Nam. Since they don’t savage Bush or Cheney, seems like they’re again using troops as props.

Don’t forget how the right savaged Al Gore for volunteering for service during ‘Nam. They value self-serving cowardice over duty every time.

The second of these terms has come up repeatedly in the posts and comments over the past year and a half that I have been a regular reader, sometimes just in the modulated form of the term “community” or others like it that this site has fostered and nurtured. I have been working on the concept of empathy as one of the moral sentiments necessary to the shift from a shame to a guilt basis of morality or ethics for the past several years, and I find the literature on this to be vast and expanding rapidly.

I do not get in early or often enough to add to the discussion here very much, but I think it would be useful to focus on empathy or the lack thereof as the source of our current hopes or current problems respectively as a country and race. Thus, I thank you for this post and the others that keep this before our eyes.

We might add to this failure on the part of our government the abject failure to alleviate the folks dispossessed in the wake of the hurricanes in 2005, our negligence in the deaths of Iraqi children throughout the 1990s, and our current devastation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

As unpleasant as it is to contemplate, we are not looking at a glass half full on any of these fronts.

Tanker J.D. @ 62

Which party has wrapped itself in the flag most?
Which one keeps using 9/11 as a political slogan?
Which party has called its opponents traitors?
Which party has used ‘law and order’ and ‘family values’ and ‘morality’ repeatedly for ‘do as I say, not as I do’?

What do any of these questions have to do with whether the photo of the wounded soldier in this post is being used (probably without his consent) to support or undermine a policy position that the soldier either does or does not agree with.

Why is it o.k. for someone who disagrees with the policy to use this soldier’s pain as a point of argument; but it is not o.k. for someone who agrees with the policy to use this or other soldier’s pride as point for their argument?

Infrequently I lose sight of the fact that Bush and Cheney were draft dodgers during ‘Nam.

Don’t forget how the right savaged Clinton for avoiding service during ‘Nam. Since they don’t savage Bush or Cheney, seems like they’re again using troops as props.

Tanker J.D. @ 62

Isn’t the picture of the wounded soldier here being used as a prop by the anti-war crowd? Isn’t it designed to elicit an emotional response of sympathy for the soldier, and then encourage a certain policy–immediate withdrawal from Iraq–as a result?

Seems like it to me…

Soldiers and sympathy/ support for soldiers gets used as a political football for both sides of most any foreign policy debate….

That’s a bit like Nader claiming that both parties are the same. Clearly they are not. Republicans should not be allowed to hide behind an ‘everyone does it’ mindset.

Badwater–I wasn’t saying that as a defense for either party. I’m pointing out that the criticism runs both ways–both sides use “support the troops” as a mantra to bolster their policy arguments.

Some who support the policy put up the canard that any criticism of the policy is a failure to support the troops.

On the other side, though, others that criticise the policy focus on the fact of casualties to make their argument against the policy. Doing so reflects a less-than-genuine concern for the wounded. It’s like saying “you support the mission in which this soldier was wounded; therefore you don’t support the troops.”

It suffers from the same logical flaw.

Peterr @ 64

Sorry, that photo is no prop. It’s the real world for that soldier, and for his family back home.

I’m not suggesting the photo was false or staged. I’m saying the use of it is designed to support a certain policy preference; it was being used as a prop.

Folks that support the continued presence in Iraq sometimes show very real pictures of uninjured soldiers doing nice things for Iraqi civilians. In that way, the photo, though real, is being used as “a prop”, according to the thesis of this post.

But under the same thesis, using a photo that shows a wounded soldier grimacing in order to elicit sympathies against the policy is also exploitive of the soldier’s condition.

Finally: isn’t it relevant what that particular wounded soldier feels about his service and the mission. What if he feels that picture shows his heroism, not suffering. How do we know how he feels about the mission? Can we ask him? Do we know his name? Does anyone care; or do they just want to make thier points for or against the policy based on what emotions can be attached to his image?