An anonymous soldier writes:

In five days, it will have been six months since I joined the United States Army. I have yet to go to a combat zone, but with deployments the way they are, I'm sure that day is not far off. I graduate from my training soon, and our leadership estimates that by March, 75% of my graduating class will be in Iraq or Afghanistan.

So, you've signed up to be cannon-fodder for a war and occupation based on lies and that has already killed over half a million Iraqis, or over 1% of the country's population, and notice people who are in awe of your sacrifice. They are just as misinformed as you obviously are about the nobility of the cause. One would think that by now, even when the general patriotic fervour is taken into account, you have enough information to make moral choices. Putting yourself in physical danger does not absolve you of your responsibility as a human being to make those choices.

Ask any soldier what it is like to walk through an airport in uniform for the first time. People come up to you spontaneously and thank you for your service. Your meal gets paid for in the restaurant, and your beneficiary never comes forward. People come up to you and share their own military stories. A mother will whisper to her young child, "Look, sweetie! There's a soldier!"

So people who know no better fetishise your uniform. The proud soldier, on his way to pacify the unruly savage, defending freedom, democracy, and the American way of life. Excuse me while I throw up.

Bash the politicians, if you want. Most have no connection to the Armed Forces, it's true. Their children will never serve. But before you condemn everyone who has a yellow ribbon on their car or their lapel, keep in mind that some people do still make sacrifices. Some people wear the pins in honor of others they know who make that sacrifice. The man or woman you mock may have a sister, a brother, a friend, a child, or a parent serving proudly.

Pride? The US is in its fifth year of committing an utter, criminal folly, and the pride of loving parents makes it all fine? I'm fairly sure the terrorists who flew the planes into WTC were also proud of what they were doing, and with about the same level of justification.

As to the subject of the article, the first time I noticed American politicians sporting those pins, I was immediately reminded of the Soviet Union. All the communist party officials had a lapel pin of the red hammer-and-sickle flag. Little did I know that in the years to follow, the US would descend much further into resembling a single-truth police state that uses its armed forces to export its brutality.

Hotel rooms used to have folders with all necessary information neatly organised inside. Whatever happened to that idea?

Now my brain hurts.

I already complained a while ago about Patrick's obsession with denigrating the looks of the A380. Frankly, I don't see what the big deal is. Granted, it's certainly not beautiful as the 747 is, but apart from the size, the A380 looks like a fairly average jetliner to me.

Come on, you're a professional journalist.

A beautiful review of a beautiful film. Forget the Pirates of the Caribbean films; Knightley is a great actor.

I'm puzzled about these two sentences, from the same paragraph:

"Luckily there has never been a case where a passenger needed to be drafted for cockpit duty." and "A few years ago, here in New England, after the lone pilot of a Cape Air commuter plane became ill, a passenger took over and performed a safe landing."

Does the second one not contradict the first?

Wow, it's weirdo city here.

Joan, you write:

For one thing, the traditionally reliable liberal stable of Times columnists is far less so these days: Tom Friedman supported the war, ...

As you note, Tom Friedman supported the Iraq war. Glenn Greenwald demolishes, in more detail, the notion that Friedman is any sort of a liberal:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/18/friedman/

Sunday November 18, 2007

The Tom Friedman of 2002 has not gone anywhere

For all the self-satisfied talk about how George Bush is incapable of ever admitting mistakes or changing his mind, our elite pundit class is exactly the same way. Tom Friedman single-handedly did more than anyone else to convince liberals and Democrats to support the invasion of Iraq; the only competitors for that ignominious distinction are Colin Powell and Ken Pollack. And while he has spent the last year or so feigning angst over his years of pro-war cheerleading, he has not changed in the slightest.

Greenwald also notes that Friedman is a weathervane:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/19/rose/

Monday November 19, 2007

Tom Friedman and Rudy Giuliani on 9/11

... UPDATE: Just one more thought on Friedman. Compare his rant yesterday about how the U.S. desperately needs Dick Cheney's crazed warmongering, to this sermon Friedman delivered back in 2006 on Meet the Press about how destructive the Bush administration is for transforming us into "a country that always exports fear":

[link to video clip here]

In 2002, there were great pro-war winds blowing, so that's what Friedman spouted. In 2006, the opposite was true, so he suddenly found his anti-war voice ("the dark nature of the Cheneys and the Bushses and the Rices . . . this exporting of fear, not hope, has really left people feeling that the idea of America has been stolen from them"). But now, the media is back to persuading itself of the Greatness of the Iraq War, so Friedman once again loves Dick Cheney's deranged war threats.

I didn't intend to return to this topic but found both of these clips while searching for something else. At Obsidian Wings, both Hilzoy and publius have more on the incomparably small and absurd figure known as Tom Friedman, America's great and Serious (and "liberal") foreign policy expert.