i kill therefore i am

or not as the case may be.

jeff goldstein and his dittoheads are thumping chests and slapping backs like the gang of drunken fratboys they are over a recent column by joel stein.

shorter joel stein: "i don't support the troops because i don't support the war but i still wan't to be cool so i'll say i like them."

shorter goldstein: "i like the sound my keyboard makes"

shorter dittoheads: "you are like a god sir"

to cleanse your palate i offer the words of mr. crispin sartwell

By Crispin Sartwell

Unanimity gives me the heebie-jeebies. And lately, I'm pretty nervous
out on the highway and in the parking lots, where every car seems to
have three yellow-ribbon magnets that say "Support Our Troops."

Even people who oppose the war "support our troops." I find this
puzzling. If you think the war is wrong, then you think what the
soldiers are doing is wrong.

One of the purposes of training soldiers to act under order is to
create a disciplined, unified implementation of tactics. Another is
to relieve as many people as possible of as much responsibility as
possible for what they're doing.

But even in a context in which someone is telling you what to do,
you're responsible for what you do. If this is not the case, then not
only are there no war crimes, there are no war heroes.

To join the military is a decision. To allow yourself to be deployed
to Iraq is a decision. No doubt it would be disconcerting to take
yourself to be serving your country in, let us say, Vietnam and then
come home to find yourself reviled. But if you yourself believed your
decision to fight was the right decision, you should expect that
others will disagree with you, and you should be able to weather the
disagreement.

I am not under an obligation to praise you for taking actions I think
are wrong. Now, if I believed that you acted in ignorance -- that,
for example, you thought that conquering and occupying Iraq was
"protecting our country," then I might regard that as something of an
excuse. Then again, I might think that you should know your belief is
false and that if you believe without question what Dick Cheney (or,
for that matter, anyone else) says, then you're liable to do bad things.

Writing in 1848 during the Mexican-American War -- a war prosecuted
on the flimsiest of pretexts with the most questionable of motives --
Henry David Thoreau wrote as follows: "A common and natural result of
undue respect for the law is, that you see a file of soldiers,
colonel, captain, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in
admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills,
ay, against their common sense and consciences, which make it very
steep marching indeed.

"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as
machines. ... In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the
judgment or the moral sense; but they put themselves on the level
with wood and earth and stones: and wooden men can perhaps be
manufactured that will serve the purpose as well."

For us to oppose what our troops are doing and to support them for
doing it is to regard them as inanimate objects, as things with no
responsibility for their own actions. It is to excuse everything on
the ground that the persons doing it have no conscience,
understanding or will.

But we, too, need to accept our responsibility. Thoreau went to jail
because -- in protest of the war and as a refusal to participate in
it -- he declined to pay his taxes. I myself, though I oppose the
war, am no tax resistor. In other words, when the authorities order
me to cough up (or, rather, when they confiscate the war machine's
cut directly from my paycheck), I utter nary a peep.

The laws and mechanisms under which I do this are designed precisely
to exculpate me, to diminish my own sense of my responsibility. But
whether the law treats me as a child, an object, an idiot or a
victim, still I am responsible as I pay for what I hate.

Support our taxpayers.

SUBVERT OUR TROOPS

discuss among yourselves

Comments

[Robot Buddha]

Brilliant.

[comandante agi]

For now on, everytime I read Jeff Goldstein's words I will think of the prosthetic prostate exam tool.

I left this on his site...

Wow. Michael Kelly does an excellent job of manipulating Orwell's writing to suit his own pro-war ends.

Orwell was writing about one particular war--World War II. He was not making a general statement about all wars. Does Kelly know that Orwell was a democratic socialist who hoped that Britain’s victory in World War II would bring about socialism in England?

It's true that the Nazis wanted Britain to fall victim to pacifism, because that would make the Brits easier to conquer. The Nazis had a huge army (not to mention an air force) just waiting to take Britain. I don’t think Osama and his boys amounted to a Nazi army waiting to march on Washington, D.C. The analogy of World War II to the “War on Terror” simply falls flat when you begin to analyze the particulars. You have to take wars on a case by case basis.

According to Kelly's logic every pacifist is pro-Fascist. Pacifists during the Civil War or the Spanish-American War were pro-Fascist? I don’t think so. Pious Quakers are pro-Fascist? That would make Henry David Thoreau a Fascist for opposing the Mexican-American War during the 1840s.

Oh, shit. Am I pro-Fascist because I don’t support this war? I feel so ashamed.

[Crusader AX E of the Lost Causes]

Ok, children, listen up and listen good.

Talk to a returning vet; they do not want to think that they wasted their time over there, but at a certain point, especially with the folks at the cutting edge, the eyes go kind of far away. If you haven't been in their shoes, you got no clue...

I am a retired soldier. I have scars, mental, physical and metaphysical -- and I didn't see shit like this. I can only guess what they're seeing. Lots of conversations go like this...tough? yeah, pretty tough. Buy you a beer? Thanks...

You want to support the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who are there? Ask for full disclosure of how we ended up there and how we fucked it all up so badly. Get a definition of what end-state looks like -- when the Iraqis are able to stand up for themselves isn't an endstate. What are the measurements this gang of idiots is using? Oh, yeah, tell your Congressmen to get a goddamn declaration of war going...

