It's Easy to Accuse Your Opposition of Not Supporting the Troops, but Actually Supporting the Troops is Much More Difficult

Yesterday, Americablog posted the full statement by Virginia Senator Jim Webb in response to GOP Senators fillibustering of a bill that he introdued to address the extended deployments and rotations of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Senator Webb said in his statement:


Americans....are tired of the procedural strategies designed to protect politicians from accountability, and to protect this Administration from judgment. They are looking for concrete actions that will protect the well-being of our men and women in uniform.


The question on this amendment is not whether you support this war or whether you do not. It is not whether you want to wait until July or September to see where one particular set of benchmarks or summaries might be taking us. The question is this: more than four years into ground operations in Iraq, we owe stability, and a reasonable cycle of deployment, to the men and women who are carrying our nation’s burden. That is the question. And that is the purpose of this amendment.


(Emphasis mine). Americablog also posted links to Webb's bill and a fact sheet that explains the legislation. The fact sheet includes statements from many articles on the effects of this extended and repeated deployment, which the bill aims to address including:

• Troop deployments have been extended from 12 to 15 months, resulting in less time at home with families


• The increased risk of psychological problems from combat stress


• The impact on the families of the troops who are not getting adequate and standard time between deployments to spend with them


• The increasing levels of troops leaving the military


• The negative impact on military training, manpower and readiness and the ability of the National Guard to respond to disasters at home

Senator Webb comes from a long family tradition of military service, was a marine who served in Vietnam and was also Secretary of the Navy. He knows what he is talking about when it comes to the subject of the military and what is best for the tropps, which is probably why his bill has been endorsed by the Military Officers' Association of America, Veterans for America, and VoteVets.org. This is an egregious example of continued Republican obstruction and is completely inexcusable. (See posts here and here.)The biggest thing we should be concerned about regarding the war in Iraq is the impact that it is having on the troops and doing whatever we can to actually support them.

It's easy to put a yellow sticker on your car, and I don't criticize anyone for doing this. But we need to do more. Americans have shown their support for the troops in many other ways but we need to be more aware of politicians who tell us to support the troops but who in fact don't support the troops.