This one is short
I don't really know a better way to say it than Ward Carroll. A 20 year vet who now is the editor of Military.com he has one of the most real looks at the war and what is going on with the people who actually have to fight it. This is only an excerpt:
"They're winning. Them, the ones who had options but chose to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. They're over there in that place you see on TV and the Internet. And they're winning in spite of the wrangling going on between the White House, the Capitol, and the Pentagon, the think tanks, the pundits and the celebs.
As a veteran I'm put off by the rhetoric (and the media's coverage of it) from the far ends of the political spectrum surrounding so-called “support” for the troops. On balance the dialectic is white noise, not to mention by in large disingenuous. The extreme conservative doesn't have the warfighter's best interest in mind any more than the radical liberal does. Sean Hannity is a poseur and Cindy Sheehan is an opportunist. Neither of them knows what its like to serve. (And, by the way, having service members email you does not count as service.)
The draw of service is an intangible, for the most part. You can't read it in a book or see it on a DVD and get it. It lives under lofty tenets like Duty and Honor but it comes down to climbing into the Humvees day after day because the rest of their squad is. Their mission isn't spreading Freedom; their mission is to keep traffic flowing along the airport road. They'll do it, not because the vice president gave them a pep talk from half a planet away, but because the captain told them to and he's a decent leader, even if he doesn't know a thing about hip hop. And they'll do it because a few weeks back a couple of their buddies died when an IED went off next to their vehicle and there's no way they're going to let those insurgent bastards get away with it."
I think thats about the best writing of how many of us feel that i have talked to in the my unit. Including me. I tend, on this blog, to go overboard a bit when responding to self-described communists but I get pissed by the misinformation i see in the Media and our Government officals. And it happens on both sides but i think that one tends to encourage while the other tends to be beat down the effort. This is a much more accurate picture i think of how it really works and what the reality is on the ground. Read the whole thing.
Military.com
"They're winning. Them, the ones who had options but chose to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. They're over there in that place you see on TV and the Internet. And they're winning in spite of the wrangling going on between the White House, the Capitol, and the Pentagon, the think tanks, the pundits and the celebs.
As a veteran I'm put off by the rhetoric (and the media's coverage of it) from the far ends of the political spectrum surrounding so-called “support” for the troops. On balance the dialectic is white noise, not to mention by in large disingenuous. The extreme conservative doesn't have the warfighter's best interest in mind any more than the radical liberal does. Sean Hannity is a poseur and Cindy Sheehan is an opportunist. Neither of them knows what its like to serve. (And, by the way, having service members email you does not count as service.)
The draw of service is an intangible, for the most part. You can't read it in a book or see it on a DVD and get it. It lives under lofty tenets like Duty and Honor but it comes down to climbing into the Humvees day after day because the rest of their squad is. Their mission isn't spreading Freedom; their mission is to keep traffic flowing along the airport road. They'll do it, not because the vice president gave them a pep talk from half a planet away, but because the captain told them to and he's a decent leader, even if he doesn't know a thing about hip hop. And they'll do it because a few weeks back a couple of their buddies died when an IED went off next to their vehicle and there's no way they're going to let those insurgent bastards get away with it."
I think thats about the best writing of how many of us feel that i have talked to in the my unit. Including me. I tend, on this blog, to go overboard a bit when responding to self-described communists but I get pissed by the misinformation i see in the Media and our Government officals. And it happens on both sides but i think that one tends to encourage while the other tends to be beat down the effort. This is a much more accurate picture i think of how it really works and what the reality is on the ground. Read the whole thing.
Military.com
posted by Maddawg at 11/28/2005 03:34:00 PM
2 Comments:
So let me get this straight. We should continue the fight in Iraq so that certain people who were fighting an occupying force don't get away with killing members of that occupying force? In other words, we attacked them, they attacked back, nay, they DEFENDED themselves and their country, and we're not going to let them get away with it. Brilliant. That way we can have perpetual war!
And I wonder what else this man can tell me that I'm "disingenuous" about. He seems to know what I'm thinking even before I think it.
No, we shouldn't but that is the motivation that alot of people feel while over there, to help out there buddies. And for alot of the men and women over there, they work hand in hand with Iraqi people and feel that same bond. They want to help those people.
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