Tag: support our troops

Support Our Troops

What It Really Means

BILL ASTORE

MAY 07, 2026

The other day, I was reading an old Atlantic Monthly and came across the following cartoon:

That is one powerful image. I like the tiny heads on the pallbearers. They make me think of the posturing politicians who tell us to “support our troops” while sending them to die in illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional wars.

That cartoon was published near the end of 2007, when America’s disastrous war of choice in Iraq was supposedly improving due to the Petraeus Surge. Of course, General David Petraeus qualified his surge by saying its gains might prove “fragile” and “reversible.” And so they proved.

“Support our troops” is a catchphrase, almost a mantra, often used by cynical politicians to suppress dissent about their disastrous wars of choice. Basically, dissenters are accused of being unpatriotic because their criticism allegedly betrays the troops and weakens national resolve. It’s a BS argument but it’s often compelling and even convincing to some.

Americans have a civic religion defined by the Pledge of Allegiance, the flag, the National Anthem, military parades and pageantry, and U.S. history taught as heritage and as a celebration of American goodness and greatness. When you step outside of that, when you criticize it, dissent from it, you must be prepared to be attacked as a heretic.

Back in 2010, I wrote an article for TomDispatch in which I argued that not every American troop is a hero. I argued instead that real heroes are few and far between, and that the ideal of heroism shouldn’t be associated so closely, even almost exclusively, with military service. These are obvious points (to me, at least), but I took some flak for suggesting that merely donning a military uniform doesn’t and shouldn’t make one a “hero.”

I remain convinced that hyping the troops as universal “heroes” isn’t a form of support. The troops know better. If you truly want to support them, listen to them. Be an informed and knowledgeable citizen. Speak your mind and don’t be afraid to criticize those who seek to use the military for dishonorable or indefensible purposes.

Since this is America, theoretically land of the free, feel free as well to speak out against the military. Our founders were suspicious of large standing armies and were wary of wars as being especially pernicious to democracy.

We Americans celebrate our troops for defending freedom, yet we paradoxically attack those who try to exercise their freedom by denouncing war and militarism. You can’t have it both ways. Unless you want hypocrisy instead of democracy, you can’t celebrate freedom while denying it.

This was, of course, the so-called original sin of the American republic: celebrating freedom while also enshrining the institution of slavery. Rank hypocrisy led inexorably to the U.S. Civil War.

As a retired U.S. military officer, I’ve been thanked for my service more often than I’ve been denounced as a murderous agent of American empire. It’s easy to accept the thanks; slurs and attacks are what they are. People sometimes think to defame or demean others is a way to elevate themselves. So be it.

Another aspect of “support our troops” is communal ritual to mark the passing of local “heroes.” Such rituals take various forms. In my community, one involves a mass motorcycle ride in memory of “fallen” troops killed since 9/11. The language used is that of America’s civic religion, celebrating our “great country” and those “heroes” who’ve made the “ultimate sacrifice.”

It’s easy to acquiesce to that language and sentiment. It’s also easy to attack it and dismiss it as patriotic claptrap.

I see it as something else: a communal rite. A recognition of sacrifice. Even if that sacrifice was not in a worthy cause.

I’m not a fan of these communal rituals and the often cynical uses to which they’re put, but I recognize their potency and the need of some people to participate in them. It’s a collective expression of belonging, of grief, of community. A place to find meaning.

A reader put it very well to me in response to my article on heroes in 2010. I saved the letter and have never quoted from it before but I’d like to do so now:

I think the reason we see the “heroification” of so many is a desperate need of so many to feel a sense of self worth. This is especially true in the working class, who have seen their cultural value, their hopes for the future and the quality of their lives decline so radically in recent decades.

This week here in town we see the massive outpouring for the fallen Marine by those who need so desperately to feel a part of something bigger than themselves, when someone like themselves is honored. I see this as poignant in ways that go far beyond the family’s loss.

