[Vision2020] Story from SpokesmanReview.com

[Dan Carscallen]

so everyone won't have to register to read it, here's the article.

DC


Is support for our troops conditional?
Patriotism not the same as being suitable to lead, James Lileks says.

James Lileks
Newhouse News Service 
Making John Kerry commander in chief would be like making Louis
Farrakhan the ambassador to Israel. At least that's the opinion of
several scores of military commanders and other soldiers, all of whom
have signed a damning letter critical of Kerry's approach to national
defense. 
Cue the predictable howls: You can't question his patriotism! Well, no
one did. They just questioned his judgment. Ralph Nader would be a bad
CinC; he'd make the Army redesign the tanks to run on solar power and
demand that unmanned Predators be piloted to create jobs. Dennis
Kucinich would be a wretched CinC; he'd send the Navy to sail into
foreign ports and use the big guns to shoot flowers and stuffed animals
into hostile territory. Pat Buchanan would deploy the entire infantry on
the Mexican border with orders to shoot anyone darker than a grocery bag
-- bad CinC. Yet each of these men in his own curious way is a patriot,
inasmuch as he wants the best for America. They just have unusual
definitions of what's best. 
Kerry's supporters find proof of his patriotism in his Vietnam service,
but this forces Democrats to describe the war in terms one hasn't found
on the left since John F. Kennedy's day. As Dick Durbin, D-Ill., put it
the other day on the Senate floor: "John Kerry led men into battle. He
defended America." 
Wait a minute. Hold on. So it's now accepted wisdom on the left that the
Vietnam War was conducted in the defense of the United States?
Interesting. Nice to know they've come around to realize it was part of
a battle against Communism. (You remember Communism. It was in all the
papers.) Vietnam wasn't the long twilight-struggle part, this was the
broad-daylight-struggle portion of the Cold War. But didn't the left
view Vietnam as a racist, atrocity-packed, misguided intervention in a
civil war? Can it be all those bad things and still be considered to be
a defensive act? 
Apparently so. Maybe in 30 years the left will have a similar epiphany
about Iraq. 
Which brings us to the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. Some insist you
have to serve before you can have an opinion on military matters.
Otherwise you're a Chickenhawk. Does this mean you're a Chickenjudge if
you criticize the miscreants who abused the prisoners? Probably. Who
cares? We can all agree that the idiots who abused these prisoners
should stand trial, and if they're guilty, make them swap the uniform
they disgraced for one with black and white stripes. Here's your hammer;
there's the rock pile. Five years or five tons of pebbles, whichever
comes first. 
But there we go again, questioning their patriotism. 
Doesn't that seem like an utterly irrelevant accusation now? Sure. And
it's as meaningless as another hoary trope of the left: "We Support the
Troops." "Support" was always conditional, and defined rather narrowly:
It meant "bring them home as soon as possible, and in the meantime send
happy be-safe mind-beams in their direction." It's difficult to support
the troops and oppose the mission. Do the people who opposed the war but
supported the troops support the troops who just flushed America's
reputation down the commode? Of course not. A more accurate slogan would
be "We Support Some Troops Performing a Limited Set of Non-Violent
Objectives," but it makes a lousy bumper sticker. And it makes you look
less, well, patriotic. 
We've become so mired in these cliches that we are losing sight of the
goal: victory. The withdrawal from Fallujah may have strategic wisdom,
but it feels wrong. The misdeeds of the prison guards make us suspect
we've ceded all possible claims to the moral high ground -- indeed, to
some our moral high ground looks like Tora Bora. At home, the inanities
of the presidential campaign seem like a diversion from the war, not a
clarification of the struggle we face. 
It may take a hard right cross to the jaw to focus our attention on the
job. And yet you think: Pray it never comes.
-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-admin@moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-admin@moscow.com]
On Behalf Of pkraut@moscow.com
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 11:07 AM
To: vision2020@moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Story from SpokesmanReview.com



I found this story on SpokesmanReview.com. Click on the link below to
read it. I offer it as more of analternative viewpoint to all the other
stuff on this site. 
Click on this link to view the story:
Is support for our troops conditional?
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