Sacrifice
I've gotten a record amount of private email response to my post last week about the soldier I met at a casino in New Mexico. The overwhelming response was a positive one, with many correspondents pointing to the surreal atmosphere we're currently living in.
We have an administration in power that justifies all of its policies and opposes all criticism on the grounds that we are at war. And yet, unless you read the obit section of your local paper and see the pictures of smiling young men or women in uniform, there is absolutely no visible evidence of national sacrifice.
Blowhard pols send the young who enlisted off to war, off to kill and be killed, and everyone else is given a tax cut and a charge card. Future historians will note this as a time of massive national decay and decline, typical of empires on the wane.
One correspondent sent me a link this morning that should be looked at. Here we see the homely looking nephew of the President of the United States. He seems untroubled by the same concerns that haunted the soldier I met last week.
I don't begrudge the little twit his beers. But you'd think that someone in the Bush family would have said something about public decorum. If not the proper policies then at least some proper appearance and public sensibilities. But that would be assuming a tad too much. Party on, dude.
June 21st, 2006 at 11:29 am
Sadly, Stephen Harper is now doing the same things with Canadians killed in Afghanistan.
To me the biggest hypocrisy is the death-porn of showing Uday, Qusay and Zarqawi as corpses during prime time news, front pages of newspapers, etc. - which speaks to a barbarism - while not showing soldiers’ coffins.
“Sacrifice” indeed…Sacrifice to baal and the gods of war.
June 21st, 2006 at 11:44 am
As ‘Heroic Dreamer’ has already noted, sacrifice is for suckers.
June 21st, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Re your last two posts, Marc: does anyone else get a queasy stomach when watching the pictures outside the dead soldier’s family home in Houston where they are grappling with the possibility that he was captured and tortured before being killed; then switch the channel and we have Loud Dobbs screeching about ILLEGAL ALIENS who just happen to be of a certain ethnicity and should therefore stop trying to survive (it’s ILLEGAL!!) That was a rhetorical question, no replies necessary.
June 21st, 2006 at 1:00 pm
“Blowhard pols send the young who enlisted off to war, off to kill and be killed, and everyone else is given a tax cut and a charge card. Future historians will note this as a time of massive national decay and decline, typical of empires on the wane.”
I like Marc’s new, more strident tone. I’ll bet he was like this in the sixties.
He’s right in my view. If everything really did change after 9/11 you wouldn’t know it by this president’s policies, and the way the American people continue to conduct themselves. It was as though the alarm clock went off and we all - or at least most of us - went back to bed.
If Republicans want to occupy the White House in January of 2009 they’re going to have to get serious about energy independence, and that’s going to mean sacrifice for everyone (including a gas tax). They’re going to have to get serious about re-engaging with allies for the promotion of democracy in the Arab-Muslim world, and disengaging with the corrupt, despotic and often oil-rich Arab regimes who are talking up our security out of one side of their mouth and funding terrorism with our oil dollars behind our backs. Just what do people think all that aid to the Egyptian security services really buys us except more terrorists?
The Democrats aren’t going to get it together by this November. I doubt they take back the house or senate, even if they make some gains in the former. But there is little reason to believe the administration is going to start doing the right thing before 2008, and it is going to mean a very steep hill for the next Republican presidential nominee to climb, however centrist. I’m coming to believe that the GOP secretly wants to get its hide spanked by our national dominatrix Mrs. Clinton because they’re doing almost everything in their power to ensure that she becomes president.
June 21st, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Over at Fox News, Bill O’Reilly has a plan, everyone on the street in Iraq after 7:00 gets shot, no questions asked. See, if only those wishy washy Dems could come up with great ideas like that…..
June 21st, 2006 at 1:50 pm
The Dems are divided between 7: 30 and 8:00. The party is riven.
June 21st, 2006 at 2:31 pm
I guess the author above also favors universal military service. This follows logically (sequitur)from his view that sack cloth and ashes are the uniform of the day for the Bush family, and all the rest of us. But wait a moment. Isn’t the fact that we now have a professional military a direct result of the desire of liberals not to serve in the military? Careless about what you wished for?
June 21st, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Except James it seems the liberals are the one who have served. it’s your guys that haven’t. How do you explain this? From Al Gore, John Kerry, Jack Murtha and so on. It must be satisfying being blind?
