Shots Across The Bow

Thoughts of a Button Man

According to Kleinheider, an American soldier is basically the same as a mob hitman; he just works for a different boss. This isn't the first time he's insulted our troops; not too long ago, he defended John Kerry who joked that only stupid or lazy people got stuck going to Iraq. In essence, Kleinheider said that Kerry was right, and told an anecdote that suggested that only the dregs of today's youth choose a military career.

But Kleinheider honors military service. He says so several times. He just thinks they're stupid killers for hire, not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'm a Navy vet. My son is currently enlisted in the Army. My father was a Navy vet. My uncle was a Marine vet. My maternal grandfather was a Navy vet. That's four generations of service to our nation, or as Kleinheider would say, four generations of stupid hitmen.

If you think I'm taking this personally, you're absolutely right. Kleinheider admits in the comments to his post that he has absolutely no first hand knowledge of military life, yet feels comfortable spewing out hateful nonsense about what a soldier is or isn't.

What a moron.

I'm going to address a few of his points, not because I think it'll change his mind. If he seriously thinks he can call the troops stupid and ignorant, and then refer to them as the moral equivalent to Mafia assassins, and doesn't see a contradiction between those two statements and his contention that he honors and supports them, then there's nothing that can be said to penetrate his delusions.

Instead, I'm doing it simply because his insults cannot be allowed to stand. He has offended me, denigrated my service and my family's service, and I won't let that go unchallenged.

Soldiers are just that — soldiers. They are spokes on a wheel. Many, many soldiers, save those at the very top of the pyramid, are pawns. They are button men for our civilian leadership. Is this an honorable profession? Certainly. But it is also, in the end, just that — a profession. Soldiers should be proud of their service, maybe prouder than men of any other profession, but let’s not get out of control with it.

Just another profession, right? Like doctors, lawyers, or maybe garbage collectors and journalists?

I don't think so. You see, there's a key difference between all of these professions, and a soldier. A soldier is willing to put his life on the line in order to defend an idea. That's a demand that no other profession on the planet is required to meet. A soldier is also required to give up many of the very freedoms he is fighting to protect, and he makes this sacrifice willingly. He goes where he's told, does what he's told, and does so to the best of his ability. To ACK, this makes him a pawn; a piece of little value and little power to be sacrificed as strategy demands. That may be true on a strategic level, but ask anyone who has ever commanded troops if he sees his men as pawns.

But you might want to duck after you ask that question.

Military men and women make a major sacrifice when they serve. In war, that sacrifice is obvious, but the sacrifices are still there in peacetime as well. Just as an example, for 4 months while getting ready to go to sea after an overhaul, we were on port and starboard duty rotation. That means that we spent 36 hours out of every 48 hour period on board the ship, away from our families.

For 4 months. No overtime pay. No weekends off.

Show me another profession that does the same for poverty level wages.

A military man has to be dedicated to something above and beyond himself, his family,or his community. It is that dedication that separates his profession from all others.

There are no more good soldiers than good people in this country and there are no less bad people in a position of dominion over these soldiers than in the civilian population.

I'm slightly surprised to hear this tripe coming from a supposed conservative; it sounds more like something I'd expect from Rosie O'Donnell or Bill Maher. There is a glaring logical flaw in ACK's statement,one that he will never see because of his bias against the military. ACK assumes that in the best case scenario, the members of the military will resemble the general population, resulting in a similar distribution of good guys and bad guys. The error is that the military population is not a random sample of the general population. In fact, the military has some fairly strict criteria that potential recruits have to meet before they can join. Things like no criminal records, a good record of educational achievement, and good physical health. So even if a randomly selected cross section of society went through the recruiting process, the selection criteria would result in a subset of society that was smarter, healthier, and better behaved than the general public. And yes, there are wavers for some things but not enough to make the example invalid.

But ACK actually goes further. While in this posts, he pretends to believe that soldiers are a cross section of society, in his other post, the one where he defends Kerry, he shows that he really holds a quite different view:

The grunts, the people that fight and die on the ground in Iraq, many of them are not exactly “college boys.� This is not a criticism of them. I admire men who can handle themselves and a firearm and dispense violence effectly[sic] when needed...A friend of mine who serves in the Army as an officer mentoring young enlisted men also has a brother who coaches football at a community college. The brother is constantly complaining about having to deal with the uncoachable wild young men of limited intelligence in his charge.

My friend could only respond to his brother that he was lucky because he was charged with leading and shaping young boys who couldn’t even get in to community college. It was said jokingly, but it was funny because it was true.

This is the old fallacy that the only people who enlist are those who can't do anything else. Even a cursory glance at today's military shows that this simply isn't true unless you think that guys who can't even get into community college are the ones running nuclear reactors for the Navy. Yeah, they're all enlisted folks. Oh yeah, and all the hospital corpsmen and medics? Yep, they're enlisted as well.

Computer operators and electronics techs? Enlisted.
Avionics techs and crypto operaters? Enlisted.
Plane captains and jet techs? Enlisted.
Nuclear machinists,fabricaters and welders? Enlisted.
Chemists? Enlisted.

I could go on, but anybody with a brain can see my point. The skill sets required by the modern military simply cannot be mastered by a bunch of educational rejects, no matter how much Kleinheider would like to think so. Even the lowliest infantryman is a highly specialized warrior in today's military; there really is no such thing as a grunt anymore. To be sure,there are jobs that don't require a tremendous amount of book learning, but there are a lot fewer of them in the military than there are in the civilian world.

These are not saints, they are soldiers.

This is true, but incomplete, particularly on Memorial Day. You see, Memorial Day is set aside to honor specifically those soldiers,sailors,airmen,and marines who died in the line of duty. They paid the ultimate price,made the highest sacrifice possible for a man or woman to make, and in doing so, they transcended their imperfections; they exceeded their limitations. You either get this,or you don't.

A man who gives his life to defend his country is a hero, regardless of whether or not he was an ass in his regular life. Robert Heinlein tells the story of a hobo in Missouri who died trying to save a woman from an oncoming train. The guy was a bum, a derelict; he was most likely a petty thief, and possibly a drunk as well. But he gave his life trying to save the life of a stranger, and that makes him a hero, worthy of remembrance.

So how much more remembrance should we give those who died to save not just a stranger, but an entire country? No, they weren't saints, but the very fact that they were flawed human beings makes their sacrifice that much more heroic. Is it too much to ask to set aside one day to honor their sacrifice, to put aside politics and snide carping and just say thank you?

Sadly, for some people like Kleinheider, the answer is yes.

Ironically, even though Kleinheider cannot appreciate the sacrifices that the heroes of the past and present have made and are making for him, they'll keep doing it anyway.

That's what makes them heroes.

Posted by Rich at June 1, 2007 2:19 AM | TrackBack