I never “rooted for failure” and I can’t find a record of anyone who did, certainly not in anything close to the blatant terms that Limbaugh uses. Yet, the right used this false claim as a weapon for years to subdue criticism of Bush and the Iraq war and it worked.

— Digby

She complains about how it worked right after she gets defensive and reflexively justifies her own patriotic credentials, which is exactly how it worked in the first place. It will keep right on working until liberals progressives stop taking the bait and stop wetting their pants in fear that someone will call them anti-American.

I’m rooting for failure. I hope the US gets driven out of Iraq and Afghanistan in the most humiliating way possible after hundreds of thousands of troop casualties, and I hope they paddle across the ocean to take their revenge on us here. Then I hope they force us to alter our flag by making the fifty stars spell out the words EPIC FAIL.

I’m also masturbating for peace. Upon reaching orgasm, I send out thoughts of peace and goodwill to all humankind, visualizing an end to strife and conflict across the world.

Do you see the equivalence?

Neither one amounts to a damned thing in reality. As shocking as it may be, no world representative has ever asked me for my opinion or permission about anything. My thoughts and feelings do not affect events halfway across the world. You might think this should be obvious, but here in New Age Nation, it evidently isn’t. As long as you’re paying taxes, you’re doing your part to contribute. I would imagine staying alive and keeping from getting shot or blown up is all the motivation a soldier needs to do their job, so as long as your money is paying for their weapons and armor (and as long as you’re not sending them letters telling them you’re running off with the bag boy at the supermarket), feel free to think whatever you want about it. It won’t make the slightest difference. Typing about your “support” is as meaningful as those stupid fucking magnetic ribbons on the back of every SUV or holding hands in a prayer circle.

The cynical bastards who have made this an issue know full well that soldiers are, by definition, expendable. Getting brutally killed is one of the job hazards. It doesn’t matter whether you want that to happen or not; it will or it won’t, depending on the circumstances there, and unless we’re going to stick to invading countries like Grenada to make the world safe for nutmeg trade, soldiers are going to be maimed and killed. The military knows this, the politicians know this, but they realized that if they can personalize it, make it about Pvt. Hubert J. Motherhumper from Frog’s Balls, Alabama, where his middle school sweetheart and their seven kids await his safe return, rather than about the foreign policy that Pvt. Motherhumper and all his buddies are risking their expendable lives for, then they could fend off criticism by pretending that you care less about him than they do, even though if it had been up to you, Pvt. Motherhumper would be safe and sound at home and nobody here or across the world would be getting vital organs shredded by bullets traveling at high velocity.

Again, as long as you keep accepting that framework, they’re always going to have you over a barrel. The fact that this “support the troops” bullshit didn’t even become such an issue until after Vietnam, when it became impossible for any halfway-intelligent person to pretend that we were doing something noble by attacking peasant countries thousands of miles away who posed no conceivable threat to us, makes it more imperative that you stop letting them bully you into silence like this.

But perhaps people like Digby and all the rest of the liberals progressives who feel a need to compulsively stress their support for our brave men and women overseas should consider: isn’t it going to take some sort of “failure” to prevent these sorts of imperial adventures from recurring? If we “win” every engagement with few or no casualties, and corporate and government fat cats get exactly what they wanted from it, is it realistic to think it’s ever going to stop on its own? Germans supported their troops too – at least when they were winning.