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Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Sticks and Stones
We're a week from the elections, and the Republican noise machine has broken out the megaphones: John Kerry insulted the troops! Shout it from the rafters, scream it in the streets -- a failed presidential candidate has said something that can be interpreted as insulting the troops!
This is the closest I've come to exploding with rage in a very long time. Let's say the Bushies are right. John Kerry insulted troops. Let's go one further. John Kerry really hates troops. He barely gets through Memorial Day and Veterans Day -- he shuts himself up and stews, nursing a single-malt whiskey, while cursing the armed forces under his breath. He often throws things at VFW parades. So what's the worse insult: what John Kerry said, or what this Administration has done? What's more likely to damage morale and hurt the actual living, breathing troops? A Senator with big wavy hair saying something to a crowd of high schoolers, or let's say, being sent to the middle of a desert to get randomly killed for three years by a government that considers you so completely valueless that its "strategy" is a soundbite -- stay the course -- that now even it can't agree on? What's the worse insult? A veteran suggesting that perhaps you would have to be kind of on the dumb side, at this point, to sign up for a commission as Cannon Fodder, First Class? Or a draft-dodging commander-in-chief who cares so little about military families that he stops the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been on an extended nine-month deployment during which all the men and women on board have been separated from their families, and makes it circle San Diego harbor like a wounded penguin for a few hours so he can gussy himself up in flight gear and get himself a little photo-op? What's the worse insult? A few words tossed carelessly into the air, or a few thousand bodies sent home in hidden coffins, because the Administration would rather that Americans shop terrorism away than think about the wanton destruction going on in their name? What's the worse insult? Telling someone "you, too, could possibly be stupid," or an Administration so convinced that it is god's gift to warfare that it fails to listen to its generals about troop levels, allows command discipline to break down, and is so desperate for more cannon fodder that its recruiters are getting autistic kids to sign up? John Kerry's words cannot hurt you or me, and they cannot hurt our troops. But sticks and stones will break our bones: so will RPGs and roadside bombs and failure of the chain of command and incompetence. And the blame for those things lies squarely with this Administration. |
5 Comments:
http://www.educationnews.org/Commentaries/Honest_Military_Recruiters_Not_Wanted_For_USA_High_Schools.htm
Aside from or in addition to what Kerry didn't say, articles like this explain how students are targeted and manipulated, how the whole concept of a "volunteer" military is a sham.
Lied to from day one, these young kids are treated as fodder and nothing more. The lucky ones may survive and collect on some part of the benefits they are promised. For the rest, too bad, too sad.
Nance
9:15 AM, November 01, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/ylw6d7
A smaller url may help.
Nance
9:17 AM, November 01, 2006
Well, I am a navy brat and come from a family with a long history of military service, both during war and peacetime.
Working for the military can provide you with dignity and integrity. It can be something where everyone serves with pride. But the Administration has effed this thing up so much. They don't listen to their brass (who are so often the brass for a reason -- like actually knowing how the military works), put our soldiers in for way more than they can handle, and then treat the "troops" like some kind of amorphous rhetorical gesture -- as opposed to an organization made of thousands of individuals, with their own minds, and rights, and personas.
I've often had to explain to liberal civilians that not everyone who chooses military service is some kind of violent jarhead. Now the administration needs to learn that the members of our military are not some kind of soulless Republican automata to be killed and praised as politics suit. They are real people. Their families are real people. And their lives matter.
9:32 AM, November 01, 2006
I've often had to explain to liberal civilians that not everyone who chooses military service is some kind of violent jarhead. Now the administration needs to learn that the members of our military are not some kind of soulless Republican automata to be killed and praised as politics suit. They are real people. Their families are real people. And their lives matter.
Kerry was right on both issues. Uneducated Americans wind up in Iraq, whether they start in the White House or in a trailer park in Alabama (or Virginia) and lop up all the content from Fox as gospel.
We're not supposed to say that our armed forces are idealogical praetorians out loud, but that doesn't make it factually incorrect. Of course, he was silly to say it 8 days before an election without a follow-up strategy, but it's done now.
WRT not everyone in the military is a violent jarhead, well of course not -- jarheads aren't violent uniformly, but really, why deny that we become the part of the organization that becomes us.
WRT to generals/brass know what to do because they are after all, brass, and got there based on meaningful criteria -- well, I don't agree that senior or junior military people should be left without civilian oversight. It just so happens that our civilian oversight at present is retarded and that makes the brass appear positively enlightened in comparison.
The military-industrial complex sucks the life out of this country both educationally, culturally and in our approach to international relations. The solution to everything is a big stick because we have a big stick.
9:54 AM, November 01, 2006
It's not just the uneducated getting the shit end of the stick in Iraq. My uncle is an Army chaplain stationed there right now. Way longer than he had to be, to boot, since there's a shortage of chaplains right now, apparently.
My uncle is educated, sweet and nice, and he joined because he wanted to minister to the often troubled and confused recruits.
I'm not saying this to rebuke anyone; not anyone here, at any rate. I'd gladly spit on the fuckers who started this war of choice. I hope my uncle comes home safely.
1:39 PM, November 01, 2006
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