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Salon Spits in Face of Military on Eve of Veterans Day
[TRUTHREVOLT.ORG] One of the reasons that the American public so eagerly and excitedly complies with the cultural code of lionizing every soldier and cop is because of the physical risk-taking and bravery many of them display on the foreign battleground and the American street. Physical strength and courage is only useful and laudable when invested in a cause that is noble and moral. The causes of American foreign policy, especially at the present, rarely qualify for either compliment. The "troops are heroes" boosters of American life typically toss out cliches to defend their generalization ‐ "They defend our freedom," "They fight so we don't have to."I always feel kind of embarrassed when someone says "thank you for your service." After spending time with some of the kids who came back from Iraq and Afghanistan I feel that even more. No American freedom is currently at stake in Afghanistan. Except for the freedom to work unmolested in skyscrapers. It is impossible to imagine an argument to the contrary, Popped right into my mind. just as the war in Iraq was clearly fought for the interests of empire, the profits of defense contractors, and the edification of neoconservative theorists. It was fought to dispose of Sammy the dictator, who should have been killed in the course of the first Gulf War. There was pretty heavy Congressional support for that war--the opposition came from the Arab and Moslem bloc at the UN and from some (not even all) Euro lefties. Iraq was reputed to be hiding its WMDs. I notice the author doesn't bring up the fact that they were "discredited," now that the public knows about the chem stockpiles. Bush's intent was to plant a democracy in the middle of the sea of presidents-for-life, which seems kind of a forlorn hope from the perspective of eleven years, but at the time seemed to be doable and maybe even a good idea. It had nothing to do with the safety or freedom of the American people. Well, maybe the freedom to live in a world free of a bloody-handed dictator who would occasionally drop a victim into a mulching machine and who subsidized terror groups on the theory that they were all traveling in the same direction. The last time the U.S. military deployed to fight for the protection of American life was in World War II ‐ an inconvenient fact that reduces cliches about "thanking a soldier" for free speech to rubble. More people were killed on 9-11-2001 than were killed in the Pearl Harbor attack. The vast majority of the 9-11 victims were civilians, who were deprived of their right to consume oxygen. If you become a Moslem you automatically lose your right to speak freely or even to think freely. The Caliphate claims worldwide dominion. So does al-Qaeda. Thank your soldier or Marine or airman or squid. If a soldier deserves gratitude, so does the litigator who argued key First Amendment cases in court, the politicians who voted for the protection of free speech, and thousands of external agitators who rallied for more speech rights, less censorship and broader access to media. The writer reserves his respect to lawyers, politicians, and community organizers, all of whom are by his definition "good." The litigators are the ones who've ripped huge settlements out of tobacco companies, stalled development projects like the Keystone pipeline, and led us into a world where a hammer comes with a warning label. We occasionally have to put a pol in jug, though he seldom serves as much time as your average drug dealer. And community organizers have so far not managed to organize any community anywhere into prosperity. People who go into the military aren't necessarily heroic. In fact, the ones who join up wanting to be heroes are soon disabused of their illusions. Nor are the majority combat arms. The army needs personnel clerks and finance clerks and guys to set up communications networks. There are mechanics and programmers and intel collectors and analysts like me and several other guys who hang out at the Burg. There are engineers and medics and the guys in the supply room and dental assistants. Most of the jobs aren't particularly heroic. That's a good thing, because Rambos aren't required, not even for the special operations guys. What makes the military work is discipline, both the formal structure of who salutes whom and when, and the informal structure that calls for being a part of a team, of being able to rely on someone you don't know to have the competence to support what you're doing. It's the reason combat is a contest of training, and always has been. The best trained force knows its arms and tactics better and it's more secure in its supply chain. It will also win unless heavily outnumbered 100.00 percent of the time, the exceptions being fire, flood, earthquake, and treachery. Are there heroes? You betcha, and more of them than get written up for medals. They don't get identified in basic training and they don't stand out. They may even be maladjusted, like Ira Hayes. I can't recall ever having seen anyone strutting and pushing out his chest and promising to kill all them slant-eyed bastards. I doubt there were many who ever strutted and promised to kill all them damned raghead bastards. The really, truly heroes are very often the guys you don't look at a second time -- the "Aw, shucks" Sergeant Alvin York, or the short, opinionated Audie Murphy. I had a great uncle from Arkansas, Henry Pruitt, who won the medal of honor twice in the First World War, one each from the Marines and the Army. He was just an Arkansas farm boy. To get back to the writer, it's a lot easier to sneer and pose and get snide than it is to sign up for something you really don't know anything about at a young age. In the majority of cases, you leave Mom and Dad and suddenly you're in a different society. Maybe you were a tough guy hanging around street corners making faces at people. More likely you were a kid who graduated high school without any particular destination in life. You get basically trained: keep your uniform straight, learn how to fire a weapon and clean it, do some obstacle course stuff to build up your confidence. From there you go to individual training. You may be a grunt (infantry) or a tank driver, or a cannon cocker (artillery). Those are the combat arms. The cannon cockers get the enemy's attention, the grunts kick his ass, and the tank drivers run over the remains. The combat arms are the "tooth." Behind the tooth, and stretching for a long way, is the "tail." That's split into combat support and combat service support. (Bear with me if the terminology's changed since I got out, which was a while ago.) Combat support includes the engineers, who clear minefields among their other duties that keep them in the field for forty days at a time training. It includes intel, where the guys at division level deploy forward of the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area). Comms guys have to set up for secure communications all along the FEBA. Probably combat support should be referred to as the "gum," since it supports the tooth. There are likely a few areas I've left out, like the chemical warfare guys and the MPs, who in wartime receive and process prisoners. Behind them all are the combat service support guys. Maybe the finance guys and the personnel clerks don't see mud very often, but the truck drivers delivering beans and bullets do. If the vehicles we use in wartime break down the truck drivers will have to haul them to the rear or the mechanics will have to come forward and fix them on the spot. When somebody's sick or hurt there will be a medic somewhere close by. If the person dies we also have mortuary service guys; they're headquartered at Fort Lee, if you want to stop by and say hello. They're in theater, too. They look like most anyone else. I could yap on this all day, but the point I'm trying to make is that most people don't have "heroic" jobs, sneaking up on the enemy and stabbing him in the kidney and the rescuing the beautiful ambassador's daughter. Most just do what they're paid to do, bitching and moaning occasionally, slacking occasionally and planning on getting out when their time's up. When you say "thank you for your service," don't imagine the guy (or gal) you're addresing standing in front of a roll of barbed wire with a cigar clenched in his or her teeth firing a .50 machinegun from the hip. In my own not so humble opinion the truck driver or the medic or the mechanic deserves thanks just as much as the grunt or the cannon cocker or the tank driver. And the poor mortuary affairs guy probably deserves it most of all. Posted by: Fred 2014-11-10 |
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