Those Damn Yellow Ribbons

I'm sure we've all noticed the ever-increasing number of those stick-on yellow ribbons on the back of cars (especially SUVs, oh the irony). While, yes, I do support our troops, I still think these things are crass and meaningless. I've been thinking of making my own with the text running across the ribbon saying "Bring Them Home," but I'm too lazy to actually do it. Anyone want to go in 80-20?

Anyway, this post here by one Jeff McMahan pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject. And to think, I found this through a right-wing blogger who was using it as an example of what is wrong with the "looney left".

Vehicles in New Jersey are covered with decals representing little ribbons inscribed with the legend: “Support Our Troops.” I have done a lot of driving recently and have noticed geographical disparities in the distribution of these symbols. There are fewer in the Midwest and very few at all in the LA area. They are also disproportionately displayed on SUVs and vans, which isn’t surprising given that the owners are disproportionately reliant on the oil supplies that our soldiers are in Iraq to protect (among their other purposes).

What is it exactly that these decals exhort us to do? How can I, or anyone, support the troops themselves? What can we possibly do for them? It seems that the message is really an exhortation to support the war. Why then don’t we ever see bumper stickers urging us more straightforwardly to support the war? It seems dishonest, manipulative, and coercive to assert an equivalence between support for a war and support for the participants in the war. The aim of such an effort is to make it seem that to criticize the war is to criticize our young soldiers and perhaps to increase their peril by weakening the war effort.

I recall that in the late stages of the presidential campaign Bush tried – successfully, it seems – to score points by claiming that to say the war in Iraq was wrong was tantamount to saying that those of our troops who had died there had died in vain. And of course no one wanted to be accused of saying that.

But of course if the war is unjust they have died largely in vain and Bush is the person primarily responsible for that. If they have been sent to die for a misconceived political agenda, that should be a source of remorse, not something to be exploited for further advantage in political debate.

If the war is unjust, as I believe it is, Bush’s remarks exploit the sacrifices of the dead while the ribbon decals further exploit those young soldiers still stationed in Iraq by invoking their peril to stifle opposition to a war in which they will remain embroiled. The decals don’t support our troops but unnecessarily endanger them by seeking to prolong an unjust war.