42 replies to this topic

[Jimmy Leeds]

LA Times
JOEL STEIN
Warriors and wusses
Joel Stein

January 24, 2006

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.

Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach."

The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.

I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.

After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.

I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.

I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.

Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

[LetsGoDevils]

[RowdyFan42]

He's only "an honest liberal" if you subscribe to the partisan premise that all liberals -- every last one, no exceptions -- hate America and hate the people who, as Stein says, "joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq."

It also calls into question the meaning of the phrase "support the troops". Stein writes:

All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return.

What else should one say or do in order to be thought of as "supporting the troops"? Discuss.

[David Puddy]

Pray. Buy magnets. Support the President.

['7']

great article by a liberal who's had enough. He's got some Ann Coulter in him as well, a great humorist. I'm glad he wrote this and I'm glad he doesn't give a sh!t what others say. I wish more Democrats were like this.

[RowdyFan42]

Pray. Buy magnets. Support the President.

Now we're back to that "support" word. Define "support the President".

[PeteyNice]

That's easy Rowdy. You support the President but never questioning anything he does. No matter how illegal or bad the things he does are.

[NJD Jester]

I found this line about the Stein piece on some conservative web site: "Finally, a mainstream media journalist fesses up and admits what democrats and the rest of the media have been reluctant to confess."

To the righties on this board: do you actually believe this to be the case? Do you believe the MAJORITY of Democrats -- not the ones Drudge highlights, not the ones Hannity calls out for speaking ill of the President in a college lecture -- the MAJORITY of Democrats are rooting against the troops? I know we have our philisophical differences on being there and foreign policy in general, but do you actually believe that someone like me is sitting at home cheering on the criminals planting car bombs outside of Baghdad police stations or at American military checkpoints?

<JESTER>

[LetsGoDevils]

That's easy Rowdy. You support the President but never questioning anything he does. No matter how illegal or bad the things he does are.

Clinton?

[Jimmy Leeds]

NJD.......No, not the majority. But some do.

[LOULAM1]

http://www.editorand...t_id=1001918137

Joel Stein. A critical juncture as far as the Alito nomination is concerned and he drops this bomb? Stein is the Dean of the West Coast and every Republican should thank him.

Stein has done more for the President than one could ever ask for. Alito in, the press trying to defend him while Bush ratings will climb. Rove could not have done a better job!

[Neutral Zone Trap]

I found this line about the Stein piece on some conservative web site: "Finally, a mainstream media journalist fesses up and admits what democrats and the rest of the media have been reluctant to confess."

To the righties on this board: do you actually believe this to be the case? Do you believe the MAJORITY of Democrats -- not the ones Drudge highlights, not the ones Hannity calls out for speaking ill of the President in a college lecture -- the MAJORITY of Democrats are rooting against the troops? I know we have our philisophical differences on being there and foreign policy in general, but do you actually believe that someone like me is sitting at home cheering on the criminals planting car bombs outside of Baghdad police stations or at American military checkpoints?

<JESTER>

To be honest with you Greg, no I don't, I think a lot of this is hyped up in the media, what with Jane Fonda wishing for American planes to be shot down in Vietnam and saying our soldiers WERN'T tortured does not help the fact.
A lot of Libs/Dems/Inds seem to jump on the bandwaggon of what's popular to protest at the convenient time for them.
It's ironic that the biggest protests against Vietnam all of a sudden came when LBJ was president increasing the draft from 17,000 to 34,000 at that time.

We all want the best for our country, I want better education for children, I want better health care, but before we get that, we have to secure the safety of our country, and if that means wiretaps, then so be it, I've got nothing to hide.

[NJD Jester]

We all want the best for our country, I want better education for children, I want better health care, but before we get that, we have to secure the safety of our country, and if that means wiretaps, then so be it, I've got nothing to hide.

I agree with you on that. But this is where the debat has been warped. It's not about the wire taps; it's about the fact that the Bush Administration felt going through the proper checks and balances to secure them was too much of a process, so they just spied on whomever they felt needed spying on. They didn't even use the mechanism that would have allowed for review AFTER the tapping had occurred. That's just balls-out abuse of power right there, and it continues a pattern of behavior where the administration will circumvent the law in the name of security -- and then get away with it, because one party controls two branches, soon three.

<JESTER>

[David Puddy]

[Devils731]

Is that supposed to be humorous? I wouldn't ask since it obviously isn't but usually cartoons try to be.

[PeteyNice]

Far be it from me to speak for whoever created that cartoon but it is not supposed to funny. It is merely meant to show how much this administration has to hide and how ironic that it tries to hide things from the public for no other reason than it makes them look bad.

The Democrats have been doing a good job at the illegal spying hearings today. Pointing how illogical the whole thing is. Gonzales scares me. Some of the things he says about presidential authority make it sound like he thinks Bush is more King than President. As one of the Democrats so rightly pointed out, (paraphrase) Republicans like to say that Democrats have a pre-9/11 mentality when it comes to national security, well it seems to me that you have a pre-1776 mentality.

[Devils731]

I think if you read the statement Gonzalez puts out it pretty clearly shows why he believes the wiretapping is completely legal. I'd post it but its pretty long and most would probably skip over it due to length.

[PeteyNice]

I believe that the sky is really brown. That does not make it true.

He refuses to say what limits, if any, the president's power under the authorization of force have. When ever anyone brings up examples to try to pin him down (intra-country calls, mail, searches of homes, etc) he does not give a proper answer.

While not comparing Bush to Hitler I do believe that he and his administration subscribes to this part of Nazism. In today's parlance we call it the "unitary executive" and it is just as scary now as it was then.

http://en.wikipedia....i/Fuhrerprinzip

[LetsGoDevils]

Commander-In-Chief

[Devils731]

Well I happen to agree with the reasoning put forth. I think some people are being told why the sky is blue and insisting that it must be brown since Bush's camp thinks it is blue.