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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Please don't patronize me. I have no illusions about the glories of our military. What you seem to fail to understand is that no one I know signed up for this war. No one I know has said "Take me to Iraq please! I'd quite enjoy getting myself blown up." They signed up to defend this country which, in case you had forgotten, is still on the United States military's to-do list. There is a reason that they call it the "armed services." Our government may be wasting money and lives with its war, but the military's role is far greater and more important than simply that.
Does it take courage to protest a war? I sincerely doubt it. Not because I would characterize protestors as cowards but because I've seen so many absolutely clueless idiots jumping on the left-wing "My God war is teeeeerrible!" bandwagon not too long after voting for the very people who wanted to make that war a reality. Obviously it does not take courage to protest, it just takes a fad. We live in a free country. This is not Reformation-era England when anything said against the crown constitutes treason, and while the Bush administration may have characterized it that way, I think you'd be hard-pressed to say that you ever actually feared for your safety or freedom while criticizing the American government.
The natural tendency to rebel is anything but courageous, it is more or less a part of who we are. It is trendy to question authority. Have you ever been to a Hot Topic? Sticking it to the man has become so redundant and commercialized that they mass produce t-shirts about it.
So please don't characterize military personnel as mindless beefcakes who "sign up for the war in Iraq" while praising protestors who risk nothing (and typically accomplish nothing) by stomping around angrily.
The only people who deserve true praise in this situation are the ones who actually reach out to help others. This is not an issue of left versus right, Democrat versus Republican, protestor versus soldier. This is an issue of humanity, and we are all of us - soldiers, terrorists, protestors, politicians included - human beings in need of something that neither shooting ourselves up nor demonizing the ones who do the shooting is going to bring about.
"They signed up to defend this country which, in case you had forgotten, is still on the United States military's to-do list."
Chloe, what I'd like more than anything is for you to think here for a second. What are the soldiers 'defending' our country against in Iraq? In what way was Iraq a threat to American lives, or even the American way of life, before the American military was directed to invade it? Responding to the rest of your letter would be much easier if you could first just answer this.
Um, did you read me at all? I have said about a hundred times that it's not the war in Iraq that I'm referring to. There are still threats to this country outside of Iraq. We still need a military to defend us from these threats. Ergo we still need people to join the military. Please stop reading my posts the way you would like them to be, the way that apparently makes me a naive child who supports our occupation of Iraq. I do not support it, I never have. But I do support our military personnel. They are doing their jobs. Unlike the administration.
Chloe, you haven't answered my question. The war in Iraq is the war we're all discussing in this thread. It's the biggest conflict the U.S. military is at this moment involved in. Do you think it's an unjust war or not? If you think it's just, please explain why. If you think it's unjust, please explain why you feel protesting it is inappropriate.
"Our government may be wasting money and lives with its war, but the military's role is far greater and more important than simply that." You kinda make wasting lives seem like a minor concern there, kid. Your letter strikes me as a schizophrenic mish-mosh of trying to come off as NOT right-wing while espousing some fairly right-wing sentiments.
See, all this time I've been wondering: if so many people claim to be against the war, how come Bush is still in office and even seems to be gearing up for more mischief in Iran? Yeah, I was scratching my head over that one. Well, folks, maybe now we have an answer to that: Conliberals! They pay lip-service to certain Liberal ideals (the whole PC shebang), while displaying extremely Conservative reflexes! Witness dear Chloe testifying that she has no 'illusions about the glories of our military' (a very Lefty sarcasm, that), yet, immediately afterwards she falls back on that hoariest of Republican riffs about our military having a job to do, etc. Anybody who protests a war that even Chloe herself doesn’t even seem too thrilled about is some kind of whiner, in her book. Which reminds me of one of Donny R.’s favorite catch-phrases: Get over it! (Get a life, you whiney, freako, loud-mouth loser trouble makers! Nobody likes YOU anyway!)
Chloe, if you agree that this Iraq thing sucks, doesn’t it bother you at all that people on both sides are getting their heads blown off over it? Or are all those people expendable in your book? Are you saying that people should enlist in the military and just kinda hope the war they get is a good one? And if the one they get is a bad one, and they have to lose an arm or their sight or their extremely precious lives over a senseless mistake (or a nefarious plot), they should go along with it so people like you at home don’t get, like, exasperated with ‘em? And this goes for their grieving mom and dad and siblings and wife (or husband) and kids, too? Just, like, a shut up you whiners and don’t make trouble kinda thing?
Christ, I'm FINALLY starting to understand you m------f-----s!
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