Yesterday on Meet The Press, Tim Russert asked Maryland Senate candidate Benjamin Cardin if he "would vote to cut off funding for our troops while the war's going on." When Cardin said he would consider using the appropriations process, Michael Steele jumped on him with all the self-righteousness the issue can evoke. "That is absolutely amazing to me," he said, "that you would vote for cutting off funding for our troops in Iraq; men and women who are putting it on the line every single day." As if the soldiers would somehow be forced to fend for themselves -- that one day their paychecks would stop arriving, and they'd have to scrounge Baghdad markets for food. This, of course, is not how these things work at all.

I don't know if this is a proper example of Lakoffian framing, but the phrase "cut off funding for the troops" intentionally confuses means and ends in order to avoid the issue of whether the war should continue. Soldiers are instruments of American policy, not the policy itself. We didn't go to war to benefit them, and we shouldn't continue or abandon it because of them either. Paul Glastris will surely think me hard-hearted for saying so, but the troops' well-considered views on the war are not any more relevant than those of other citizens. Yes, many soldiers would no doubt wish to fight it out until the end, to not feel as if their comrades had died in vain (whatever that means.) But are we now to feel worse about bringing soldiers out of war than we do about putting them in?