This is well and sensitively put. How often in our communal settings are “ordinary” people celebrated for anything? Our culture most often celebrates the rich, the powerful, Hollywood and sports “stars,” while neglecting the everyday heroism (or, if not heroism, acts of generosity) of people from all walks of life.

In sum, “our” troops don’t want to put on pedestals and plinths. They certainly don’t want to be carried in flag-draped caskets. And most don’t want to be celebrated as heroes because they know they haven’t earned it. What they want, I think, is to be understood. What they don’t want is to be wasted, to be betrayed, to be misused.

Who among us would want to see their life as a waste, who would wish to be betrayed, who would seek to be misused?

With Memorial Day approaching, it is good to ponder the wise words of Andy Rooney in the video below. Troops don’t give their lives. Their lives are taken from them. Something so precious shouldn’t be taken so lightly by leaders with neither compassion nor conscience. Even better, as Andy Rooney suggests, is a future where war withers away and peace brings out the very best in us.

Support Our Troops — But How?

A1C Courtney Wagner, getting the job done as the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron loadmaster in 2017. When America thinks of “our” troops, someone like A1C Wagner may come to mind (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Divine Cox)

W.J. Astore

Today I saw a “support our troops” magnetic ribbon on a pickup truck.  I used to see more of them, especially in the Bush/Cheney years of the Afghan and Iraq Wars.  I don’t oppose the sentiment, though the “support” it encourages is undefined.  I’ve always thought the best way to “support” our troops is to keep them out of unnecessary and disastrous wars.  Even to bring them home, not only from these wars but from imperial outposts around the globe.  But, again, “support” on these ribbons is unspecified, though the Pentagon seems to equate it with huge budgets that approach a trillion dollars every year.

Americans continue to profess confidence in “their” military, with 69% of us saying so in July 2021, whereas only 12% of us have much confidence in Congress.  Can it be said we hold Congress in contempt?  Americans know, I think, that Congress is bought and paid for, that it answers to the rich and the strong while dismissing the poor and the weak.  If you’re looking for affordable health care, for higher pay, for fair treatment, best not look to Congress.

Indeed, if you want a $15 minimum wage, free government health care, and a government-funded college education, your only option is to enlist in the U.S. military.  These “socialist” programs are a big part of the military, including government-provided housing as well.  Yet we don’t think of them as socialistic when the person getting these benefits is wearing a military uniform.

It’s truly remarkable that despite disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere, Americans continue to “support” and have great confidence in “our troops.”  There are many reasons for this.  I think most Americans recognize now that the wars our troops are sent to are losing concerns from the get-go.  You really can’t blame the troops for failing to win unwinnable wars.  You can, and should, blame the leaders for lying us into these wars and then lying again and again about (false) progress in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.  But the troops who bleed on the frontlines?  No – we sense it’s not their fault.

I think many Americans also support our troops out of guilt and ignorance.  Most Americans are isolated from the military and therefore have little understanding of its ways and even less understanding of its wars.  Less than 1% of Americans currently serve in the military, plus there’s no draft, so young Americans can safely ignore, so they think, the discomforts and potential perils of a few years spent within the ranks.  After a flurry of attention paid to a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, the mainstream media is back to saluting the troops while warning of potential conflicts elsewhere, perhaps with China over Taiwan.

The disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq, among others, are already being sent down the Memory Hole to oblivion.  After all, there’s always another war looming, so we’re told, which serves to convince most Americans that a strong “defense” is needed.  So why not support our troops.  We’re going to need them to fight the next war, right?

This is precisely how we fail to support our troops.  We don’t ask enough tough questions – and we don’t demand enough honest answers – about why the next war is necessary.  How it serves national defense and the ideals of the U.S. Constitution.  We are always pressured to salute smartly, even if we’ve never served in the military.  And that way lies militaristic madness.

So, if I had to define how best to support our troops, I’d answer with another bumper sticker motto: Question Authority.  Especially when it’s wrapped in the flag and camouflaged by a military uniform.

