The Gadflyer's Memo To The Hawks

The Gadflyer has a response to hawk who are gearing up to blame the lack of public support for "losing" the war in Iraq:

You knew--or certainly should have known--that there are a lot of us and we'll never support a war unless it's clearly necessary. You just can't face that simple reality so you never plan for it....

Sure, you hawks can convince a lot of folks in the beginning of a war that it's an absolutely necessary fight, but as it drags on and people have a chance to think it through, they realize that that bad guy wasn't so bad, at least not for us--and certainly not as bad as the neighbors' kid coming back all mangled. And, after all, wasn't that bad guy 6,000 miles away?

When those conversations hit Main Street, we become the majority. And then you bitch and moan about it like you never saw it coming....

What's more, we are just as firm in our sense of moral superiority as you and your 'honor thy country' crowd are in yours. You don't understand how we can fail to support our president and our troops, and we can't understand how you can betray those troops by blindly supporting a president who sends them into harm's way for anything less than the most noble purpose.

I guess it's an irreconcilable difference. But it would be nice if you planned to lose the country's support beforehand instead of whining about it afterwards. If you factored it into your calculus and chose a course other than war, we'd be happy and the world would be a little less bloody.