Support The Troops? Not Me.

A growing number of individuals are voicing their opposition to recent, and not so recent, Israeli sabre-rattling and warmongering. They condemn the preparations for attacking Iran, demolition of homes, the jailing of Palestinians without charge, and the confiscation of Palestinian land for settlements. They don't support the Israeli troops or their mission, nor do they condone soldiers who are just "doing what they are told."
Nonetheless, some of these same individuals support coalition troops in Afghanistan. Dangerously, Americans in particular advocate the notion that the troops' intrinsic 'heroism' provides them with the impunity to destroy any 'bad guys' who stand in their way, cultivating a code of silence that strongly discourages dissent. It is under this premise that they support 'our' 'brave'and 'noble' soldiers: we know their stories well, they miss their families, they are "just like us," they are doing what they always wanted to do and we should respect their service. It's easy to comprehend the mindset of the troops but this understanding does not validate support for them. If the invasion of Iraq, the mission, and the occupation as stated policy were all wrong, then support for the armed forces carrying out the mission must also have been wrong.
We are also led to believe that a soldier can either serve out the rest of his tour or stint or be branded a disgrace and imprisoned for becoming a conscientious objector. In reality the choice is much starker: a soldier can refuse to serve or contribute to the death of a million Iraqis or who knows how many Afghans.

When people invoke the hardships the troops face, I think of the dead Iraqi mother, the splattered torsos on the pavements, and the .50 caliber bullets that have sprayed cars and 'compounds' and farm labourers and wedding parties in Afghanistan. Western governments and our media have systematically dehumanized another people, whittling their presence in the world down to a nuisance that drains their budgets, as though Iraq and Afghanistan (Libya?) were welfare states that strip our societies of health care, education, and petrol.

Iraq and Afghanistan are not the banking sector pillaging our economy. Many still discuss these peoples in terms of "our" interests, criticizing the so-called ineptitude of the indigenous people (or the ingratitude!) and their unwillingness to embrace 'democracy', all while five million have been made refugees, Baghdad has been cleansed of Sunnis, and each child, father, and mother live with horror stories we wouldn't wish upon our worst enemies. This is the result and reality of the Iraq debacle.
The assertion that troops are "just following orders" and that it is impossible to refuse once enlisted rings hollow(cf Bradley Manning). There is no draft; on the contrary, each soldier chooses to fight on behalf of their respective governments. This should not be applauded, nor should it be respected. Real courage would be abandoning these wars —against orders - as a number of western soldiers have done (a phenomenon ignored by the mainstream media).
Perhaps most importantly, many people fail to make the connection that supporting the troops enables the war and presents people who are against the occupation with a false reality: the ability to support the troops while rejecting the mission. Standing in solidarity with the troops facilitates funding for the occupations. Following orders was universally rejected as a defence long ago.