This is a war.

"Kicking ass" in wartime means killing people. Are we supposed to celebrate this as if it's a sporting event and we're racking up points against the other side?

Kicking ass in wartime means winning. It means not losing. It means not retreating in disarray, pulling our troops out and throwing the nation to a hapless bunch of unarmed Iraqis while the Baathists come out of their holes and start killing people again by the tens of thousands.

We are trying to kill people who want not only Americans dead, but Iraq enslaved.

And when soldiers are having a tough time on the ground, and their families are having a tough time at home, it means giving them a boost, not a downer.

It doesn't mean going over there like Hillary did, and telling them they weren't getting as much support at home as they might. It doesn't mean picking out a single quote that emphasized the casualty level. Or is that somehow in the spirit of the season to remind those here with loved ones still in harm's way that they are still dying over there?

Many of the people on the other side are fanatics, with enough belief in their cause to drive cars full of explosives into buildings and fire guns at us out of crowds of children. If you think we can beat such creatures by holding out holly branches, singing carols, and "seeing the other point of view," we're going to be burying a LOT of our soldiers.

We don't have to lie to our troops. But we don't have to cut them off at the knees with crepe-hanging either.

I am reminded of an article I once read, which I can't lay hands on any more, from a WWII revisionist. He took great glee in pointing out that many of the things that people at home did to support the war effort, like collecting tires and metal, were in fact largely useless. Had he been there at the time, I'm sure he would have gone up to the nearest Boy Scout troop collecting old metal and announced this fact to their face. Some people get most of their joy from crapping in the punchbowls of life.

In some ways life is a lot like a football game, and the most important way is that the attitude of the team means almost as much if not more than the skills.

"Support the troops" isn't just a buzz phrase. Although listening to some news types and politicans, who follow the rote recital of the phrase by comments on how the war is a failure, some people apparently think so.

In and of itself, that particular comment from that returning soldier was not a bad one, or even all that negative. But piled up with all the rest of what I have been hearing on ABC news, it adds up and becomes quite obvious.