Everywhere I go, I see bumper stickers that tell me to Support Our Troops. People have been saying that they support our soldiers, even if they don’t support the war they’re fighting, for years. What I have not heard or seen anywhere, however, is exactly what supporting the troops entails.

Does supporting the troops mean hoping that they don’t get killed? Or does it mean buying body armor and sending it to them, since Rumsfeld keeps sending them onto the battlefield with sub-par equipment? Or does it mean petitioning the government to bring them home and stop creating terrorists for them to fight?

I recently read an article written by a soldier in Iraq; he or she was mostly describing the types of equipment being used, but mentioned that soldiers get frustrated when they hear that Americans don’t want them to be fighting in Iraq. Judging from the author’s remarks, it seems that some of the troops are getting the message that the soldiers themselves are being blamed for the war and the resulting terrorism, instead of those responsible for their deployment.

When people stage protests and author petitions to bring the soldiers back to America, we need to make it clear that we hold the Bush administration responsible, and not the soldiers that he victimizes. That is the support we ought to show–the genuine concern for our fellow Americans’ lives, and the acknowledgement of their innocence in the problems that threaten them.