Sunday, February 06, 2005
Smoke 'Em if You Got 'Em
Marine Lt. General Lattis is being reviled in the MSM over comments he made about war making. Naturally, context was omitted in the reporting. The story is nothing but a canvas for high moralistic preening by little men.
Here is Mattis' line as it has been lifted and used as a battering ram against him (and the military in general):
"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil . . . it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."
An unfortunate choice of words, to be sure. But I don't think we can afford to judge our frontline commanders by how neatly they avoid running afoul of the p.c. brigade.
Veterans aren't sitting still while the essential spirit of war fighting, during a time of war, is being savaged by desk jockeys with a genetic dislike of things military. Ralph Peters, himself an Army veteran, comes to the Marine's aid:
What was the media's reaction? A B-team news crew saw a chance to grab a headline at the military's expense (surprise, surprise). Lifting the general's remarks out of context, the media hyenas played it as if they were shocked to learn that people die in war.
Combat veterans are supposed to be tormented souls, you understand. Those who fight our wars are supposed to return home irreparably damaged.
Hollywood's ideal of a Marine is the retired co lonel in the film "American Beauty," who turns out to be a repressed homosexual and a murderer. Veterans are supposed to writhe on their beds all night, covered in sweat, unable to escape their nightmares.
Gen. Mattis may have been unusual in his honesty, but he certainly isn't unusual in our history. We picture Robert E. Lee as a saintly father figure, but Lee remarked that it's good that war is so terrible, since otherwise men would grow to love it too much. He was speaking of himself. Andy Jackson certainly loved a fight, and Stonewall Jackson never shied from one. Sherman and Grant only found themselves in war.
We lionize those who embraced war in the past, but condemn those who defend us in the present. George S. Patton was far blunter than Jim Mattis — but Patton lived in the days before the media was omnipresent and biased against our military.
The hypocrisy is stunning. Gen. Mattis told the truth about a fundamental human activity — war — and was treated as though he had dropped a nuclear weapon on an orphanage. Yet when some bozo on a talk show confesses to an addiction or a perversion in front of millions of viewers, he's lionized as "courageous" for speaking out.
Here is Mattis' line as it has been lifted and used as a battering ram against him (and the military in general):
"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil . . . it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."
An unfortunate choice of words, to be sure. But I don't think we can afford to judge our frontline commanders by how neatly they avoid running afoul of the p.c. brigade.
Veterans aren't sitting still while the essential spirit of war fighting, during a time of war, is being savaged by desk jockeys with a genetic dislike of things military. Ralph Peters, himself an Army veteran, comes to the Marine's aid:
What was the media's reaction? A B-team news crew saw a chance to grab a headline at the military's expense (surprise, surprise). Lifting the general's remarks out of context, the media hyenas played it as if they were shocked to learn that people die in war.
Combat veterans are supposed to be tormented souls, you understand. Those who fight our wars are supposed to return home irreparably damaged.
Hollywood's ideal of a Marine is the retired co lonel in the film "American Beauty," who turns out to be a repressed homosexual and a murderer. Veterans are supposed to writhe on their beds all night, covered in sweat, unable to escape their nightmares.
Gen. Mattis may have been unusual in his honesty, but he certainly isn't unusual in our history. We picture Robert E. Lee as a saintly father figure, but Lee remarked that it's good that war is so terrible, since otherwise men would grow to love it too much. He was speaking of himself. Andy Jackson certainly loved a fight, and Stonewall Jackson never shied from one. Sherman and Grant only found themselves in war.
We lionize those who embraced war in the past, but condemn those who defend us in the present. George S. Patton was far blunter than Jim Mattis — but Patton lived in the days before the media was omnipresent and biased against our military.
The hypocrisy is stunning. Gen. Mattis told the truth about a fundamental human activity — war — and was treated as though he had dropped a nuclear weapon on an orphanage. Yet when some bozo on a talk show confesses to an addiction or a perversion in front of millions of viewers, he's lionized as "courageous" for speaking out.
# posted by mds : 1:21 PM
