It Floats (Addendum to Clausewitz)
It’s all but official: The war in Iraq is lost. Report after leaked report says so. Everybody in Washington knows it except that draft-dodging ferret in the White House. Politicians scurry to avoid the blame. One day soon people will ask aloud: How did we let 3000 GIs die for the weak ego of a pampered liar and his desperate need to prove he’s half the man his father was?
The troops from now on will die for a war that they already know is over. They are dying for politicians. They are dying for nothing. By now they must know it. It happened to us, too, long ago.
The talk among pols now is about finding an “exit strategy.†This means a way of pulling out without risking too many seats in Congress. Screw the troops. We must look to the elections. Do we really want an exit strategy? A friend of mine, with two tours in heavy combat in another war, has devised a splendid exit strategy. It consists of five words: “OK. On the plane. Now.†Bring your toothbrush. Everything else stays. We’re outa here.
It is a workable exit strategy, one with teeth, and comprehensible to all. But we won’t use it. We will continue killing our men, calculatedly, cynically, for the benefit of politicians. The important thing, you see, is the place in history of Bush Puppy. Screw the troops.
Face it. The soldiers are being used. They are being suckered. This isn’t new. It happened to my generation. Long after we knew that the war in Vietnam was lost, Lyndon Johnson kept it going to fertilize his vanity, and then Nixon spoke of the need to “save faceâ€â€”at two hundred dead GIs a week. But of course Johnson and Nixon weren’t among the dead, or among the GIs.
I saw an interview on television long ago in which the reporter asked an infantryman near Danang, I think, what he thought of Nixon’s plan to save face. “His face, our ass,†was the reply. Just so, then, and just so now. Screw the troops. What the hell, they breed fast in Kansas anyway.
Soldiers are succinct and do not mince words. This makes them dangerous. We must keep them off-camera to the extent possible. A GI telling the truth could set recruiting back by years.
The truth is that the government doesn’t care about its soldiers, and never has. If you think I am being unduly harsh, read the Washington Post. You will find story after story saying that the Democrats don’t want to do anything drastic about the war. They fear seeming “soft on national security.†In other words, they care more about their electoral prospects in 2008 than they do about the lives of GIs. It’s no secret. For them it is a matter of tuning the spin, of covering tracks, of calculating the vector sum of the ardent-patriot vote which may be cooling, deciding which way the liberal wind blows, and staying poised to seem to have supported whoever wins. Screw the troops. Their fathers probably work in factories anyway.
Soldiers do not realize, until too late, the contempt in which they are held by their betters. Here is the psychological foundation of the hobbyist wars of bus-station presidents. If you are, say, a Lance Corporal in some miserable region of Iraq, I have a question for you: Would your commanding general let you date his daughter? I spent my high-school years on a naval base, Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground as it was then called. Dahlgren was heavy with officers, scientists, and engineers. Their daughters, my classmates, were not allowed to associate with sailors. Oh yes, we honor our fighting men. We hold them in endless respect. Yes we do.
For that matter, Lance Corporal, ask how many members of Congress have even served, much less been in combat. Ask how many have children in the armed services. Look around you. Do you see many (any) guys from Harvard? Yale? MIT? Cornell? Exactly. The smart, the well-off, the powerful are not about to risk their irreplaceable sit-parts in combat. Nor are they going to mix with mere high-school graduates, with kids from small towns in Tennessee, with blue-collar riffraff who bowl and drink Bud at places with names like Lenny’s Rib Room. One simply doesn’t. One has standards.
You are being suckered, gang, just as we were.
It is a science. The government hires slick PR firms and ad agencies in New York. These study what things make a young stud want to be A Soldier: a desire to prove himself, to get laid in foreign places, a craving for adventure, a desire to feel part of something big and powerful and respected, what have you. They know exactly what they are doing. They craft phrases, “Be a Man Among Men,†or “A Few Good Men,†or, since girls don’t like those two, “The Few, The Proud.†Join up and be Superman.
Then comes the calculated psychological conditioning. There is for example the sense of power and unity that comes of running to cadence with a platoon of other guys, thump, thump, thump, all shouting to the heady rhythm of boots, “If I die on the Russian front, bury me with a Russian cunt, Lef-rye-lef-rye-lef-rye-lef….†That was Parris Island, August of ’66, and doubtless they say something else now, but the principle is the same.
