Given the fact that most criticism of the Iraq War has been directed at civilian policymakers rather than American soldiers, I have always refused to accept the bullying conservative effort to frame the debate on the war as one of "supporting" the troops or not. Unfortunately, this frame seems almost irresistible for many Americans, despite the fact that it completely robs people of their critical faculties and political rights where the use of military force is concerned. Conditioned by the ubiquity of the damaged Vietnam vet in popular culture -- the trope started out in serious antiwar films only to become a cheap action-movie plot device -- I would guess that Americans buy into the mythology of widespread public mistreatment of the troops during Vietnam. It sometimes seems like every baby boomer who ever saw a hippie on television has become convinced that they personally spat on soldiers daily back in the 60s and now need to redeem themselves by loving foreign wars today. The support-our-troops tactic also feeds into the relentless therapeutic personalism of our present culture, the boiling down of all issues to matters of some individuals' personal feelings and qualities.

Anyway, what I wonder is, why is it not supportive of the troops to avoid sending them into battle unless we absolutely must, to defend ourselves from immediate threats? This is the crux of my opposition to starting this conflict, and to the whole pre-emptive war policy. War is far too awful, even for the winners, to ever become an elective or favored policy, as the new Bush doctrine seems to make it.

It is clear that many of the battles in this war, while going great for the U.S. in terms of military goals, have been horrific, lopsided slaughters in which our armored soldiers got the experience of killing hundreds of desperate, poorly armed people while being barely threatened themselves. As described in some of the more vivid and honest "embed" stories, the battles sound like scenes from some alien-invasion movie, only this time we are the invulnerable invaders annihilating anything that gets in our way. What kind of toll would this experience take on any reasonably sensitive, well-adjusted person?

I was struck, almost to tears actually, by the reaction of the captain interviewed in this Dana Lewis story from NBC, about a ragtag Iraqi ambush of an American column last week that resulted in total carnage for the attackers:

OUT OF THE dust and haze came a hail of gunfire from Iraqi soldiers who were driving trucks and jeeps and even taxis. The Iraqi army had been laying in wait for days on this road. As the Americans came north, the Iraqis opened fire with everything they had — automatic machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Most of the fire came from buildings alongside the road, and the Americans answered with everything they had — outgunning the Iraqis and leaving hundreds dead. 

One American soldier from the 101st Airborne died on the top of a tank when he was struck by a bullet under his arm and beneath his bulletproof vest. . . .

Capt. Brad Lauden said units from his 270th Armored Battalion never trained for this kind of fighting back at their home base in Kansas. “These are desperate people doing desperate things in order to survive,” Lauden said, “throwing everything they have at us.”. . .

But it wasn’t just the regular Iraqi army the U.S. troops took on. U.S. Army commanders were surprised to find Saddam’s elite Republican Guards, too, especially so far south of Baghdad — 65 miles from the capital. Lauden said the Iraqi soldiers used women and children as human shields. American soldiers who were fired upon, fired back. “Soldiers had to do the unimaginable … the unthinkable,” Lauden said.

Then there were these scenes from the Times story describing Saturday's incursion through Baghdad, a message pitch to show that the US can move through the city at will. A canny politico-material move, no doubt, but another one that produced scenes of one-sided mayhem that are clearly going to be haunting some of our soldiers for a while:

Sgt. Anthony A. Cassady described a scene that several others also mentioned.

A family in a car stopped on Highway 8's median, evidently hoping to endure the sudden eruption of fighting they had driven into. A large truck, mounted with an antiaircraft gun, hurtled toward the column and was shot. It careered onto the median and struck the car, bursting into flames. As the American column passed, a man, a woman and three children — the youngest an infant — struggled with their injuries and burns. The man, presumably the father, was on his back. One child's fingers were virtually severed.

"Being a dad myself, that's the hardest part," said Sergeant Cassady, who manned a .50-caliber machine gun on the roof of an armored command vehicle. "I've got six kids at home, and I can't imagine it. I'd just as soon die than see that happen to my kids.

"Just to drive by and be helpless — man," he said. "It makes you feel selfish."

OTHER READING: I concur in the Talking Points Memo recommendation of a Policy Review article that gives the first real conservative critique of Bush foreign policy that I seen.