Honestly, with the ideology of the anti war left, and the realization of having an all volunteer Army--does anyone personally know of a liberal soldier serving our country?
One of my former "Marines" is a card carrying Democrat and is a Liberal in love with Hillary Clinton. He believes in Iraq for the reasons I have posted enough times and is right now working in the White House in the Local Control Center (LCC)-which he was interviewed among many from other branches-which organizes intel traffic flow to the President. Ironically, and to my great pleasure, he can't stand President Bush.
However, it is true that we are largely a politically conservative military. One of the few negative developments in American life over the past half century has been the loss of the ideals of service among the most priviledged. One of the few actual legacies of Vietnam has been the abdication by the most fortunate Americans of their responsibility to serve in uniform. The protestors of yesterday that managed to stay away from military life are now our suited leaders (D and R) in Washington in every level. The "nobility" they shared in dissention for the Vietnam War was cast aside for the "nobility" of sending troops off for American revenge. For our Left, our nation's favored young took their opposition to one war as a licens to turn their backs on our military permanently. Now, today, we here the complaints that we are a politicially conservative military, but if Liberlas wish to be represented in the ranks, they only have to join. There is nothing cheaper than complaining about a problem you are unwilling to help fix.
In the course of their politicial campaigns politicians of every persuasion assure Americans that they revere our troops. yet, once in office, both Republicans and Democrats increasingly view our troops as an international janitorial service with guns whose primary purpose is to clean up the messes made by Clintonian irresponsibilty or Right wing arrogance.
This is the disconnect that so many can't understand. How can the active military explain to men who have never served in combat (or served at all) and will never experience its complexities firsthand what war entails? I for one am tired of deploying out to these third world countries armed with the expectation that we won't be provided the tools necessary to do the job effectively and will leave before the job is done. Time after time (before my time) our country has sent troops abroad since the fall of Berlin to jobs with half *** efforts. Time and again we managed to only be able to convince our enemies that if they fight long enough, we will simply surrender everything to them and eventually in Somalia we proved to them that it only takes a small amount of blood to scare us. Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten that it took dozens of bombed out cities in Europe and two atomic bombs to bring peace. Today, we strike deals to give us an illusion of peace in order to maintain a deadly sense of "higher" morality.
"But if you don't pay the butcher of front, you will pay with interest in the end."
For the military, it is true that we have done a poor job of explaining to our civilian leaders what war is and what to expect. But what is the result when our civilian leaders don't care to listen? We have gone from the Clintonian idea that we can defeat our enemy without having a presence and without spilling his blood to the Rumsfeld vision that technology-alone with complete ignorance of culture-will win the day.
The truth is that if we lack the fortitude to do whatever it takes to win we may be certain that our enemies do not share our weakness. Despite the dangers of the Cold War, Americans lived through a golden age of safety. That age is now over. It has been over since the fall of the Kremlin. But our civilian leaders, who would never dirty themselves with the filth associated with uniform, have continued this attitude that we can face forward by employing yesterdays tactics and toys (while inventing new ways to waste the tax payer's money). Despite our best efforts, we live in an age of vulernability unprecedented since our frontier days. And the only enduring means to reduce that vulnerability isn't frisking Grandma at the airport.
We can win the War on Terror (for lack of a better term) or anyother war. But only if we are willing to fight without reluctance and reservation. The losers in this war will be those who first despair. Our fanatical enemies cannot defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves through a failure of will.
Find a suit in Washington that understands any of this.
Wait..what was this thread about?
