WaPo’s Arkin: The Troops Are Mercenaries (And The’re Lucky We Put Up With Their Rape And Torture)
The lovely Mr. Arkin, responding to this NBC News report posted here on SA yesterday:
I’ve been mulling over an NBC Nightly News report from Iraq last Friday in which a number of soldiers expressed frustration with opposition to war in the United States.
I’m sure the soldiers were expressing a majority opinion common amongst the ranks - that’s why it is news - and I’m also sure no one in the military leadership or the administration put the soldiers up to expressing their views, nor steered NBC reporter Richard Engel to the story.
I’m all for everyone expressing their opinion, even those who wear the uniform of the United States Army. But I also hope that military commanders took the soldiers aside after the story and explained to them why it wasn’t for them to disapprove of the American people.
So, all the liberals and all the war critics out there can disapprove the hell out of the troops, but the troops themselves can’t put in their two cents? They can’t express their opinions and share their experiences from on the ground in Iraq?
Methinks the arrogant big-media reporter is obliquely telling the troops to just shut up.
It gets worse:
These soldiers should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President’s handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect.
Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order.
Sure it is the junior enlisted men who go to jail, but even at anti-war protests, the focus is firmly on the White House and the policy. We just don’t see very man “baby killer” epithets being thrown around these days, no one in uniform is being spit upon.
So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?
Do you get the feeling that Arkin actually thinks the soldiers should be called “baby killers” and spat upon? That they deserve? That’s certainly the feeling I get.
And what’s this talk about “every” Abu Ghraib and “every” Hadita? Those are two, isolated incidences as is pretty much every act of wrong-doing on the part of our soldiers. After those incidents the perpetrators were rounded up, given a trial and then punished. Though Arkin clearly doesn’t believe it, the majority of our soldiers are good, law-abiding people.
As for the soldiers asking us here at home to “roll over and play dead” when it comes to the war, the soldiers in that NBC report weren’t asking for that at all. They were asking the American people for understanding. Just as war critics want the public to see Iraq through their eyes, the soldiers in that video want us to see Iraq from their perspective. I don’t think that’s such an unreasonable thing, but Akin clearly does.
Amazingly, it gets even worse:
I can imagine some post-9/11 moment, when the American people say enough already with the wars against terrorism and those in the national security establishment feel these same frustrations. In my little parable, those in leadership positions shake their heads that the people don’t get it, that they don’t understand that the threat from terrorism, while difficult to defeat, demands commitment and sacrifice and is very real because it is so shadowy, that the very survival of the United States is at stake. Those Hoover’s and Nixon’s will use these kids in uniform as their soldiers. If I weren’t the United States, I’d say the story end with a military coup where those in the know, and those with fire in their bellies, save the nation from the people.
Delusional. Absolutely delusional. He goes from a few troops voicing their opinions and asking for the public to see things from their perspective to military coups and fascism.
But we haven’t quite reached the bottom of Arkin’s barrel of nastiness quite yet:
...this NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer - force that thinks it is doing the dirty work. . . .
America needs to ponder what it is we really owe those in uniform.
Everything, you jackass. We owe them everything, for without the men and women in uniform our republican democracy would no longer exist. Yes, even the ones in Iraq, because the only thing standing between this country and doom is our fearsome military’s ability to convince our enemies that attacking this country just isn’t worth it.
I’d say that it’s shameful for the Post to have published this man’s screed, but unlike Arkin I recognize that all citizens of this country - from soldiers serving on the battlefield to douche bag columnists - has a right to express themselves.
Update: More on Arkin here.
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