This is a Yahoo story, which means it will be gone in an hour or so, but the gist of it is that the Pentagon and some Congressmen are blaming people who call the war a mistake, and media types who only show the bad side of the war for the failure of the Army and other branches of the military to meet recruiting goals.
OK, come on. Just what is it about the rich and powerful that makes them behave like morons?
Let’s look at the reality of the situation.
- the occupation of Iraq is killing something like 20 – 50 U. S. troops a month
- the occupation of Afghanistan is killing something like 10 – 20 U. S. troops per month
- the endless saber rattling by the administration about things which do nothing but antagonize those who might otherwise not take issue with the American Nation and keep the American Nation in a constant state of heightened fear like:
- the inevitable second wave of terrorist attacks
- the inevitable distribution of nuclear weapons by North Korea
- the inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran
- the price of gas at the pump, and crude oil in the commodities market – which shows no prospect of returning to pre-war levels
- the inability of the Republican party, which controls the White House and both houses of Congress, to solve the economic problems of this country and its choice to instead engage in ideological crusades
- the frequent reports that we didn’t have a plan for coping with a post-Saddam Iraq
- the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the Saddam government
- the absence of any proof linking Iraq to the September 11, 2001 attacks
- the reports of abuse in prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay and the accompanying assertion that nothing wrong was done by those in charge
- the revelation that Pat Tilman was killed by friendly fire from his own Ranger unit
Any one of those reasons is good enough to convince some people, particularly intelligent young people, that they are better off working the 5 am shift at Starbucks. Taken together, they are a pretty damn good case that if you trust these guys with your life, which is what you are signing up with the Army, you might find out that safeguarding your life isn’t their priority.
There is a big difference between putting your life on the line to keep the Constitution from being torn up and the American Republic disassembled in favor of a Japanese, Nazi, or Communist empire and putting your life on the line to force representative democratic ideology on a country that, right now, would just like to have reliable running water and electricity, and a drastic reduction in the amount of airborne metal. The thing that the President seemed to be saying the other night was that blowing up Iraq and having guerrillas killing off their police and national guard and politicians and judges and reporters is better than letting the guerrillas blow up the U. S. and kill off our police, politicians, judges, and reporters. That is nice, I guess, if you are someone who might get killed if we weren’t letting the Iraqis take all the rounds, but our National Guard is over there getting killed right along side the Iraqi defense forces. Calling an incursion into a sovereign state with the express purpose of overthrowing the sitting government, based on a complex series of mistaken interpretations, misconceptions, and outright lies at the expense of thousands of lives on both sides, the stability of the civilian population, the heritage of a people, and the respect of this Nation in the eyes of the world a patriotic duty is more than simply rhetorical, it is perverse.
Expecting that another nation should shoulder the burdens of an American war for no better reason than we decline to accept that responsibility is a sacrilege to the honor of those men, women, and children who put their lives on hold to support a national war effort by working in factories and farms, and by living lives of reduced comfort brought on by rations of key materiel and resources. A wartime President engaged in a patriotic war doesn’t tell the Nation to go on with their lives as if nothing has happened. We are, and have been since the early days after September 11th, 2001, essentially being told to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” which is not a sign of a patriotic endeavor. Patriotism endures the shadow only when compelled to, preferring to seek the wide open skies and warm sunlight of openness. The glory of patriotism is that is a struggle shared among all one’s countrymen, not one suffered by the few, profited by the few, and ignored by the mass.
For the Pentagon and these Congressmen to try to lay the blame on lowered levels of interest on the part of lower income young adults to put their lives in the hands of the U. S. government on a ‘negative media’ that reports only the bad news is not just stupid, it is hypocritical. The bad news they are referring to is that this war maims soldiers because we have gotten just good enough at tactical medicine to keep them alive, but not to save their limbs. The bad news they are referring to is that we haven’t learned from Hue City or Sarajevo or Grozny on how to fight in densely populated, densely built-up urban areas. The bad news they are referring to is that we haven’t learned that war lasts longer than just a few weeks. The bad news they are referring to is that we think that, absent another Superpower, we can resume our pre-World War I modus operendi of capitalist empire. The bad news they are referring to is that we went into Iraq without a good plan to reconstruct the infrastructure of the nation after we blew it up and no plan to deal with unemployment or healthcare or education or humanitarian needs.
The bad news they aren’t referring to is that we aren’t paying attention to the lies being told to us, and they, the liars, are noticing.