Face it. Neither the administration nor Congress can be said to "support the troops." But there is a way they finally can do just that.
I'd like to see Congress distribute to every single member of the military in country as well as to every single member of the military stateside who is likely to be redeployed a written offer that s/he choose to either remain in Iraq or come home with no risk of losing a career in the military.
If thousands and thousand of troops decide to accept the second option -- meaning a drastic reduction in troops and an unworkable military situation in Iraq -- then that answers all our questions and all military are withdrawn from Iraq immediately.
Why make an "offer" of this kind? Because our presence in Iraq is based on a lie, because the administration and Congress are destroying lives to sustain that lie, and because the very least they can do is to offer victims of the lie a chance to stay alive and whole.
It's bad enough that both Congress and the administration are virtually ignoring the meaning of the November election. But to hide from the despair of many individual members of the military who have been put in harm's way to support a political lie amounts to making the rest of us, military and civilian, co-conspirators in the lie their deployments are based on.
I don't think many of us want to be in that position anymore. But, Congress, don't take my word for it. You already know what American civilians voted for last November and so far you've ignored us. Is ignoring our exhausted military, too, your idea of "supporting the troops"?
Go ahead! Tell them as many who want to opt out may do so without recrimination and with full honors!