And so you come out in splendid physical shape and feeling no end manly and they tell you how noble it is to Fight for Your Country. This might be true if anyone were invading the country. But since Washington always invades somebody else, you are actually fighting for Big Oil, or Israel, or the defense industry, or the sexual ambiguities who staff National Review, or the vanity of that moral dwarf on Pennsylvania Avenue. You will figure this out years later.
Once you are in the war, you can’t get out. We couldn’t either. While your commander in chief eats steak in the White House and talks tough, just like a real president, you kill people you have no reason to kill, about whom you know next to nothing—which one day may weigh on your conscience. It does with a lot of guys, but that comes later.
You are being suckered, and so are the social classes that supply the military. Note that the Pentagon cracks down hard on troops who say the wrong things online, that the White House won’t allow coffins to be photographed, that the networks never give soldiers a chance to talk unedited about what is happening. Oh no. It is crucial to keep morale up among the rubes. You are the rubes. So, once, were we.
More Fred Here.
More Scurrilous Commentary by Fred Reed is available at http://www.fredoneverything.net | More from Fred Reed
Stumble It!
December 17th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Nice to see you’ve taken a stance as a surrender monkey. You need to remember that everyone in the military is a volunteer. Yet you pretend to know what’s best for them,, just because you say so.
Your attitude and that of our elected officials makes me want to puke..
Shouldn’t you really be writing about Mexican politics???
December 17th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
I think Fred would do better telling us about his life in Mexico; you know, cleaning hotel toilets and scrounging for cigarette butts in tourist areas.
It seems most of his opinions these days come from Michael Moore’s films and Jimmy Carter’s books. It wouldn’t surprise me if Fred’s next column was about the “true” Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
December 17th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Fred, I know you are comfortable with the rumours of your demise.
Like Fidel, you never reply directly.
Truth-telling is no longer an honorable profession in Norte America.
As a expat, you still have that privilege.
Iraq is lost.
So, tragically, is the idealistic America that bought into The Shrub’s “Jonny Appleseed” foolish delusions about “planting democracy.”
Iraq is the least of what has been trashed by this stupid boy-king.
He is in fact, the WORST we have ever elected.
December 17th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
I generally like Fred as a curmudgeon. He writes amusingly well enough and has a modicum of talent for making defeatism in general seem noble. That notwithstanding his opting out of the United States makes his scribblings suspect as he’s chosen somewhere else to reside while spending american cash money.
This version of functional ‘Walmart patiotism’, this ‘value allegiance’, running to where his dollar buys him more intoxicants and senoritas and then deriding his rejected former home places this fashion of refugee Nihlistic anti-patriotism firmly in the side of scavengers and despoilers. Nothing wrong with being erudite and aloof, but sniping from south of the border is most reprehensible and the hallmark of a hypocrite of the most craven type. Likely things will come to shit for western culture due the inexhorable attraction of a reckless belief system allowing all manner of predation on ‘non-clubmembers’ being hard to beat with the worlds wretched being as they always with us when shown the riches made available by western culture. Isalm will be the way to steal what their own cultures cannot provide. In any respect as far as I stand, it will be with my cold dead fingers fused to a trigger that I defend my home and homeland. A real man never really takes off the uniform. Methinks Fred gave his to the Goodwill and took the deduction to the donkey show…
December 17th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
red pill – “A real man never really takes off the uniform.”
Excellent writing and so intelligently wrong.
If my ancestors in the heretical colonies had been so foolish to stand in rows and be shot down by superior redcoats marching in lockstep –
instead of hiding behind trees in their work clothes and firing at the red marching penguins from the King’s Imperial stormtroopers—
then we would have no freedom.
Whatever that means today.
So, uniforms are always just about fashionable illusions, yes?
And poor military strategy.
December 17th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
“He is in fact, the WORST we have ever elected.”
We cannot wait for Hillary to show how it’s all done, maybe Pelosi will show the way !
December 17th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
But really christianj,
Who would you nominate as a more stupidly inconsequential president?
And, please do not suggest George Washington.
The first dude gets a pass….
December 17th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
WOW!
Tokyo Rose had music.
Bukowski had a publisher.
Hemmingway had gonads.
Reed has..a cigar and a hat!
