Can't disagree More

It's just not possible. I fight this when I see it online in it's most virulent form--as debate killer--and it deserves push-back even when presented in this form:

Don't say you support war unless you've walked in a combat veteran's shoes, one who has maimed and killed soldiers and civilians in war.

The foot soldier has the dirty, gory job of the actual fighting to secure a city or battleground. If he is lucky and survives, he lives with horrific memories.

He knows how it feels to drive a knife into another to kill, to pull the trigger and watch someone die, to throw a hand grenade into a trench to blow bodies to bits.

A disabled vet knows how it feels to have a bullet rip through his arm, feel the fragments of an exploding grenade tear through his body, and feel the fiery blast of a 90mm mortar round throw him into the air, tearing away his seared flesh.

I know how it feels to undergo five major surgeries, to spend a year in a hospital recovering with a 90 percent disability and the effects 50 years later, and the memories of what I had to do in the Korean War.

With all due respect to Mr. Dailey--and it is a considerable amount that he is due--the constitution guarantees I and anyone else who wishes to, the right to support in good faith a war effort with which we agree.

In fact citizens have the right to and the constitutional duty even to oversee the US Armed Forces, ultimately sending them to war when it is believed appropriate. Neither I, nor I'd bet Mr. Dailey himself, would want to live in the society we'd have if only Generals could make those decisions.

If an anti-war protester has the constitutional right to command the US Armed Forces as Bill Clinton did, I have the right having never fired a shot in my life, to support a war effort I believe right, important and necessary.