We Should Live - Ben Bateman

In a sane country, a large proportion of the news would be filled with segments like this one from NBC, in which the reporter explains that some of our soldiers are unhappy about domestic opposition to their mission. It’s done with a light touch. The interviewed soldiers aren’t ranting, and don’t appear to be particularly interested in politics. They’re just presenting their perspective, in which they are unhappy about being portrayed as fools, dupes, or mindless drones.

But even such a mild dose of reality was too much for William Arkin of the Washington Post. The NBC segment threw him into a rage, and this screed resulted:

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.

And I’m all for everyone expressing their opinion, even unpatriotic sacks of excrement like Mr. Arkin. But I wish that his editors had taken him aside and explained to him why it wasn’t for him to disapprove of American soldiers. I also wish that they had explained to him that American soldiers are Americans, just like him, and as such they have the same right as all other Americans to disapprove of “the American people,” meaning Mr. Arkin and his fellow liberals. But maybe the editors themselves don’t understand that.

And Mr. Arkin is just getting warmed up.

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 don’t see very many “baby killer” epithets being thrown around these days, no one in uniform is being spit upon.

The soldiers should be grateful that America’s liberals haven’t yet betrayed them? That’s more a question of opportunity than intent. Lefties like Mr. Arkin offer our troops as little support and respect as they can get away with.

No one is spitting at soldiers during anti-war protests? I’m sure that Mr. Arkin and his friends would love to do so, and will do so just as soon as it’s safe for them.

The public has indulged them? In the liberal imagination, every soldier is a knuckle-dragging short-tempered sadist who eats babies for breakfast, so they view it as charity to resist the urge to lock them all up as war criminals. And it’s apparently extravagant charity, in the liberal mind, to provide our soldiers with pay, housing, and medical care:

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?

In that meeting with the editors, maybe they can explain run-on sentences to him. And I’m sure that this sentence will come up in that meeting, too:

[T]he recent 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.

That word ‘mercenary’ has caused the most trouble, though some brave-but-foolish liberals have tried to argue that they’re mercenaries as long as we’re paying them. The mistake is adopting Arkin’s warped juxtaposition of mercenary with volunteer. The opposite of a volunteer is not a mercenary but a conscript, that is, someone who is pressed into military service against his will.

Mercenaries are always volunteers as a matter of logic. It’s a question of motivation. Most volunteer soldiers join out of patriotic duty; mercenaries join only for the money. The ‘merc’ in ‘mercenary’ refers to money or payment, as in ‘merchant’, ‘mercantile’, or ‘commerce’.

The “cool” reaction in the conservative blogosphere is to shrug and say that none of this should be surprising if you’ve been paying attention. But the point of blogging is not to communicate with other bloggers; it’s to inform and entertain readers. And it is something of a surprise that the Washington Post would be so careless as to let its mask slip to this extent. This article is an important weapon in showing the public at large just how liberal these people are.

And don’t imagine that Mr. Arkin is some loose cannon guest columnist unrepresentative of the press at large. Read his biography. He was a Washington Post columnist for over four years, and a LA Times columnist for just under three years. He isn’t a raving lunatic off the street who wandered into WaPo offices one day and banged out a column. He has been a professional journalist for years.

And his hatred of our troops is long-held. Nearly a year and a half ago he wrote this introduction page to his current column, of which the recent screed was a part. That intro page includes a parenthetical: “(memo to self: Don’t say anything bad about the troops)” I guess he lost his own memo.