Just a reminder that there are those of
us who appreciate the lengths some of our countrymen,(that are still bodily able to do so) will go to in order to impress upon the mindless dupes and pathetic followers of the insane that their desperate journey for the attention of virgins includes extra costs beyond cost beyond imagined glory- their sons, wives, mothers, villages, camels,and daughters continue to pay for
imagined dispensation, while the self appointed HOLY ONES and princes lounge in palaces. You see, they live on your share of the blood and sweat of their nation, merely to preach from their hidden caves, languishing the cost borne of others freedom while bemoaning penis envy in their hosts distant lands.
December 17th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
Bush is worse than Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and even Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons.
I don’t know how America survives his diabolical rule.
December 18th, 2006 at 12:58 am
What a lot of cant. From the answerers that is. There is much truth in what Fred says even if bluntly put. There are several sides to any story, and some do make you grin wryly and most are right anyway. I speak from a long, friutful and proud military service record.
It was ever thus that the common soldier was hailed in war as a hero, and vilified, ignored, sidelined, cast aside, when he came home, bloodied and limping and the country safe again. So, what’s new? Kipling wrote a poem about it, from which I will save you by not repeating it. What’s new is that American soldiers have always been unpopular, at war or not. I don’t know what it is with you guys. Not even part-time respect! What are you doing wrong?
And the ad men. Yes, they do a good line in attraction. In my day it was, “Join the Forces; get a career; go water skiing in exotic places; meet new and interesting people; shoot them”. haha. Hey, it worked!
I was a raucus and barely controllable, hooting and roaring troop who was let loose on Mrs Qs enemies; an up and coming, resourceful, leader- of-men, NCO; and a first class and oh so capable Officer ordering ‘dismantle this over ‘ere and remantle it over there’. Been there, done that. I would be unhappy if my daughter married a troop too. Their job is to kill people, preferably in a manly fashion, by hand. (Hands were more effective as the equipment was usually ratshit. Nothing much goes wrong with a knife.) Much better to order the killing and direct the action! With a gin and tonic in hand, preferably. Like a politician, even. Thank the Lord she took up with a divorced car repair foreman with two kids instead.
Defending the country? Britain in its modern history almost never took part in a fight it didn’t start. (It actually makes me quite proud!). Interfering violently to save the small guy from the big guy is a noble act, as long as its out of sight of the ladies. Then its hubris. Australia has never fought on its sown soil at all! What a record. Mind you, these days our western countries are barely worth defending any more, so anti-male they have become. I wouldn’t advise a young man to join up.
Land of the Free because the you guys in the heretical colonies defeated Redcoats? Come along, be a nice gentleman DWG. Do you think you wouldn’t be independant by now? Everyone else is. You just might have a better class of politician now. The world would be a different, and possibly better place, with steam trains and tea. We only had a chiding go at you lads cause the French would have treated you so badly because you spoke English. Remember, the French were a lot more powerful than the American colonies and has their eye on you. We really didn’t want to hurt you. Just give you a smack and get you back in line. But you guys just had to be smartarses. Pretty well every country ruled at one time by the UK are now the better countries in the world. People flee from everywhere to go to ex-British places, including America. Its only because you speak English you know. Maybe if you fellows had just marched in step a bit longer we wouldn’t have feminism.
December 18th, 2006 at 1:08 am
I speak in jest of course. Independance war – damned fine shots, you guys. Never could take a joke.
December 18th, 2006 at 6:08 am
Dadwithgirls:
Your posts are usually predicated upon some form of implied higher ‘fairness’. You like many in the states and elsewhere are of the opinion that this fairness can in large amounts exist either in humanskind or somewhere on this planet. I know it does not. You have to be for your side or plot against it, seeking another homeland, as Fred has done. Unwillingness to be a shameless advocate for your ’side’ will get you abused in this world and will lead to others with less than sophisticated world-views who are not afraid of taking casualties to get themselves or their heirs to a position where they will have their way with you and your daughters. There is no enlightened self interest, there is no opting out that is not borne of self-centered cowardice in the face of allegiance to your kind. This is incontravertable. This is how ‘man’ works. There are no “autonomous communes” of Monty Python fame. Victory is seen as accepting various costs to remain free and as such is independant of body counts or effects on GDP. Fred has lost and run away to play ultimate REMF so that you and your girls will be at the mercy of those with no enlightened self interest, only entitlement to indulge their lusts. You assume you can arrange a seperate peace with conquerors. Those that come will want to know only one thing before they dispense their justice: Which side were you on?
December 19th, 2006 at 5:22 am
Those that come will want to know only one thing before they dispense their justice: Which side were you on?
