Making sense of my own viewpoints...

This entry will continue to explore some of the reasons why there is so much conflict in defining the “anti-war, pro-troops” standpoint.

A lot of politicians on the right claim that even though democratic bigwigs such as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Edwards and others voted to go to war in Iraq in 2002 they have now set blame on George W. Bush for going to war. This article states: “So instead of self-serving attacks on the present administration, Democratic senators and candidates should simply confess that while most of the earlier reasons to remove Saddam remain valid, the largely unforeseen costs of stabilizing Iraq in their view have proved too high, and now outweigh the dangers of leaving.” This is where I and most of America disagrees with what this article is saying. The “largely unforeseen costs of stabilizing Iraq” as I have mentioned before have cost over $420 billion dollars. This is too high of a cost in most American people’s views. Also the civil war in Iraq has already broken out so the cost of leaving is not as high as the right would like to make us think it is. Whether we leave or not, there will be a civil war.

This entry not only assumes that if we leave, the situation in Iraq will escalate to a level beyond what it already is but it also suggests that all anti-war, pro-troops activists are also human rights activists. This is another issue that is part of the problem when it comes to defining the “anti-war, pro-troops” standpoint. Insinuating that all “anti-war, pro-troops” activists do not realize that the human rights of Iraqi citizens are being violated in Iraq is another grand generalization. While it is true that some “anti-war, pro-troops” activists might “[style] themselves to be human rights activists…[who are] pro-human rights, yet anti-action” and are in a sense being a little hypocritical, it is not true of all of them. This entry also claims that the left is “self-indulgent” and “self-affirming”, again throwing around grand generalizations that are for the most part untrue and only meant to be jabs at the democratic party than an actual legitimate argument.

This illuminates a major issue when it comes to conflicts that arise when defining this, according to Patrick Ishmael, “dissonant” standpoint of being “anti-war, pro-troops”. I for one, do not believe that it is dissonant if you know all of your facts on the war and still do not have any views that contradict each other.