Strange to hear something like this coming from a veteran:

George Boone and his wife, Anna, of Zephyrhills will be among the protesters.

"You have a president in the White House that cannot give you a cause for this war," said Boone, 65. "He says we're fighting for democracy, but that's something he invented since the start of the war."

Boone, who served in the Air Force, is a member of the group Veterans for Peace and says he is opposed to all wars.

"Not only is it immoral, it's insane," Boone said. "It doesn't accomplish anything. No war that we've ever fought accomplished what it was supposed to do."

It's not clear what position Boone had in the Air Force. But to say that "no war...accomplished what it was supposed to" seems discordant. It is strange because all the contacts I have had in the US military are clearly better versed in history, even if they disagree with the Iraq War today.

Did World War II accomplish its goals? Europe was freed from the yoke of Nazism and Fascism, but much of Europe then fell under the shadow of Communism. That burden was lifted as a result of another war, the Cold War.

Did the American Revolutionary War accomplish its goals? Clearly it did.

Did the American Civil War accomplish its goals? The goal of preserving the Union was accomplished. As for civil rights for ex-slaves, that took much longer, so maybe the Civil War came up short there, but many argue that war was mostly about the Union anyway.

The Spanish- Mexican-American war? Well, Cindy Sheehan is living in California.

Then there was the Spanish-American War, but Pasco County is in Florida, which was ceded by Spain to America peacefully in 1819, so Boone can't claim his home as being the benefit of war fought and won in the past.

America blew it in Vietnam, but then the war itself was winnable, or so it is argued. The politics were poisoned, though, and entire books have been written about how the radicals in the US lost the war for America (remember John Kerry in Paris?), thus fulfilling their own prophecies. The same could be said of the anti-war movement today. They are not interested in seeing American succeed, even if that success means freedom for millions of Iraqis.

They seem to lack a sense of history, about how the ultimate value of decision today is measured in part by the effects it has years and decades later. For them, history is as long as it takes to write up a placard, and distill a complex political and military situation into a pithy rhyme.

Funny thing about historical events -- it is very hard to know whether you are on the right side of things until well after the event is over, that is, it becomes history. When you're in the middle of it, you gather the information as best you can in a fluid situation, integrate it and trust your instincts.

But when you walk through the day utterly convinced of the absolute correctness of your all-encompassing view, information and instincts don't matter. You no longer think. You no longer debate. You no longer question and re-evaluate. You become a billboard for a point-of-view, inert and two-dimensional.

Am I such a billboard? I hope not. I have a point of view. But like all bloggers, I try to support my posts with evidence from relatively neutral sources, or even from sources I know would be naturally in opposition to my point of view. If I can frame a cogent argument under those circumstances, I think I'm doing things right.

Remember that post about Casey Sheehan's unmarked grave? When I first started writing it, I wrote a framework in which I refuted the rumour and defended Cindy Sheehan from malicious rumour-mongering. I was certain that this story was fake, even if it seemed to cast Cindy Sheehan in a bad light, so I got everything ready to plug in what I expected to be confirmation from my sources. I was not willing to peddle a lie, or to ignore the truth. When I discovered the story was true, of course everything changed. But I know I am capable of critical analysis of a statement, and of being careful in what I accept to be true, even if it supports my natural point of view. I'll even admit when I'm wrong.

That's why you'll never see a statement like "No anti-war protest that they've ever held accomplished anything of value or stood for any point at all defensible." I leave those sorts of absolute statements to people like Boone. I'll make the effort to think things through.