It’s folly in the extreme that Americans routinely acquiesce to Pentagon “defense” budgets – let’s face it, these are war budgets — that consume more than half of federal discretionary spending each year, even as the Pentagon loses wars and fails audits. Nevertheless, our very unpopular Congress continues to throw money at the generals and admirals and war contractors, and indeed these groups are often interchangeable, as many senior officers join corporate “defense” boards after retiring from the military.

It’s not Private Jones (or A1C Wagner, pictured above) who’s cashing in here.  It’s America’s military-industrial-congressional complex, which is guided and motivated by one word: more. More money, more power, and, often enough, more wars.

If we keep “supporting” our troops while funneling vast and unaccountable funds to the Pentagon and the weapons makers, America will get more weapons and more wars.  It’s that simple.  And more weapons and more wars will combine to destroy what little is left of our democracy, no matter how many “support our troops” ribbons we stick to our pickup trucks.

Do you really want to support our troops?  Besides questioning authority, one might best begin by reducing their numbers.  America’s military should be no larger than what it needs to be to provide for a robust national defense.  Then we need to remember that a state of permanent war represents a death blow to democracy, no matter how much we profess confidence in our troops.  Since Congress is already deeply unpopular, it should have the guts to cut and limit military and war spending to no more than 25% of federal discretionary spending.

Cutting funds to the military-industrial complex will help bring it to heel – and force more than few spoiled and hidebound generals and admirals to bring our troops home rather than wasting them in faraway countries fighting unwinnable conflicts.

What say you, America?  Ready to support our troops?

A Typical Democratic Official on the Pentagon and War

Jeh Johnson with Biden and Obama, 2013 (White House photo)

W.J. Astore

Jeh Johnson, formerly homeland security secretary under President Obama, showed how a typical Democratic official approaches the Pentagon and war as he spoke on ABC’s This Week on Sunday (11/15).  For Johnson, the Pentagon “is typically an island of stability” in the U.S. government, but President Trump was destabilizing that island because of recent changes to Pentagon personnel.  Trump’s changes could be driven by his desire to get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, speculated Johnson, which was not a good thing:

“If he [Trump] wants troops out of Afghanistan, as I know most Americans do, we have to do it in a way that makes sense, in an orderly manner, and that comports with battlefield reality … in trying to strike a deal, you don’t unilaterally surrender your greatest point of leverage by unilaterally withdrawing troops before the Afghan government and the Taliban have stuck a deal. So this is very concerning and if I were in the Biden transition team right now, I’d be very focused … on restoring stability in our national security.”

We can’t surrender our “leverage,” those thousands of U.S. troops that remain in harm’s way in an unnecessary war that was won and then lost almost two decades ago, because it’s that “leverage” that will compel the Taliban, who have already won the war, to strike a deal with an Afghan government that exists mainly because the U.S. government props it up.  Makes sense to me.

By the way, only “most Americans” want our troops to come home?  Where are all the other Americans who want them to stay there indefinitely?  Within the Washington Beltway, I’d wager.

The Afghan war has always struck me as nonsensical.  Yes, some kind of response to the 9/11 attacks was needed, and initial U.S. military strikes in 2001-02 succeeded in toppling the Taliban, in the sense they saw no reason to stand and fight against withering fire.  At that moment, the U.S. military should have declared victory and left.  Instead, the Bush/Cheney administration decided on its own disastrous occupation, extended another eight years by Obama/Biden, even though we knew full well the extent of the Soviet disaster in Afghanistan in the 1980s. 

The Afghan war has lasted so long that I’ve been writing articles against it for more than a decade.  You’d think any sensible and sane Democrat would love to see U.S. troops withdrawn and the war finally come to an end.  Not so.  The war must continue in the name of “leverage” and “stability.”

I like Johnson’s truly absurdist reference to “battlefield reality,” which, if we’re being real for a moment, reflects a Taliban victory.  Unless the U.S. wants to occupy Afghanistan forever, with hundreds of thousands of troops, that victory is not about to be reversed.  And what kind of “victory” would that be? 

