Wow,

I nominate PI's savage parody of the thin people's (or at least, 'not fat' peoples) hate brigades' rantings as an 'Editors' Choice' letter (the first for this thread).

NotaHero

I had a history professor in college whom I rather liked, even though he was a staunch conservative with whom I disagreed on just about everything. He had a certain confidence, charm and optimism about him that was appealing, as well as the sort of intelligence and intellectual honesty that most other modern conservatives seem to lack. But he was from an older and more honorable generation of conservatives who actually practiced what they preached and whom you had to respect, even if you passionately disagreed with their politics and thought that they were a little bit nuts sometimes. E.g. Goldwater, Lodge, Patton. And like them, while he supported an aggressive and militaristic US foreign policy, he had also served in the military himself, so his was no armchair gung-ho conservatism. He did not advocate sending OTHER people and their children to fight wars that he supported, but volunteered to fight them himself.

While one might disagree with their politics, one has to at least respect such conservatives' honesty in terms of having the courage of their convictions and fighting in the wars that they support. But this sort of conservative seems to be a dying breed today, having been replaced by a new generation of armchair neoconservatives who enthusiatically call for all-out war, so long as OTHER people and their children fight it, but certainly not them. They're too busy rallying the public at home and risking paper cuts and eye strain furiously pounding out lengthy articles and books advocating for yet more wars to have the time to actually fight in them. And, as we all know, "intellectuals" aren't meant to fight in wars. They're too delicate and important for that. We need them right here at home, putting their brains to good use, not their brawn other there.

I wonder what my old professor would think of them now.

Oh, and by the way, they might want to read some Wilfred Owen, Sigfried Sassoon and Robert Graves when they get the chance, or perhaps Paul Fussell. All delicate poets and intellectuals who wouldn't be caught dead near a battlefield.

By the way, there's yet another pantywaist neocon pro-war armchair warrior who might give Freddie Kagan a run for his money in terms of intellectual dishonesty and simply looking like a pudge boy moral coward, Kirk Johnson. He's the guy behind all those stats we heard this week that claimed that sectarian violence and deaths were down since the "surge" started, even though, inconveniently, they weren't. Look him up and decide for yourselves. Or better yet:

http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan.csp?command=dprogram&record=200889055

and

http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/Pictures/Programs/200712/200712-09-m.jpg

Fair warning: there seems to be another Kirk Johnson on the internets who, ahem, appears to have persued a somewhat different line of work, of a more, shall we say, Jeff Gannon variety.

OK folks, listen up,

I know, for a fact, that every branch of the US military keeps meticulous records on exactly how many days are spent in a combat/war/imminent danger zones. Are you kidding me? The military uses these metrics to write 'atta-boy' lines for everyone's annual performance reports...basically, these lines in these reports are stuffed with factual, and many times verry fuzzy, fact(-oids), surrounded by 'high-impact' command-approved adjectives. These same lines of prose are used to populate the narrative in soliders' various Medals that they receive from time to time. All thes performance reports, medals, and duty histories are periodically judged by promotion boards to see if the member will be granted the next higher rank (promoted) or not. The number of days in war zones also is used to compute how much 'homecoming leave/recuperative time' is granted to each deployed soldier, sailor, and marine as 'home time' away from 'the office' afer returning. The number of days in the war zone also is used to compute how much of the warrior's pay will be exempt from Federal taxation.

I could go on and on, but I have established enough facts to make my case...gee, it's almost as if I live this dream!

Soooo, these neocons are vomitting total lies and/or demonstrating their complete unfamiliarity with military life and operations. They should volunteer to patrol the most dangerous parts of iraq at night, sans body armor, on foot...maybe some of them will have their heads forcibly separated from their bodies by RPGs and IEDs, as many of our comrades have. Or maybe they can just be brutally injured and experience the heroic joys of living the rest of their lives as amputees, perhaps with metal plates in their headache-stricken heads, under the care of the under-funded VA system.

I am sick to my stomache.

NotaHero

Flashheart:

I think it's pretty obvious...

That Kagan has never worked in an S1 or G1 shop.

Or has the slightest idea what an S1 or G1 shop is.

- - Flashheart - - Saturday, September 15, 2007 09:55 AM

Fred Kagan's official bio at AEI says he's an expert on military issues, but ALL of Fred Kagan's scholarship (he actually was a scholar once, but now he's at AEI where he's merely a "scholar") and ALL of Fred Kagan's peer-reviewed publications have been in the area of Imperial Russian military history, especially the period of Aleksandr Pavlovich (Tsar Alexander) and Napoleon.

Aleksandr Pavlovich's dad, Pavel Petrovich (Tsar Paul) was assassinated in 1801 by a bunch of officers and nobles for not being harsh enough to the soldiers and serfs. That assassination in 1801 seems to have traumatized poor Freddie Kagan's imagination when he was a scholar (before he went to AEI), and now Freddie is bound and determined to show that he's harsh enough to be a good imperialist.

* * *

The most hypocritical part of Freddie Kagan's article is where he says that Democrats must prove their good faith by endorsing a huge expansion of the military. The reason that's so hypocritical is that, a year ago, in 2006, Freddie Kagan said that the USA needed a huge expansion of the military, in order to surge AT LEAST an additional 80,000 troops into Baghdad, in order to win there. Then somebody whispered something in his ear, and all of a sudden his plan was revised to say that only 30,000 addtional troops were needed for the surge. Poor Freddie. How he dreams of the good old days when an empire could just tell the serfs what to do and where to go and die for the Tsar.