Amen, Serge.
It's a cop-out to say "we support the soldiers but not the war" - it's corrosive to morale to hear "we love you guys, but you're fighting an unjust war" or some other permutation that demeans the cause. At the end of the day, it amounts to something like "whatever actions are required of you as a soldier, under the circumstances of war, are entirely without justification or honor because your cause is corrupt. But we can forgive your transgressions b/c you were just the implement of the policy." Gee, great, sign me up for some of that good ol' American appreciation, followed quickly by the de rigeur therapeutic forgiveness.
It's as though the highest principle is supporting the soldiers, and therefore any further critique is legitimized by having co-opted the issue of support for the soldier; and the judgment/patriotism/reasoning of the critic cannot be assailed. Neat trick until you see it for what it is.
The highest principle is the cause itself, and the soldiers are the means to the end -- they deserve our full support, not just in saccharine lip service, but commitment to their morale. Part of which is accepting responsibility for the consequences of exercising First Amendment rights. If these people actually care about the soldiers and Marines they should tone it down some, commit to seeing this through (as the servicemen have) however rough or distasteful it'll be while we're at it, and save the recriminations for later.
And the "oh, we're only second-guessing" stuff isn't any justification for the derision, IMHO. All this keening for a plan ... for whose eyes? We're a democracy and all, so the admin should've let us all know their plan, so we could've critiqued the whole thing and keep the retired know-it-all generals in champagne and filet. But they didn't tell us the plan, which must mean we don't have one -- that's the only possible, logical reason, right? From the dawn of time, military pundits have acknowledged that the best plan usually goes out the window when the first shot is fired - so planning for planning's sake is fine as it helps to evaluate options, etc. But to fetishize a PLAN to such extremes is ridiculous -- the facts on the ground are going to change, the PLAN won't have been 100% correct, no matter how many supercomputers you modeled it on, and X's and O's are not going to move according to the choreography of the textbooks.
This effort is virtually unprecedented in its scope, ambition and complexity -- you can't possibly buy (other than for baldly partisan reasons) that there haven't been plans made, revised, thrown out, recrafted and adapted, some of which worked, some of which failed (which happens to the best of 'em). A plan is no guaranty of success, though slavish, robotic adherence to a plan when the facts don't match they assumptions -- as they rarely do -- is a virtual guaranty of failure.
The cause is noble and honorable. Our soldiers are the finest equipped, best trained, most lethal force in the history of mankind. However, their dedication and commitment is our most valuable, insuperable asset. IMHO we ought to steward that dedication carefully and resist the corrosive bile we get from BigFatTedKennedy (btw, I guess he'd agree then that Vietnam is BigFatTedKennedy's brother's Iraq) and his fellow-travellers taking us right back down the path of our collapse of resolve that worked so well for our adversaries in the past. We had overwhelming man and materiel superiority in Vietnam, won almost every battle we fought (including Tet, which was an unmitigated disaster for the VC and North Vietnamese) and allowed ourselves to be poisoned from within at home. Boots on the ground is not the real issue, and no guaranty of success.
Incidentally, Serge, before I climbed a tree in it, this was my ride:
Hope you get back in yours soon. Thank you for your service, and remember the Great Silent Majority at home that don't protest (we have jobs) and don't need to dichotomize our support for you *versus* the reason you put yourself in harm's way.
JP