June 21st, 2006 at 4:48 pm
“death-porn of showing Uday, Qusay and Zarqawi”
Well that may be, but it’s an Al Jazeera staple. I’m certain that’s where the concept came from. When in Rome and all that.
June 21st, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Disturbing story in today’s Chron. If any raging Coulterites are out there, here’s a perfect opportunity to attack a family who lost their son in Iraq for (1) seeking publicity for their anti-war views and/or (2) “not supporting the troops”. Read the article and bring it on…if you’ve got a hole in your soul or a savage partisan mind.
http://tinyurl.com/zb6lp
June 21st, 2006 at 6:51 pm
I do favor universal military and universal national service, you bet!
June 21st, 2006 at 7:25 pm
Things I Meant to Mention While I Was Obsessed With Distracted By the World Cup…
What Marc said here and especially here. What Michael said here. What Eric said here. A few weeks ago in the comments to this post by Boz, I butted heads with an apologist of sorts for the AUC, which you…
June 21st, 2006 at 8:28 pm
There’s a lot of growing pains in war. I like national service, as one who has devoted a number of years to public service for the feds, but I would want it directed to individual interests.
June 22nd, 2006 at 3:49 am
How about voluntary “universal” US national service — for all foreigners who want to immigrate to the USA? Including an English language boot camp/ preparation that doesn’t count in their 2 year voluntary commitment, followed by 2 years of service?
There should be a Volunteer National Service that pays low wages, but includes high repayment of education loans. The way “capitalism” gets things done voluntarily is easy to see — it pays people who agree to do those things.
Of course, poverty-chickens have no things they’re willing to hire poor folk for.
And the “sacrifice” desired is primarily to punish Americans for supporting Bush. Clinton’s “no genocide” policy of happily accepting genocide INSTEAD of any sacrifice whatsover is the Leftist model … let others die first, then apologize (and blame America, blame capitalism, blame the Jews…)
Linus, I support a gas tax — but don’t hear Al “Mr. Green” Gore talking it up. Maybe necessary, certainly the best overall policy economically, but highly unpopular.
June 22nd, 2006 at 7:53 am
Congratulations for your wisdom and courage, Mr. Cooper. But, Publius, “…satisfying being blind?” My, my, calm down, you’ve insulted me without even knowing me just because I made an observation. Here’s another for your efforts. Those folks you mention (not to forget Oliver Stone) went into the military while we had universal military service. Perhaps they joined up to avoid being drafted, you know, just as the President became a fighter pilot to avoid being in danger, or even I, who became a lieutenant of infantry for the same reason. It worked well in my case (1959 to 1961…not much shooting going on).
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:58 am
I’d support universal service if Pierce Bush had to serve. Somehow I think only a naive idealist would ever think that likely to occur.
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:24 am
Two years of mandatory service — military or civilian, you get to choose — for everyone at age 18. Everyone. No exceptions. Only after completing service will people be permitted to (a) attend college, and (b) vote.
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:08 pm
“Isn’t the fact that we now have a professional military a direct result of the desire of liberals not to serve in the military?”
No it’s nothing of the sort. Talk about a false cause. We’ve always had a professional military supplemented by a draft based on need. That need ended. I find your argument lacking. Liberals served, and Bush ran as the records show. Gore and Kerry didn’t run and were in the line of fire even if you weren’t. That’s my point, and blindness means can’t or refuses to see.
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:13 pm
‘Everyone. No exceptions. Only after completing service will people be permitted to (a) attend college, and (b) vote.’
Unconstitutional and unrealistic. Not gonna happen.
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Kudos–even the daughters of Czar Nicholas II left their gilded palaces to volunteer as nurses during WWI. Has any Bush offspring even set foot on an underfunded VA hospital to comfort any of our wounded?
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Liberty Daddy wants an American Foreign Legion or is it the old Roman Auxillaries that provided Roman Citizenship for all who put in their twenty. Let us just make Spanish the manditory language at the USMA so the officer corps can communicate with the other ranks. Oh and maybe the Brits will let us recruit Gurkhas too!
Bill O’Reilly also said that he’d run Iraq like Saddam. So why did we go?
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:16 pm
BTW compare Pierce Bush with his Grandpa who at age 17 went off and became the youngest Naval Aviator in WWII. That says volumes about the sense of duty in this country. But George H. W. Bush was inspired by Henry Stimson’s speech to the graduates of Andover’s class of 1942 to public service. His sons see the state as a cash cow. Big difference.