Want to support the troops? Fully fund the VA. Do something for the reservists and guardsmen who are mentally fucked up by this thing and can't get either VA or military assistance. Tell your congressman to vote for concurrent receipt.

Want to support the troops. Enlist...then I'll take you seriously. When the Bush twins and the ilk are all wearing body armour, then I'll accept that this is a war worth fighting, at least in their parents minds. You see, if it's worth fighting, then you fight. You don't send other people...

I have infinite respect for our men and women and undecideds in uniform. I have 0 respect for Dubya Tse-Wha and the rest of the gang. You want to support the troops? Send them a big box of cookies and work for a pro-unass-Iraq-yesterday congress in the fall. Maybe an impeach this motherfucker and the rest of them ticket this fall...misleading us into war, violating laws at will and whim, gross incompetence and then lying about, cronyism, and so on should qualify for high crimes and misdemeanors if a blow job and a wink qualify...

The logic of supporting them by killing more continues to escape me. Of course, I live in a reality based world...

[reverend quitter]

10-4 Crusader AXE

[comandante agi]

I made the little Jeff lackeys get all frazzled. he he. They don't understand the meaning of "support".

[Robot Buddha]

Well said, Crusader.

[Neil Shakespeare]

It's kinda like having a child who's over at the neighbor's bashing the hell out of the neighbor's kid with a baseball bat and saying, "Well, Bob & I really don't believe in what he's doing, but we support him 110%!"

[the quitter]

funny stuff neil. well put.

[comandante agi]

Support The War, Fuck The Troops

...It's the Republican Way!

[Ames Tiedeman]

YOU SHOULD HAVE A BLOG DEDICATED TO TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WAR ON TERROR AND ISLAM.

THE WAR ON TERROR IS NOBLE. IT IS ABOUT THE WEST FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL AGAINST THE SAVAGE MUSLIMS!

STOP BASHING OF BUSH!

GOD BLESS AMERICA AND THE HELL WITH ISLAM!

[reverend quitter]

you know ames, you're right. i hereby renounce my bashing of bush and will join your holy war starting......

now.

[Ames Tiedeman]

You liberals are so warped it is really sad. I suppose you want Iran armed with nuclear weapons as well.

The world is hostile. Conservatives recognize this and meet this hostility with force. No civilization has ever surived by being weak. Meet force with force and win, or meet death.

[El Comandante]

Ames, your psychic ability is quite compelling. How did you know we desire Iranian theocrats to achieve nuclear weapons?

I'm so thoroughly convinced by your portrayal of this world that I just might give up being a defeatist. I never realized the world was that simple.

[Ames Tiedeman]

What is worse, bombing Iran or allowing Iran to devlop a nuclear arsenal? You tell me Mr. Smartass. I have never read a blog that has been infected with so many pathetic, narcissistic, leftists who cannot build any real arguments for their philosophy. Can you do anything other than offer a bashing session for those who oppose you?

Do you actully think telling me that their are "no simple solutions" is a premise, or an argument? It is nothing more than the kind of statement one makes when one has no ability to argue or debate or think.

Please, present some respectible arguments.

[the serrach]

yes ames. just bomb everyone until they agree with you. conduct your diplomacy at the barrel of a gun and tell me, at the end of the day, how you differ from those you aim to defeat.

asshole.

t.s.

[e_five]

I'm with you, Ames! The best way to ensure that we are never harmed by enemies is to kill every man, woman, and child in every other country on earth. Commence Total War, to be followed by delicious torture and mass extermination.

The only question now is what color do we paint the crematoriums, and how deep do we dig the mass graves? I say yellow, because it goes so well with blood-curdling screaming, and 35 feet, because we don't want to contaminate the ground water will all those rotting foreign corpses.

Now let's get going! GLORY!!

[Ames Tiedeman]

This is the most pathetic blog ever...

[Roger Schweitzer]

I agree with Ames. This is a leftist tash blog.

[the serrach]

roger, when you talk tashy like that, it really makes me hot for your bod. wanna get it on?

[Ames Tiedeman]

Hey Neanderthals!

So what is your take on North Korea?

Tell me please......oh genius DEFEATIST..tell me!

Also, about those savage beasts they arrested in Miami. Do you think this is just right wing politics? What will you say when you see the tapes and hear the audio of their plot and plan to take down the Sears Tower? Oh, I suppose you think the government should have done nothing until the building actually fell. Oh, ok..I get ya now...

Bye Neanderthals..bye pascifists...bye bye...losers...

[Comandante Agi]

Ames,

Since none of us have yet commented about North Korea or the Miami arrests I think YOU should join this blog and educate us. Your arrogance (and your frequent visits to this "loser" blog) lead me to believe that YOU know everything. So please, educate us oh great and wise one. We are all ears.

[the serrach]

yes, do tell us what to think.

[the serrach]

it's not just us agi. check out what you find when google this ass

that's all he does.

[Ames Tiedeman]

You are brilliant!~
Amazing!
Spectacular!

YOU ARE GOD!

[Ames Tiedeman]

Did I tell you that you really are the best?