It really doesn’t matter to the “conquering mujahadeen”. An infidel is an infidel. Though it is possible they will kill the brave more quickly with less pain. Fred and DWG will definitely live the longest.
December 19th, 2006 at 9:37 am
So much wrath for the bearer of bad tidings and no gallows for those who made it so? What war was that we were fighting? The one to bring democracy to a greater Persia for the free elections of the next Grand Ayatollah? But its been such a disaster wherever it’s been practiced, stupid people electing stupid leaders spouting stupid tripe about man’s central drive for liberty. The central drives of man are food, shelter, and sex. After that greed looms large filling his mind with fantasies of power, corroding the anchors of liberty that a minority of thoughtful men had once sacrificed to establish.
We didn’t lose the war! We won it in a matter of months. Ahh, but stupidity and greed made a delicious sludge that settled in the land. We wanted to be humanitarians. Kill then kiss. No nation building, Mr. Bush, only fat no-bid contracts for the ones who made it possible. Well, I understand that. But I don’t understand telling men to walk into bullets and bombs with zip wire and “Mother may I?” Two instructions only please: Kill the enemy. Save yourselves. Politicians using grunts?! Yes. Ready, aim, fire, but don’t hit anything sensitive. Just stand still in the sniper’s cross-hairs.
Which brings us to the moral dwarfs at the top stroking each others’ glands in congratulations while the land of the free titters with talk of “Boy, oh boy. Look at dat dem dare stock market rally!” Bigger houses, bigger TV’s, bigger debt, smaller dollar. But our sensitive, deballed natures won’t allow for the voluntary end of this MTV summer. How could we spoil the children’s fun? Lesbians! Lesbians!! Lesbians!! Lesbians and bread is all we ask, and if our mouths are gagged and minds lobotomized, well such is the price of freedom!
From the blunt and unabashed imbecility of Carter, to the moral dereliction of the fecal sludge, Clinton, onward and upward to the intellectual vaccuity of Bush, never having heard of Sun Tzu, what have we wrought? We are free to choose. We do it a million times a year with our pocketbook. We choose the shows, the music, the food, the books, the movies. Those choices reflects the psyche. The process filters on up to the ballot box. They hear you. They watch you. They know you and they laugh. Democracy? Yes, of fools. They lost the war, all right. The one at home that would have set them free.
December 19th, 2006 at 10:42 am
jjtaup;
As your measure of competance of others is comparison to unsullied perfection as you see it, I assume you can likewise provide as indication of your bona-fides the perfection of performance to my level of expectation.
Typical of libs and nihlistic defeatists of all stripes you demand of others what you could never provide, which should in a perfect world be a perfect invitation to sit down and STFU instead of passing your feeble judgments on those that attempt to make however imperfectly a difference in the responsibilities that you shirk. I clearly see you ranting with spittle flying from your lips as you demean the efforts of those that attempt to please hyperdemanding children such as yourself
December 19th, 2006 at 11:42 am
Pill, drink thyself of a triple strength mug of your special lager. Your inferences are childishly pleasing to only those who take refuge in flatland and monochromatic worlds. And wrong.
And whose efforts have I undeservedly demeaned? El Clintone’s, whose orders to our men on the USS Cole were to let their arms and twats dangle at their sides while the Goodship Lollipop approached? Surely, Carter is no hero of yours. The Shrub? Were his imperfect attempts to make a difference in this world the unhinging of our immigration doors and El Union NorteAmerica while he sends sons and daughters to defend the borders of Iraq in unarmored Hummers? I don’t mind his dropping bombs. As Clinton declared Iraq to be a threat, coming up for air between bouts of puff-n-muff, I’ll accept the fairly unanimous decisions by the powers-that-be that Saddam was a threat. But I’ll be G-d’d if our people should spend one more night in another turd-world s-hole dying for a people that don’t understand democracy, don’t want democracy, and will cut their neighbor’s throat for praying with the wrong headwrap. Bush fought this war with kid gloves, appeasing at every turn. Of course the swine in our congress contributed mightily to his weak decisions. Still, do you like to see your band of brothers courmartialed for fighting a little too well while the military from the Commander in Chief and Secretary of Defense on down float them down the river?