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:21 pm
“Bill O’Reilly also said that he’d run Iraq like Saddam. So why did we go?”
“Iraqi Troops Are Turning on Their American Counterparts
Friendly Fire Ambush
By MARJORIE COHN
Sergeant Patrick R. McCaffrey, Sr. and First Lieutenant Andre D. Tyson died on this day two years ago in Balad, Iraq. Back then, military officials reported that enemy insurgents ambushed them. The Army subsequently conducted an investigation and learned the men were targeted and killed by Iraqi troops they were training.
Although the Army completed its investigation on September 30, 2005, it failed to clarify the initial notification to the families for nine months. It took a May 22 letter from Senator Barbara Boxer’s office to force the Army to finally come clean.
A month before he died, Patrick told his father that Iraqi forces they were training had attacked his unit. When he filed a complaint with his chain of command, Patrick “was told to keep his mouth shut,” his mother said.
After Patrick died, his parents conducted their own investigations. The Army denied requests to see autopsy reports. The McCaffreys persisted. They talked to soldiers in their son’s unit and managed to learn what really happened.
Bob McCaffrey was informed by members of his son’s company that insurgents were offering Iraqi soldiers about $100 for each American they could kill. “Iraqi troops are turning on their American counterparts,” Bob said. “That puts a knock in the spin that the White House is trying to put on this story — how the Iraqis are being well trained and are getting ready to take over.”
Nadia McCaffrey learned that after her son was shot, a US truck arrived. It picked up Lt. Tyson, who was dead, but did not take her son who was still alive. The truck returned later and took him to the base, where he bled to death.
Yesterday, Brig. Gen. Oscar Hilman and three other officers visited Patrick’s mother to deliver the official report. “It was overwhelming,” Nadia told me. I had to live through the whole thing again.”
The officers “tried to patronize me as a good Mom,” she added. “I said I won’t stand for that. I want the truth!”
When Nadia talked to Army officers yesterday she asked them, “How could you possibly let this happen”? They sat silent.
An Army official cited the “complexity” of the case as an excuse for the delay in telling the families how their sons really died, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“They never tell the family the truth,” said Ophelia Tyson, grandmother of Andre Tyson. “You know how politics is.”
“I really want this story to come out; I want people to know what happened to my son,” Nadia said. “There is no doubt to me that this is still happening to soldiers today, but our chain of command is awfully reckless; they don’t seem to give a damn about what’s happening to soldiers.”
The father of two children, Patrick joined the National Guard the day after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He was the first combat death in the 58 year history of California’s 579 Engineer Battalion, based in Petaluma, Ca. Patrick was listed as “Casualty number 848.” That was 1652 deaths ago.
“He was killed by the Iraqis that he was training,” Nadia said. “People in this country need to know that.”
“It’s god-awful,” said Bob, himself an Army veteran. “It underlies the lie of this whole situation in Iraq. It’s all to me a pack of lies.”
http://counterpunch.org/cohn06222006.html
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:39 pm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/22/MNG6HJIDN21.DTL&type=printable
Here’s more on that story. The SF Chronicle has been carrying excellent coverage the last few days.
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:48 pm
“Here we see the homely looking nephew of the President of the United States.”
And, in all likelihood, Number 49 (if anyone at this point cares anymore). I wonder if the guy with the hairy butt will be first lady #49.
June 22nd, 2006 at 6:29 pm
“I wonder if the guy with the hairy butt will be first lady #49.”
My prediction is he’s gonna be Pierce’s version of Rasputin.
June 24th, 2006 at 7:39 am
Publius, your continuing attacks on my eyesight are simply a result of the different ways we try to understand events. Apparently, you have been gifted with the intuitive and immediate grasp of reality called insight. Poor me, however, I am forced to undertake the slow and agonizing effort of trying to think my way to the light. Take your immediate apprehension of the proposition that Gore’s and Kerry’s having been in a military combat zone means all progressives have. Or that George Bush’s hiding from danger in the cockpit of a jet fighter, one of the most dangerous places in the military in peace or war, means conservatives are all cowards. Thinking about this only brings me to a proposition that because Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, and Audie Murphy were in combat zones, all movie actors are warriors. That’s why I envy you your clearity of vision and why I regret the imperfect tool that thought is by comparison. It is also the reason why you distain me. I don’t take it personally though. You probably treat all clumsy overreachers badly.
July 20th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
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July 20th, 2006 at 11:53 pm
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June 29th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
preparation tax…
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