Peacenicks backstab the troops
From dKosopedia
Equivalent to: Dissent Harms the War, etc.
Contents |
Status
Prevalent and persistent; see Origins below.
Quality
Better than it should be—it's a non sequitur.
Sightings
Arnold Kling, Tech Central Station, 5/27/2004:
In fact, a debacle in Iraq could backfire for the liberal media. Suppose that the post-mortem on Iraq reads, "The media weren't reporting. They were taking sides. With our enemies. And our enemies won. Because, under media assault, we lost our will to fight on."
Ralph Peters, "Kill Faster!" New York Post, 5/20/2004:
The global media disrupted the U.S. and Coalition chains of command. Foreign media reporting even sparked bureaucratic infighting within our own government.
The result was a disintegraton of our will — first from decisive commitment to worsening hestitation, then to a "compromise" that returned Sunni-Arab Ba'athist officers to power. That deal not only horrifed Iraq's Kurds and Shi'a Arabs, it inspired expanded attacks by Muqtada al-Sadr's Shi'a thugs hoping to rival the success of the Sunni-Arab murderers in Fallujah.
The American establishment, led by the media and politicians, is in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq. And the results would be catastrophic.
Origins
Unknown, but depressingly and revoltingly similar to the Stab-in-the-back myth/meme from Weimar Germany. This should not be construed as equating those who spread this meme with Nazis or Fascists.
Talking Points
- "Antiwar protesters are objectively pro-Saddam."
- "Protesting the war hurts our troops' morale/strengthens the enemy's morale."
- "Antiwar sentiment hurts the war effort."
Counterpoints
- Where's the causal link? None can be established.
- Morale is but one factor in waging war.
- It can't even be established that morale is affected—unless the vector for this meme is a credible mass-mind reader.
- (snarky comeback)"Really? How many rounds of ammo does a inch of column space in the New York Times generate?"
Analysis
If this meme has any real content, it's simply a hyperbolic expression of concern for the morale of the troops. That's a legitimate concern, but does it reflect as serious a concern for the troops—and the facts—as the effort expended by activists to remove them from an unnecessary war?