Yes, I’d like unsullied perfection to be the standard, but it’s hardly what I demand of others. If my vote had counted, we’d see a real conservative CA governor instead of a Rino actor. And schools wouldn’t give abortions on demand without a parent’s consent. And shools would have to compete for students and money. Californians had that choice. But they were too busy with high-speed internet connections. The people who have inherited America are not very American. They HAVE ALLOWED their brains and spirits to be turned to mush by an indiscriminate acceptance of “reckless belief system allowing all manner of predation.” It would be a different world if people bought, sold, and voted as do I. I’ll take my standards over the sheeple’s any day. And I live by them.
I think from your post that you have served in the military and a patriot. That office is one of the higher and I have nothing but gratitude for those who have done so anywhere–German, Japan, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. If you think I, too, will not defend my home and homeland with my finger fused to the trigger, you are wrong. If you are under the illusion that I am a nihilist, defeatist, hyperdemanding illiberal, then you may have another long draught of the beverage you so heartily recommend.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Bush fought this war with kid gloves, appeasing at every turn.
The same way he’s run America. Spending like a drunken Democrat, letting Jose and Jorge run wild across OUR land, etc…….etc……etc……
Now we will reap the fruits of his actions – we have given over Congress to the enemy, we will give Iraq and Afghanistan to the other enemy, and our children will get blown up in the next attack.
I voted twice for Bush. I had no choice. Now the only choice I can see is to stock up on ammunition. Looks like I’ll need it.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
As a nation we have followed license to its logical conclusion. Even most here dont really have the capacity to live by the fruits of their proclamations made real. Expecting leaders to be perfect in anything other than in the pursuit of power is a waste of time. Leadership notwithstanding global tendencies and trends are unlikely to be directed as easily as you think. I wish I knew less than I do. At best a holding action is possible before things change beyond recognition. One cannot hold back the tide without first destroying the moon.
December 19th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Our troops should never leave our shores. Everytime they have done so, it was to implement political policy.
Our troops took an oath to defend OUR COUNTRY from enemies, both foreign and domestic.
Any President that tramples the constitution, sends out troops outside the country to “spread democracy” and lets illegal immigrants run wild, is a domestic enemy.
May our Generals realize this soon and bring our troops home to retake our capital from this enemy.
I had hoped that the Dems would realize why people voted them in. They are evidently to inflated with social agenda to realize that if they don’t bring this adminstration to heel, they’ll be the next out the door. If they try to outlaw guns, they’ll be shown the door at gunpoint…Cause, we all know that the endpoint of the “diversty” experiment is going to be interracial civil war. And, civil war is best done if you bring your gun…
For those who are supporting the shrub, did they just not have Government 101 when you went to school? Don’t they teach the Constitution in school anymore? And, BTW, war is not a football game. For you all to cheerlead for it is disgusting.
December 19th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
I had hoped that the Dems would realize why people voted them in.
They voted them in because the American people are vapid and have short attention spans.
And I very much cheerlead for our soldiers to win this war (and any war we’re in). And they ARE winning, just as our boys were winning in Viet Nam. Then our liberal traitors turned public opinion away, and we forfeited that war. It appears to be happening again. This time we have a multitude of Walter Cronkite wanna-be’s. I’m afraid we can never win a war again, because you can’t win a politically correct war.
December 19th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Everytime they have done so, it was to implement political policy.
WWII was a political policy? You can’t be that much of a dumbass.
December 19th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Yes, WWII was political policy. It’s true purpose was create Israel and to make the US the worlds economic super power. It had nothing to do with defending our country.
If defense of the country was the President’s true priority, why’d the let Pearl Harbor happen? They knew the Japanese were coming and in fact forced them to come via economic policies.
December 19th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Our troops have already won the “war”. They did their job of bringing death and destruction admirably. The war is over, why are our troops still there? To spread democracy? I don’t believe that was in the oath that they took and, it smacks of political policy. I believe it is called “nation building” and our dear leader swore that he wouldn’t do that….I know, I heard it in one of his speaches and silly me, I believed him and voted for him. Won’t happen again.
The reason we can’t occupy a country is because of the Geneva conventions that our government signed also. The conventions outlaw brutilizing the civilian population and if you can’t do that, then you are just sitting ducks for the civilians to take shots at. And, our treasonous politicians know it. There is only one reason that the politicians send out our troops, it is for their own economic gain.
All wars are fought for money and religion is the tool to stir the masses into action.
Where are the billions and billions of dollars going to? It’s not for our troops, their pay was already figured into the budget. I suspect that it is being used for “nation building” via Haliburton and other companies that are going to hire George and Dick after their terms expire.