Posted by Daikazu Neko

Read your own posts:

“Do prepare yourself now, of course, to be on the receiving end of what you’re dishing out now whenever, in future,…”

“…just as the Right discovered to their horror after eight years of moving Heaven and Earth to undermine Clinton that such tactics could rebound upon their pet projects, so the Left is destined to encounter the “chickenhawk” slur…”

There’s something to that. On the other hand, what if our veterans are coarsened by the experience, and perhaps brainwashed? Then they wouldn’t be good choices either.

“The opposite of an ordinary truth is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another great truth.” This is one of those things where the opposite fits just as well.

So let’s combine both ideas! When we’re thinking about having a war, call an election. Veterans vote in one election, nonveterans in another. And both sides get a veto, if either one of them votes for peace, we don’t get to start the war.

If somebody attacks us then we need to vote quick. We could do that.

Au contraire, mon frere. The U.S. has always been a stickler for civilian control of the military. That’s why the Constitution make the President (& not the Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs) the Commander in Chief. It seems to me that if a war is being fought in my name, & my sons may one day end up drafted, & my tax dollars are unavailable for paving my streets or providing my fellow citizens with affordable medical care, etc., etc., I consider as much an obligation as a right to have an opinion, regardless of my military experience.
Never mind the 1st Amendment.
On a side note, Starship Troopers provides an amusingly gory object lesson in reserving citizenship for the soldiering class.

I haven’t read the original article, since I have no interest in subscribing to NR and I haven’t looked for a copyright-infringing version online. So I was surprised when someone copied the passage about the graveyard, and it made no mention of the soldier with the skullplate on his head wearing a helmet. He talked like the bone was visible.

Did it really say he was wearing a helmet? I could easily imagine that he wasn’t, and that all the critics assumed that no soldier in iraq would be stupid enough not to.

If these guys were a mediocre unit put in a mostly-safe place—where they were out of the way but they might possibly do some good if things spill over to them—and they’d had no combat and no casualties, I can easily imagine one of them leaving his helmet off while digging in the heat. And if there wasn’t somebody on the spot who’d call him down for wearing human bones on his head, there wouldn’t be somebody who’d call him down for taking his helmet off either.

Are there low-morale units in iraq? I’d expect so. There are a few everywhere else, right? And if there’s a unit with a bunch of guys nobody else wants, wouldn’t it make sense Beauchamp might be there? It sounds like he has a bad attitude.

Any takers?

BTW, I thought you said “sayonara”.

There are, after all, entire groups of people who require … no, who demand, your condemnation! Go get ‘em, John!

Funny, though, that it does seem that others up thread did kinda do something like that – circumscribing entire groups as beneath contempt in what amounted to essentialist terms. I know, I know, that’s different! It doesn’t count if it’s wingers, and your hearts in the right place, and …..

You’ll forgive me if I say I’ve heard that before, I trust?

Wow…I didn’t realize it until now, but suddenly it’s clear to me: all you guys who have been arguing with DN are racists. You all make me sick.

But permit me to be true to my word – I said “sayonara” earlier, and I feel compelled to honor that sentiment. Giri and all that – perhaps it’s an essential component of who I am, being yet another one of “those people.”

The US has been driven into the ditch by an out-of-control political party, while the enablers have cheered on the sidelines. How did it go so wrong? Those of us forced to observe it up close have noticed certain pervasive psychological features, features so uncharacteristic of the ordinary population, that it’s not hard to think that they contributed to the disaster that has befallen us. One of them is chickenhawism. Maybe it’s not the most important. Really, we’re trying to make sense of the world-view of crazy people by the indirect clues of their public utterances.

It’s an excellent question, Bruce, and one that’s occurred to me as well in the past week. One minute the soldiers are fighting with one hand tied behind their back because the namby-pamby liberals won’t let them take the gloves off and win; the next they’re St. Francis of Asisi.

I guess it’s not terribly surprising that you’re not getting anything more substantive from the war supporters here than incoherent, spittle-flecked babbling.

Are there any other groups out there you’d like to include in your category as deserving of exclusion? As being comparable to criminals and incompetents? As being bad because they’re “those people” and therefore essentially wicked and beyond redemption?

Or would you prefer to revert to the “Shut up, he explained” school of argumentation?

Ah, let me save you the trouble. Don’t bother. As one of “those people,” I’m not worth it.

Sayonara, John.