Greg Sargent has the details. Here's the key quote:
Gates added that troops understand members of Congress want to find the best way to win the war. "I think they're sophisticated enough to understand that that's what the debate's really about," he said.
Thank god someone finally said it. I've always found it deeply offensive when people use the "debate hurts the troops" line of thinking. For that to be true, you have to assume that when you puts on our nation's uniform, you lose your ability to reason. Our soldiers aren't idiots. (Nor are they all Republicans. But that's a topic for another post). And yet the way people both in congress and on the news talk about them, you'd have every reason to think that they were.
I've never understood it... they are brave enough to be deployed for months, even years, in a war zone, but they can't handle people talking about why they are there?
Maybe I'm crazy, but if I were serving, I would hope people were debating the war. I would hope that they were carefully considering whether or not the efforts I was making were being put to their best possible use. And if they weren't, I would hope they would redeploy me elsewhere so that my sacrifices weren't made in vain.
This whole debate reminds me of the flip-flop issue, but in reverse. If you begin with the presumption that changing your mind is a sign of weakness, then yes, questioning the mission at any point would be terrible. But of course we all know that changing your mind can at times be a sign of immense strength. In this debate, however, we're somehow supposed to pretend that what's good is bad, that failure is success, and that our men and women in uniform can't tell the difference between them.
It doesn't have to be this way. Eventually, it won''t. Here's a reminder of the possibility of a better tomorrow, courtesy of Sen. Jim Webb. From his State of the Union rebuttal, this commentary on serving in our nation's armed forces:
Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues - those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death - we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm's way.
We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us - sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it.
Making the decision to serve in the military is an enormous sacrifice. It shapes and orders virtually every aspect of your life. And yet, millions of Americans make that sacrifice willingly. It really is one of the amazing things about this country. We owe to them to make sure that sacrifice is honored each and every day it is made.
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