Can we have a discussion about this kind of ideology?
Like where this belief really comes from?
I understand the need to “support our troops.” I really do.
But I really bristle at hearing how a young soldier got killed by a roadside bomb in order to protect our Way Of Life and our Free Society.
I dont think this way of thinking can just be written off. I want to talk about where it comes from and what the need for it is.
2+2=5
Once upon a time, 9/11 happened.
Bad Men were doing Bad Things to destroy our freedom.
So we must destroy them where they are to preserve our freedom.
The end.
(I wish there was something more to it than that but there is literally nothing else to it at base. The more elaborate types spin out the idea that Iraq was going to be a haven for al Qaeda but it boils down to the same thing.)
As for the need, the need is one of security (as in a security blanket rather than actual security), justification and the ever-hopeful sign that it all ‘meant something.’ Because if it means nothing, everything else collapses and a whole bunch of people are in fact dead for no reason. That many people don’t want to confront that is understandable, but that doesn’t make their stance any less justifiable.
that last bit is OTM. but this has roots deeper than 9/11.
I’d say the roots were a combination of the US’s love of intervention in this hemisphere (see the past hundred years) plus The Great Crusades of World Wars I and II. This hemisphere gets conflated into the world and the moral twaddle ratchets into high.
But,
Troops in the Pacific/ North Africa/ Europe = Freedom in the USA
was much more credible a belief, wasn’t it?
Thus you see the power of myth.
“It was true then, it must be true now!”
Yeah, well while you guys are busy BLOGGING or whatever, those troops are out there fighting for your freedom.
someone’s gotta mind the homefront
I’ve talked a little bit about this before — I really hate the idea that “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” That reduces the US military to the role of the goat staked out in a clearing to attract the tiger. If I had any Fred Phelps-style madness in me I’d go around to military bases and ask people “How does it feel to be bait?”
Yeah, it also propagates the ridiculous notion that there is this set number of “bad guys” out there that we just need to scare out of the bushes so we can kill them.
What do troops do? They fight.
What do they fight for? Freedom.
Ergo, the troops are fighting right now so they must be fighting for freedom.
I honestly believe that a lot of people say it out of habit without thinking twice about what they’re actually saying.
I guess it’s a lot like seeing two octogenerians fucking in the park and thanking them for conceiving babies.
I take it you speak from personal experience there.
Well, they weren’t really ocotgenerians...
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I see the future of Young SunnyPlains as a kangaroo wrangler has been well thought out.
Out of all of the possible things “Troops in Iraq” might mean to an American, “Freedom in the USA” is the one that implicates and involves the American the least: it’s the least guilty option.
Actually, it’s not merely about *our* freedom, though. That’d be selfish. It’s also “freedom for Iraq,” “freedom everywhere,” and “democracy.”
Might as well use this thread to link to Eleanor Clift’s column from yesterday, as blunt and vicious as anything I’ve ever read about Bush.
rough and concise
“freedom” for people where i’m from = code for parts of a fantasy map sketched sometime in the ’40s and ’50s by john birch society crazies now with so many extra convenient blindfolds it’s kind of awe-inspiring to watch the system in action. i think you can find examples of it in WWII propaganda all the way back to teddy roosevelt back to (?), but suspect it’s the lofty, disconnected concept it is today bcz of the Cold War.
i guess i started this thread because i’m sick of calling people who i live and work with crazy and really just wanted a thoughtful dissection of how and why Americans attach meaning to the military-industrial complex.
did the anti-war movement during vietnam fuck up by NOT supporting the troops? is that part of how we got here?
that’s (more or less) a myth, and an important one for a conservative movement that needed to recover from a hugely unpopular war. see the backstabbing piece from harper’s a while back.
why Americans attach meaning to the military-industrial complex
Because it seems permanent, I’d guess. It seems forever present and (by self-definition) ‘strong,’ therefore it has value attached to it. Like most traditions it’s not THAT old and yet it seems eternal.
But skeptical takes on power are truly long-lived. It’s very me to say this, perhaps, but I am reminded of a line of Faramir’s from The Lord of the Rings (the book, that is): “I do not love the sword for its brightness or the arrow for its swiftness. I love only that which they defend.” Tolkien as a war vet doubtless said this from the heart and it’s a viewpoint I am highly sympathetic towards, speaking as someone who grew up in the military and all. It serves as a warning and in and of itself can have its meaning twisted to alternate ends, and I think we see something similar at play now.
my mother gets genuinley excited about barneycam every year.
CJR Daily’s take on short memories about the previous “surge” effort that failed (only a few months ago) as well as a bit about what happened the last time one of the new second-in-command guys had control.
If nothing else, it’s like pro-wrestling; lose a “loser retires” match, stay off the cameras for a few months, then do a run-in fresh as can be to be brought into the storylines again.
Troops in Iraq = Oil pipelines in the correct, freedomloving hands (well, at least that’s what they’re trying to do. But they haven’t managed to secure the entire country JUST YET) = Freedom in teh USA
troops in iraq:freedom in the usa::taking the new testament literally:taking the old testament literally
as for the article kingfish posted, specifically relating to odierno, well, who the fuck in their right mind would actually want to be in charge of that shit at this point in time?