"Dissension is not unpatriotic"

So says Carlos--a self-identified military veteran--from Phoenix:

Regarding the Monday letter "Dems' Bush-bashing is out of control": I will hold my opinions on the issues of the Democrats. But as a veteran who served in Iraq twice, I feel the need to fix some preconceptions that Republican activists seem to have. Why do you people persist in thinking that dissension is somehow demoralizing the troops? What kind of warped view of war do you have?

Do you think we read the newspapers while firing our weapons? Do you think we read blogs while driving our vehicles? War is horrible and harsh and yet the first people to glorify it are people who are too cowardly to fight it themselves. Before you pretend to "speak" for the troops and before you say that Democratic criticism is demoralizing to us, you might want to go to boot camp and serve.

Carlos raises an interesting point, in that the default assumption on the Right vis-a-vis the attacks on the Iraq effort and those undertaking it play on the minds of the troops, thus contributing to an erosion of morale. Perhaps in that regard the Left is not the only group stuck in an unchanging Vietnam-paradigm.

With all due respect however to Carlos and his service, he does his basic argument a huge disservice when he insinuates that those who support going to war with Iraq "glorify" war and do so as cowards, afraid to enlist and put their bravado where their mouth is. That's an old argument, one that is more interested in shutting down discussion than making any point in particular:

The central implication here is that only men who have professionally endured war have the moral standing and the experiential authority to advocate war. That is, in this country at least, a radical and ahistorical view. The Founders, who knew quite well the dangers of a military class supreme, were clear in their conviction that the judgment of professional warmakers must be subjugated to the command of ignorant amateurs--civilian leaders who were in turn subjugated to the command of civilian voters.

Again, with all due respect to you and your two tours of duty in Iraq, Republicans, Democrats and Independents are entitled to support a war effort whose aims they agree with, as 229 years of US history shows.

Republicans, Democrats and Independents who oppose the war effort are, likewise, entitled to their dissent. The problem as I see it comes when you try to understand the motives behind such dissent. I would put it this way, in an echo of Dennis Prager's thoughts on the subject (and as I think the letter in question tried to address it):

Do the critics oppose Bush because they oppose the war, or do they oppose the war because they oppose Bush? A question worth asking.

As Sim has said before, "The unexamined life is not worth living."