The phrase "support the powers that be" is one of the most successful political psychological operations in American history.
What it does, functionally, is make the soldier hostage.
If you question the war, you attack the soldier.
The young soldier, recruited from an economy with limited options, who was told he was going to defend his country, who is now in a country he can't find on a map shot by people defending their homes.
This soldier is real. His trauma is real. His sacrifice is real.
And he was in use.
by people who will never be in the field.
by people whose children will never be in the field.
By politicians and defense contractors and think tank strategists who needed bodies to implement policy and found them, reliably, in zip codes with the worst schools and fewest alternatives.
"Support the forces" exists so that it cannot be said.
Make criticism of the war machine sound like criticism of the nineteen-year-old boy from Ohio who joined it.
The biggest trick the empire pulls is turning its most expendable people into its most protected symbols, and using that protection to silence the people who try to explain who is truly expendable, and why.