Interesting opinion piece (and for those who are familiar with various political websites, I made a visit to Matt Drudge's site this afternoon) from Joel Stein of The Los Angeles Times.

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

I actually agree with his sentiment. If you're against armed conflict there's absolutely no way you can support the people pulling the trigger. You might respect the person, as mentioned earlier in Stein's piece but, you can't respect what they're doing. He does raise another good point about joining the US military, regardless if it's for Iraq or not.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

First of all, it's factually incorrect to say Kosovo was "ethnic genocide." I realize this is probably more about technical terminology for some people but Kosovo was not genocide. It's as if you wrote an article saying a person who went on trial for the death of an individual and was convicted of manslaughter was convicted of murder. Sure, in the end someone is dead but manslaughter and murder are two very different legal terms.

Second, he's right. When you sign up for the military, regardless if we go into Haiti, Kosovo, Somolia, or Iraq, the US is still acting as a global force. Whether you agree or disagree with a conflict the bottom line is, in the end, you're going to a foreign country and are going to end up shooting foreign people, whether they want you there or not.

The entire article can be found here