With all due respect Chuck, the troops are the war. You can't hate
one and love the other - they are one and the same.

**********
And with equal respect, that's not correct.

Surely you remember Viet Nam?

By the end of that mess, something like 80% of the public was sick of
either the flawed motivations for the war or the inept way it was being
prosecuted. When the troops came home, the were often shunned, and
sometimes even abused, by a portion of the people who opposed the war
that the troops had been sent to fight. That was wrong, but the excuse
that the bad actors who gave the troops such grief when they arrived at
home relied on *exactly* the same
logic, (in reverse). "The troops are the war. They cannot be separated.
If you support the troops you must support the war, and if you oppose
the war you cannot respect the draftees that were
hauled off to fight in it."

One of the lessons we should have learned from Viet Nam is that the
troops don't make the policy, they simply go where they are sent and do
the job they are ordered to do. I don't blame the troops for the war
in Iraq. Nobody yearns for peace more than a soldier. I can freely say,
"Mr or Ms Troop, while I disagree with the national foreign policy that
has sent you to fight in Iraq I respect your service to your country
and that you are obeying your orders to do your duty
in a perilous situation. I wish you a safe, and speedy, return."

Neither side should stoop to using the men and women serving in the
armed forces as pawns in the propaganda war concerning whether our
invasion and continued occupation of Iraq was (or continues to be) a
good or necessary thing that actually defends the American homeland.
That debate can go on without using the troops as whipping boys.