Is there no good news in the world? There's precious little in this thread.

[Alex]

There are many ways to win a war without killing somebody. There are many ways to lose a war without having had any people killed. There are many ways to avoid a war in the first place. We can all wish for those to have happened (I think the war is a just one but one that shouldn't have been started for non-moral reasons). But we're not talking about a general concept, we're talking about a specific situation.

The specific situation is that right now two groups of people are killing each other. How do you support American troops in that endeavor while simultaneously opposing, as immoral, the purpose for which they are doing it? Yes, you can also advocate that we simply leave right now and fight no more. But until that happens, how do you support the soldiers in their efforts to do that which you consider immoral, especially when they are doing it of their own volitoin?

That support is not the same thing as simply saying "I don't want you to die."

If we are wrong to be in Iraq, then Iraqis are justified in commiting violence against our soldiers to force us out (and third-parties are right to help them). Unless you are purely a pacifist.

Maybe it would be instructive to me in trying to understand how you can hold such contradictory ideas to ask this:

what does "support the troops" mean to you?

what does "oppose the war" mean to you?