Masochism, Duty, or what?

[pecunium]

I really ought not to drop in on people like Andrew Sullivan. His attempts at pithy little snarks rarely amuse, often annoy and on occasion, (like today) actually offend.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY I: "I'd much rather be doing this than figthing a war," - helicopter pilot Lt. Cmdr. William Whitsitt, helping the survivors of the south Asian tsunami. Earth to Whitsitt: you're a soldier.

I don't know what Andy thought he was doing, just what message that little mal mot was supposed to convey ("Abandon all humanity, ye who enter here?) but having been to a war, and having helped people, I'd rather be doing the latter than the former.

If Sullivan wants to question why... I'll be more than willing to hand him a rifle, a flack vest, and a Basic Load, and take him for a couple of long walks in Falluja.

But until he takes me up on the offer, well he can shut the fuck up. We don't bottle up our decency just because we've accepted the obligation of killing people for the Sullivans of the world, people who are to tidy t0o get their hands personally dirty, but more than willing to let other people go and get killed when they have an agenda that can't be finished with dimplomacy (even more, who are willing to keep arguing for failed policy, and to send more troops into the meat-grinder, so we don't lose face (never mind that the abject failure of the state goals, and complete impossibility of the re-framed goals is ruining not just our position in the orld, but our economy, and maybe everyone else's. I wonder what that sort of failure will bring to pass).

And Sullivan knows it, "i'm sorry but i pay for those soldiers to fight in a volunteer army. they are servants of people like me who will never fight. yes, servants of civil masters. and they will do what they are told by people who would never go to war. that's called a democracy.

That attidude may be the best argument for the reinstatement of a draft I've ever heard, but the draft I want, they'll never pass (right now, I'd want a dead even lottery, no exemptions, and the children of everyone in federal office to be drafted... with a lottery to decide which ones get to join the PBI)

So Sully (not that he'll ever read this) put-up, or shut up. You owe some people apologies, and until then, you can kiss my ass.

Comments

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Conspicuous consumerism is a very good way to put it. I'd classify that as a kind of arrogance, though, because it's an assertion of his privilege to waste a shared resource, and if that isn't arrogant, what is? It's made even more so by the fact that the "shared resource," in this case, is the lives of his fellow citizens.