GUEST EDITORIAL: Fuzzy Thinking Snags 'Bring Troops Home' Backers

Fuzzy Thinking Snags 'Bring Troops Home' Backers The Capital Times EDITORIAL A9 Saturday, March 4, 2006 WILLIAM RICHARDSON First, we have to admit that being taken apart by John Nichols, an editor and writer of national stature, while not an honor, is at least a tribute to the fact that we must have been doing something right to be flogged by a famous editor! We have been working on the VOTENOToCutandRun.com Web site for the last three weeks and just put it up officially a few days ago. We agree with him on at least one thing: We think the site is "slick" too. Thanks! Expensive? No. Hard work? Yes. New appreciation for what a writer must do? Yep. The three founding members of Vote No to Cut and Run, Wendy Fjelstad, Sam Johnson and I, are newly minted Republicans, joining the party in the last two years and elected a year ago to serve as Assembly district chairs for the Republican Party of Dane County. But the source of our funding was strictly grass-roots -- it started in our own pocketbooks. Republicans, independents and Democrats (so far no one from Progressive Dane, but we are hopeful) have donated $10, $15, $25 amounts mostly, with one individual stepping up to help fund some of the start-up costs. No money has come from the Republican Party at any level. How about a follow-up story on all the Bring the Troops Home Now referendum supporters and their funding? We are not "so-called" -- we are called VOTE NO to Cut and Run. (Wouldn't that be called an editorial "cheap shot"?) Nichols calls it "peddling armchair slogans." We call it trying to get reasonable people with common sense regardless of their political orientation to look at the referendum -- which is: "Resolved: The U.S. should bring all military personnel home from Iraq now" -- and say, "Now?" We ask them to imagine what would happen in Iraq, the Middle East, the United States and the world if we withdrew all our troops now! We grant we are amateurs at writing and persuasion and Nichols is a master at his craft. However, he did not mention, quote or discuss the actual referendum in his column or what would happen if we did remove all our troops now. Why? Will he now? We believe the important thing now is to address not how we got there -- the historians will handle that -- but what do we do now: finish the job of stabilizing a struggling, proudly purple-fingered democratic state or cut and run now as the referendum dictates. Also agreed: We did not address several issues Nichols raised; we need to do so and will. Freeing 27 million people from Saddam and sons was already known, we thought. Shouldn't reporting the good news in Iraq be your job, too? However, the Web site does allow our soldiers, the Iraqi people, our governor and prominent Democrats to speak about the wisdom of an immediate withdrawal. The site shows how this referendum is a direct attack on the morale of our troops in Iraq, how our Wisconsin troops are reacting to being undermined by their hometowns and how this is, in fact, more about an anti-military referendum than it is about peace and justice and "just let the people decide" foreign policy in each city across the state. The fact that 41 Wisconsin soldiers re-enlisted recently while serving in Kuwait/Iraq speaks to how high their morale is. Not every soldier who has, or is serving, likely agrees with every reason why they are there, but they are serving and deserve our support, not our criticism, or second-guessing their mission. The Green Party, Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, World Can't Wait, Not in Our Name, Answer and many other anti-military left groups have made this a partisan issue by placing it on the ballot in nearly 30 communities in Wisconsin, using tactics that included lawsuits to force it on each city, and make them pay for it, too. Check the minutes in most of the cities. They did not want to join Madison and pay local tax money to pretend they set national foreign policy. We are reacting to those tactics. On our Web site, we define the background of the referendum groups and show how their literature and historical stance have been anti-military for many years and this pose of "caring for the troops" now is just that, a cynical pose. Nichols mentioned that voting is a way for citizens to provide a "check and balance" on their elected leaders at all times. This referendum does not address our elected leaders; it is a local referendum in April. Voters had the choice of an anti-war candidate during the national Democratic primary for the 2004 presidential election and will again in coming elections. What is the real reason this referendum is being pushed? * Finally, to call the Bring the Troops Home Now referendum rammers (hiding behind multilayered, well-funded, far-left front groups) "true" patriots (look at their history and anti-American literature) who are acting in an "American tradition" is beyond the pale, unless you are referring to their own old, worn-out playbook from the early '70s as a "tradition." William Richardson is a retired UW-Madison professor, retired member of the Wisconsin Army National Guard and treasurer of the anti-referendum group VOTE NO To Cut and Run.