“Stability” is not preserved by fighting unwinnable wars on the imperial periphery, unless you’re talking about the stability of Pentagon finances and corporate profits.  Johnson’s wiki bio does mention he’s on the boards of Lockheed Martin Corporation and U.S. Steel, which certainly hints at a conflict of interest when it comes to offering advice on ending wars.

In the meantime, we probably shouldn’t tell our troops, whom we’re supposed to love and support, that we’re keeping them in Afghanistan for “leverage” until the “battlefield reality” is more in our favor.  That’s truly a recipe for endless war in a place that well deserves its reputation as the graveyard of empires.

Finally, a reminder to Democrats: your Pentagon is an island of stability, and your troops are creating the leverage that allows democracy to flourish everywhere.  If this makes sense to you, and if this is the guiding philosophy of Joe Biden’s national security team, we’re truly in deep trouble.

Bonus Lesson: The Pentagon is an “island” of government only if that island is roughly the size of Pangaea.

William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor, is a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals.

Thanking Our Troops for their Service

Author's photo, July 2014, of the American Flag at Dusk
Author’s photo, July 2014, of the American Flag at Dusk

W.J. Astore

I served for twenty years in the Air Force.  Service in the military involves sacrifice even when combat isn’t involved, but it also conveys privileges and provides opportunity, or at least it did so for me.  I can’t recall people thanking me for my service when I wore a uniform, nor did I expect them to.  I just saw myself as doing my duty to the best of my ability, and therefore deserving of no special thanks or commendation.

At TomDispatch.com, former Army Ranger Rory Fanning talks about his discomfort with the thank you parade directed at “our” troops.  His honest words are a reminder that a thank you repeated again and again loses its meaning, especially when it’s appropriated by megastars and sponsored by corporations.  Think, for example, of that Budweiser ad during last year’s Super Bowl that featured a returning LT.  We see him greeting his pretty wife at the airport, then we cut to a surprise parade in his honor down Main Street USA complete with the Budweiser Clydesdales and teary-eyed veterans.  The sentiment, however honest to many of the celebrants, is cheapened as heart strings are tugged to sell beer.  Or consider those Bank of America ads for wounded warriors airing during this year’s World Series.  Images of wounded troops continuing to triumph in spite of war injuries are appropriated to associate a huge bank with the sacrifices endured by ordinary GIs.  Again, however well-intentioned such ads may be, heart strings are being tugged by a bank with a dubious record of sympathy for the little guy and gal.

As retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich has noted, elaborate thank you ceremonies can be a form of cheap grace in which Americans clap themselves on the back in spasms of feel-good celebratory pageantry.  Some of these celebrations are so over the top in their flag-waving thanks that you just can’t help having darker thoughts.  Is this a recruitment video?  Are we even meant to think at all or just gush with pride?  Are we simply meant to bask in the reflected glow of the medals on the chests of our young men and women in uniform?

We thank our troops for complicated reasons as well as simple ones.  The simple are easy to write about: genuine thanks, from one person to another, no megastars, no corporations.  Just a handshake and a nod or a few kind words.  I’ve had people thank me in that way since I retired from service, and I appreciate it and respond graciously.

But the complicated reasons  – well, these reasons are not as easy to write about.  The guilt of those who avoid service.  Pro forma thanks.  The thanks that comes from people who believe their involvement with the military both starts and ends there.  The related idea that if one thanks the troops, one has done one’s bit for the war (whichever war our president says we’re fighting today).

More disturbingly is the thanks that allows us all to deny the reality of America’s wars (the reality of all wars): the sordidness of wartime bungling and mismanagement and violence and murder.  Often the latter is drowned out by the bugle calls of thanks! thanks! thanks! coming from the cheering multitudes.

My father taught me “an empty barrel makes the most noise.”  I think that’s true even when the noise is presented as thanks to our troops.