PsyOp of the Week: “Support Our Dupes!”

PsyOp of the Week: “Support Our Dupes!”

This week I woke up and took notice of all the yellow ribbon stickers people have placed on their cars, trucks, and SUVs that read “Support Our Troops”. At some point I scratched my head and pondered over what exactly that is supposed to mean.

I mean it’s true that most of us are forced to pay an inordinate amount of income tax on our wages we receive by selling our labor to our employers. As we all know, a big chunk of those tax dollars goes toward funding, appareling, equipping, and arming our troops. But evidently that’s not support enough.

In addition to actually having to pay (being extorted) for the military in the first place, many of us allow our sons and daughters to sign up for military service. So in essence, our children are the military. But again, apparently, that’s not what is meant by “Support Our Troops” either.

So what are these people really getting at with this rather nebulous and ambiguous phrase? I asked around on a few internet message boards this week, and I got some interesting retorts that ranged from “provide our soldiers with words of encouragement” to the bizarre “take $50 of your hard earned money and send them a care package”.

A care package! To that I replied how absurd an idea I thought that was. On the surface, it sounds like a really nice gesture. But scratch below the surface and it becomes profoundly preposterous. So you mean I should bake up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and DHL them to some guy over in Iraq, complete with a letter that reads:

“Dear Mr. Soldier, I know how pissed you must feel at having been directed to Iraq under false pretenses of imminent danger, exclamations of “Weapons of Mass Destruction!”, and jingoism and fanatical patriotic rhetoric of how much these people “hate our freedoms”. And I’m certain you’re not at all too happy about having been exploited for the self-aggrandizement of our president. But … I baked you some chocolate chip cookies…”

One of the counter-responses I received – amid the condemnations of what a bad, bad person I am – was that a care package doesn’t have to be chocolate chip cookies. Apparently, some of the troops are running a little low on certain consumables such as toiletries and the like, so it might be a good idea if I send them some of those items.

Toiletries! So “Support Our Troops” means send a soldier and eight-pack roll of Charmin bathroom tissue? Now, I’m not at all denigrating the person who recommended the idea. I remember how it was when I was in the military; all we ever got was that Government Issue (GI) toilet paper. It wasn’t even close to the stuff Mr. Wipple was always begging you not to squeeze. Nope, not even close. We always referred to it as “John Wayne” toilet paper because it was rough and tough, and certainly wasn’t about to take any shit off anyone!

But somehow I just don’t think that sending toiletries to needy soldiers is the essence of what is meant by “Support Our Troops”. If that were the case, we’d see Sally Struthers back on TV doing commercials for the “Adopt a Troop” foundation.

“Did you know that for only $0.50 per day, you too can adopt your very own soldier? That’s less than the price of a cup of coffee! And your donations will go a long way towards providing needy troops with Charmin toilet paper, helping them to maintain the best in person hygiene, and ensuring they don’t get a case of the “itchy-butt” while out on patrol and while popping off insurgents.”

Of course, “Support Our Troops” might mean that we should be sending them words of encouragement and letters letting them know how much we appreciate what they’re doing and the personal sacrifices they’re making. But what if we don’t believe this is a righteous or legitimate war? Should we still be trying to motivate our troops with encouraging words? I mean, the purpose of a soldier is essentially to kill the enemy. And a motivated soldier is a motivated killer, right?

So, if I don’t believe that the war in Iraq is a just war, should I still be supporting our troops with motivational and encouraging statements, thanking them, and essentially helping them to be better killers?

I’d hazard a guess that that is not what the “Support Our Troops” crowd means when these people tell someone like me to “Support Our Troops”.

I’d bet that what they’d say to me – someone that disagrees with the validity and justifications of this war, someone that has moral objections to the war in Iraq – that what “Support Our Troops” should mean to me, is for me to just keep my mouth shut and let them do their jobs.

Therein lies the PsyOp, folks. It’s quite simple if you think about it. A “Support Our Troops” sticker on a car doesn’t mean a damned thing to someone that agrees with the war in Iraq! Those people already support the troops! You don’t have to tell them to do something they are already doing.

“Support Our Troops” means, quite frankly, that if you do not agree with the war in Iraq, keep it to yourself!

Keep that fat yap of yours shut, don’t denigrate the soldiers over there, because how are they supposed to do their jobs if they’re demoralized? And if they can’t do their jobs, their lives are jeopardized. So by someone like me opening my fat pie-hole and speaking out against the war in Iraq, I’m endangering their lives. Every time a soldier dies, gets taken hostage, gets blown up or beheaded, it’s my fault! And the fault of people like me, those who just can’t seem to keep their damned mouths shut.

So now you know. Support our troops, dupe: Bring them home!