Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is claiming that anyone who opposes Trump’s warmongering hates “the troops”.
“If you want to take issue with what we did in Epic Fury or Rough Rider or NAB and Nicolas Maduro, you’re taking issue with the troops and what they accomplished,” Hegseth told the press on Monday.
If you’re too young to remember 2003, this was the line they used the last time the White House started an unwinnable war in the middle east. If you hate the war, you hate The Troops. And we all know you’re not allowed to hate The Troops. You MUST love the imperial stormtroopers.
It’s such shitbrained war propaganda. Yes, absolutely fuck the war. Absolutely fuck every single person who chose to enter into this ridiculously unprovoked war of aggression. And hey, fuck The Troops too while we’re at it. Fuck everyone who knowingly enlisted in a military force that is literally only ever used to inflict evil in modern times.
Don’t valorize employment in a murderous war machine. If you do, you’re only encouraging future waves of young people to enlist. Don’t be a pro bono recruitment advertiser for the US military. Stigmatize that entire line of work.
We’re not doing that shit anymore. You don’t get use “the troops” as human shields to hide the depravity of your military decisions behind. The fact that your mass atrocities are carried out by rank-and-file employees does not magically exonerate anyone involved. Not the people sending those employees off to war, and not the people who knowingly enlisted in a military force that is only ever used to murder human beings for power and profit.
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Senator Ruben Gallego took to Twitter on Monday to proclaim, “Ukraine can win. Thats why I back them. It’s a Russian talking point that Ukraine can’t win, cause Russia big blah,blah. If Ukraine kills enough Russians they will quit.”
When a commenter told him to join the International Legion and go fight the Russians himself, Gallego replied, “No that’s the beauty of this, we can pay the Ukrainians to kill the Russians.”
Propagandists claim it’s Russian propaganda to say those who support the war in Ukraine want to “fight to the last Ukrainian,” but that really is their position. Ukrainians keep telling pollsters that they want a negotiated end to the war while western proxy warriors chomp on cheesy carb snacks and tweet from their sofas about how great it is to throw Ukrainian bodies into the meat grinder.
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New rule: if you get to tell me that I hate Jews, then I get to tell you you’re just pretending to believe that in order to advance the interests of a genocidal apartheid state. If you get to tell me about my thoughts and feelings, I get to tell you about yours.
I get to tell you that you don’t believe a single word you are saying in our conversation. I get to tell you that you are lying about what you think and feel in order to marginalize criticism of the state of Israel. Those are your rules. We get to make sweeping assertions about one another’s internal conditions in an authoritative tone instead of making actual arguments.
If you whine about this, I will tell you, “This is the type of conversation you chose to have. This is the interaction you asked for, so this is the interaction you are getting. You’re just upset because you’re unaccustomed to getting back what you are serving.”
Give them back what they are giving, and don’t stop until they produce a real argument instead of dopey “antisemite” ad hominems.
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I ran into one of those liberal Zionists who poses as pro-Palestine but spends half their time concern trolling about “antisemitism” in the pro-Palestine movement. He tried to get me to engage him in this subject and I told him this:
“Address the fact that 99.9% of the time “antisemitism” gets mentioned it’s in reference to criticisms of Israel and Zionism. Address the fact that Israel and Zionism cause many orders of magnitude more damage than the 0.1% instances of actual antisemitism. Address the fact that the overwhelming majority of the 0.1% instances of actual antisemitism are caused by Israel’s genocide and warmongering and would go away if Israel stopped butchering children under the banner of the Star of David. Explain how it is possible to have a ‘serious discussion about antisemitism’ while these three things are happening.
“You will answer all four questions I asked you in their entirety if this conversation is to proceed. Until you have thoroughly addressed them all, the conversation you are trying to have is nonsensical.”
Back in 2021 I tweeted, “If I wanted to sabotage the pro-Palestine movement, I would make myself a part of the conversation by criticizing Israeli abuses and supporting Palestinian rights, then I’d start going ‘This rise in anti-semitism sure is concerning though, can we pause and focus on this please?’”
That’s exactly what these freaks are doing.
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As a veteran, in response to your first note, let me say, that I approve this message.
Was the same in the late '60s/early 70s --- protesting Vietnam meant you hated the troops.
Difference: Those poor bastards were mostly drafted, had no choice. So we big-time hated the officer training programs -- "ROTC, sounds like bullshit to me to me".
And when the draftees returned, huge numbers of them lashed out against the war. Subsequent gens who shit on us Boomers need to remember -- you never faced a bloody draft. It ended in '73, and it was mostly our efforts that fucking killed it.