Collegiate Times

We?ve all seen those little yellow ribbon bumper stickers that say ?Support Our Troops!? Looks so nice and patriotic, doesn?t it? After all, who would object to supporting our brave men and women in uniform?

But underneath the friendly exterior there?s often a not-so-friendly message: ?support the Iraq War or you don?t support our troops ? and if you don?t support our troops, you should probably move to France, because you hate America.?

Or, possibly, the person with this sticker wants to convey the message that perhaps the Iraq war wasn?t such a good idea, but we need to keep waging it because we have to support our troops.

Both messages are ridiculous. People sending the first message probably view the opposition to the Iraq war as a ragged bunch of extremist liberals, hippies and communists who would perhaps be happier in France anyway.

But that view couldn?t be further from the truth. According to the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, 59 percent of Americans now believe that invading Iraq was a mistake. I think this country would be in serious trouble if almost two-thirds of its citizens moved to France.

The second message is a little more reasonable ? but still ridiculous. Common sense tells you that if you?re doing a bad thing ? stop! If the Iraq war was a mistake, then we shouldn?t have killed all those Iraqis. And we shouldn?t keep killing them. The simple fact that our troops are there doesn?t mean we have to continue this war. No, if the Iraq war was a mistake, our troops are fighting, dying and killing for a mistake! If we care about them at all, we should advocate a policy that allows them to come home to their families as soon as possible.

Won?t 1,910 American soldiers have died in vain then? Yes, I?m very sorry that that?s the case. But at some point you just have to cut your losses. The kind of mentality that says we have to honor the fallen by continuing their fight, even when it does no good to do so, is irrational. It?s like if you buy a loaf of bread and find out it?s stale and moldy, but you eat it anyway because you don?t want the money you spent on it to have been spent in vain.

And make no mistake about it ? continuing to fight this war will not do us any good in the end. It has already failed to help defend America. Iraq was never an imminent threat to us: as everyone knows now, there were no WMD and there was no Saddam-Al Qaeda collaboration.

The war is in fact doing the opposite of defending America ? it is increasing the threat of terrorism. In Osama Bin Laden?s worldview, the United States is engaged in a crusade against the Islamic world. Invading a Middle Eastern country for spurious reasons just helps reinforce that view, making it easier for Al Qaeda to recruit new members.

This theory was confirmed by a December 2004 report by the National Intelligence Council, which concluded that Iraq is now a breeding ground for terrorists.

Some Iraq war supporters say that the war will benefit us by creating a free and democratic society that will not breed terrorism. But the whole reason Iraq is breeding terrorism right now is because we?re there. So even if we did succeed in building a free and democratic Iraq, that would not make us any safer than we were before the invasion.

The benefits to us from staying in Iraq are virtually nil. But the costs are great. It is already costing more per month than the Vietnam War did, and the total cost is now over $200 billion. Resources that could have been used to produce useful things have instead been diverted to senseless destruction. And the war is making our already-massive budget deficit even worse ? placing an unfair and unnecessary burden on future generations that will have to pay it off.

Continuing this war is simply not in America?s best interests. You could argue that it is in Iraqis? best interests (despite the fact that tens of thousands of them have died because of it), but why should American soldiers continue to die for people who don?t even want us there? According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of Iraqis earlier this year, 57 percent of Iraqis want us to leave immediately. Even more want us to leave immediately if you don?t count the overwhelmingly pro-U.S. Kurds.

It is not very supportive of our troops to ask them to fight and die in a war that is in no one?s best interests (except maybe Halliburton?s). The only way to support them is to demand that we bring them home right now.