The Right has a couple of fundamental advantages over us. They have a tendency to be more homogenous and to act more in lockstep with each other. This allows them to be more organized, more "on message" and more unified in general. In contrast, we on the Left tend to be much more diverse and much more free-thinking. On a micro-scale, those are big advantages. But when it comes to macro-scale political movements and affecting public opinion, we are at a big disadvantage.
This proposition is especially true, I believe, with respect to Iraq and our troops.
More on the flip.
On the issue of Iraq and our troops, the Right is pretty unified. They generally take a very narrow view, such as, "Screw the Iraqis, our boys are angels, and even if they mess up now and again they're under a lot of stress and besides we're still treating them better than they treat us. Beheadings, suicide bombs, dead innocents, terror terror terror!"
In contrast, we on the Left have so many disparate views. We have our hardline pacifists, who oppose all war and all violence.
We have our racial egalitarians, who believe Iraqis are being mistreated much more often because they're not white.
We have our anti-oil and anti-corporate faction, who see the entire action as a cynical oil grab, and our troops as the oil grab enforcers.
We have our anti-MSM folks, who view with inherent skepticism any news whatsoever coming out of Iraq.
We have our Bush = Hitler folks, who think every single thing that's wrong in the world can and should be laid at the feet of the deliberate, calculating, evil, mass murdering, manipulative, scheming George W. Bush, who obviously LIHOP and is generally the Anti-Christ.
And then we have folks like me. Folks who believe Bush is completely incompetent, but not a Dr. Evil mastermind. Folks who think war and force are sometimes absolutely necessary. Folks who oppose the war in Iraq and the people at the top, but who don't think it was a giant conspiracy to take over the world. Folks who want to bring our troops home, but think withdrawing everyone immediately will cause mass chaos and generally be a Very Bad Thing. And folks who think the individual soldiers who committed crimes at Haditha and Abu Ghraib should be punished severely, but who know the vast majority of American soldiers are good, honorable and loving people who are just trying to do their jobs in an incredibly difficult environment.
In other words, our neighbors, our family, our friends.
Generally speaking, folks like me aren't bending over backwards to disassociate ourselves from some of our more strident brethren because we're afraid of what the Right might say about us.
No, I would venture a guess and say that MOST of us are bending over backwards to disassociate ourselves from some of our more strident brethren because we are genuinely opposed to, and at times horrified by, some of the more extreme statements we see at sites like DKos and DU.
I support our troops. Period, end of story. Not INDIVIDUAL troops who commit crimes, but the COLLECTIVE body of people who are my neighbors, family and friends. I support the mostly poor folks who comprise our soldiers because they were often stuck in a bad situation, and the armed forces represented one possible way to improve that situation.
I mean, think about it from the perspective of many of our troops for a moment. Most of your time has been spent in a tough neighborhood, going to underfunded schools that just want to move you along because they don't have any other realistic choices. You don't listen to the news much, and what you do happen to hear is a big, cheerleading, corporate media infomercial for the government. You don't know much about the rest of the world, but you do know that the country was attacked by Middle Eastern fundamentalists a few years ago, but we've taken it back to them somewhere in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, your job options look pretty lousy, your educational options look even worse, but hey, here are some military guys, they look pretty cool in their uniforms, and they're telling me the world is my oyster if I sign up. The pay is supposed to be good, I get free meals, and I get to see the world. Lots of camaraderie, action and excitement, no real danger because you're never really in the combat zone unless you want to be, and if you do, it's a RUSH, man. And did I mention how people find a person in uniform to be really sexy, you'll get all kinds of action in the military.
Those people are my neighbors, family and friends. I care about them, I want to see them survive and prosper, and I don't blame the catastrophic decision to stick them in Iraq on them. No, I blame the incompetent moron George W. Bush and his cabal of warmongers.
Oh, and by the way, I root for my neighbors, family and friends. I don't want to see them die. I don't want to see them take undue risks. And if I have to choose between one of my neighbors, family or friends surviving or an innocent Iraqi surviving, well, I have to be honest: I might feel badly for the innocent Iraqi, but I'm still going to pick the American soldier. And that choice has nothing to do with race, because most of my neighbors, family and friends are people of color.
It has everything to do with the fact that the soldiers are my countrypeople, and to be frank, I care about them more than I care about the people of other countries. You might rail against me for that admission, but it's the honest truth, and it's a sentiment shared by the vast majority of people in America. And if you don't get that, you're never going to understand how to move macro-scale public opinion and affect political movements, because you're not sufficiently connected to practical reality.
I support the troops. I support them because they are my neighbors, family and friends. And I don't like people who say bad things about my neighbors, family and friends, who generalize about them and think that the average soldier is a murderer. And people like Zarqawi, who try to kill my neighbors, family and friends, are the scum of the earth. And I will shed no tears and make no complaints if they end up reaping the violence they've sown.
If you want to wax eloquent about how we're to blame because we went there in the first place, or how incidents like Haditha and Abu Ghraib birth a thousand terrorists, go right ahead. On an intellectual level, I understand all of that. I know that we're fighting a losing battle, I opposed and oppose the invasion, and I know that major screw-ups like the aforementioned Iraqi locales will absolutely create huge problems and blowback for us, just like supporting the mudjaheddin in Afghanistan did. I understand all of that.
But on an emotional level, no, on a VISCERAL level, I'm still going to root for my neighbors, family and friends to come back alive. I'm still going to breathe a sigh of relief if a tough choice occurs and some Iraqi gets it instead of my cousin. And I'm still going to take some grim satisfaction from the deaths of people like Zarqawi.
When the Left sounds like we're not supporting our troops, when we paint with a broad brush about atrocities, when we sound like we're almost rooting for Zarqawi, I'm going to object, and object strenuously. And I'm not objecting because I'm afraid of what the Right will say.
I'm objecting because I'm genuinely pissed off. And the fact that crap like this also happens to make us look bad is secondary, quite frankly.
DTH