Supporting The Troops And Stifling Of Dissent

Many people opposing the war in Iraq on principle have been saying that they and most of their compatriots "support the troops" by wanting to bring them home. That's probably true. Others, though, aren't quite as good at supporting the troops. Via Chaotic Synaptic Activity, check out the E-mail from a college professor to one of his students who was trying to bring in an OIF veteran to speak on campus:

Dear Rebecca:
I am asking my students to boycott your event. I am also going to ask others to boycott it. Your literature and signs in the entrance lobby look like fascist propaganda and is extremely offensive. Your main poster "Communism killed 100,000,000" is not only untrue, but ignores the fact that CAPITALISM has killed many more and the evidence for that can be seen in the daily news papers. The U.S. government can fly to dominate the people of Iraq in 12 hours, yet it took them five days to assist the people devastated by huricane Katrina. Racism and profits were key to their priorities. Exxon, by the way, made $9 Billion in profits this last quarter--their highest proft margin ever. Thanks to the students of WCCC and other poor and working class people who are recruited to fight and die for EXXON and other corporations who earning megaprofits from their imperialist plunders. If you want to count the number of deaths based on political systems, you can begin with the more than a million children who have died in Iraq from U.S.-imposed sanctions and war. Or the million African American people who died from lack of access to healthcare in the US over the last 10 years.
I will continue to expose your right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like your won't dare show their face on a college campus. Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors and fight for just causes and for people's needs--such freedom fighters can be counted throughout American history and they certainly will be counted again.
Prof. John Daly

Hey, isn't this one of those examples of trying to "stifle someone's dissent", or does that only apply if the person being stifled by a perceived authority figure is a progressive?

(And because I don't have a copy of the original E-mail, and can't verify that the copy of it on the YAF website wasn't the source of the error, I won't make a big deal about a college English professor mis-spelling "hurricane". Or the 3rd sentence below the mis-spelling that doesn't quite seem to follow the traditional "subject/verb" structure.)

Unrelated blog admin note: Because it's really not worth a separate post, I just wanted to brag about how I got my 250,000th page view this morning. Thanks to the person from the Littleton, Massachusetts area who visited about 0642 EST this morning, and viewed six pages over 14 minutes and 33 seconds.

Oh, and make sure to vote for the group submarine blog Ultraquiet No More (and me!) for the 2005 MilBloggie Awards... we're tied for 2nd and 3rd place, respectively, in our categories.

Going deep...

Update 1057 20 Nov: On another unrelated blog admin note, I should thank everyone who's linked to me, enabling me to hold on to Large Mammal status in the TTLB ecosystem for over a week now. I'm humbled and honored... and, of course, now that I've mentioned it, I'm sure I'll drop back down when they re-index tonight.