1 post tagged “support your troops”

Alright, here's something most of you don't know about me:

Back in the day--really, back before I could actually vote, but that's neither here nor there--I was a fan of Reagan, a supporter of the death penalty, and a devotee of William F. Buckley.  No, it's true.  I was openly conservative.  I relished the humor of P.J. O'Rourke and delighted in bashing hippies. 

Nevermind what changed, but when I turned 18, I voted for Bill Clinton.  Yes, Clinton. 

I still read O'Rourke and Buckley and loved them (I actually still harbor admiration for O'Rourke's earlier work and for Buckley in general--dude had class) and I often read George F. Will, but something changed during those Clinton years.  (Besides, Buckley was really a libertarian, and his analysis of why we end the War on Drugs was spot-on).

O'Rourke stopped being funny.  Not just O'Rourke.  The right in general lost its shit and went off some kind of invisible edge that apparently leads to instantly becoming a bitter old loser.  I couldn't really tolerate the way the right reacted to the Clinton presidency.  The Kenneth Starr thing--all of it, but especially the probing into Clinton's apparently consensual sexual relationships--really pissed me off.  The general disrespect the right suddenly showed to the office of the president pissed me off.  Conservatives are supposed to be all about traditional values like respect.  But in every red quarter, from the National Review to the increasingly abrasive Christopher Hitchens, absolute disrespect was the order of the day.  This offended my conservative nature, really and truly, and I gradually abandoned all things Republican. 

Now, as you're aware, I've hardly become some kind of Berkeley hippie (sorry, electric firefly!).  I still have a lot of things in common with the right, including my extreme tendency toward libertarianism and my general conservatism as regards social and cultural values.  As we say in country music, I still say "yes, ma'am" and "no, sir" and call men "sugar" and "honey" even if I don't know them.  I know, I know, the retrograde gender roles drive you nuts, don't they? 

Anyway, this is all leading somewhere.  While most of the right-ish commentators went through an extremely ugly period during the Clinton years, the more serious ones have recovered and become readable again (I don't even bother with the wingnuts on talk radio or Fox, not at all), the Hitch has not.

Listen up, Hitchens ('s if, right?):  YOU WERE WRONG, AND ARE STILL WRONG, ABOUT IRAQ.  None of your arguments are consistent or logically coherent--they hardly constitute arguments anymore.  You're scrabbling around for any reason for the waste of life and resources and money (did we mention the 3 trillion or so dollars this shit is costing us?  did we further mention that we're in a recession, the dollar is weak, and we could probably find better, less fatal things to spend a trillion bucks on?  finally, for a laugh, did we mention that that is apparently twice the GNP of Canada!  LOL  Ah, Canada always makes me chuckle--but I digress).  And you're not coming up with anything solid.  Yeah, Saddam is out of power.  Woo-freakin-hoo.  Beyond that, though--uh, nothing.  There's nothing.  No other good has come of this.  (I know the Hitch would ding me for being overly flip about Saddam being out of power.  If the overthrow of Saddam Hussein eventually leads to some good for the people of Iraq, then fantastic.  I shall at that time eat my fucking shoe, OK?  So far pretty much all they've got in return is death, terror, and chaos.  At least under Saddam, they only had the first two.  Damn!  I'm being flippant again!)

If you're not concerned about the monetary toll--although that should be the first consideration of a true Reagan conservative--and maybe you don't care about what we're actually doing to the nation and people of Iraq, let's talk about our own soldiers for a minute.  Let's remind ourselves how many of our own young men and women have died so far (nearly 4000 with close to 30,000 casualties).  Then maybe we should have a sit-down about what this is doing to families all over America, families whose sons and daughters and mothers and fathers are deployed for looooong stretches of time--many of whom were in the freakin' National Guard and NEVER expected an overseas deployment.  See, conservatives are supposed to care first about money and second about the troops and about families.  But we're not caring about any of those things anymore, are we?  We are abusing our soldiers by reneging on our obligations to them; we are abusing their families the same way.  A good soldier probably wouldn't say that, but I'm only a (ex-)soldier's daughter, so I can get out of line.  We are abusing the trust that our troops and their families have in us, to only risk their lives when it is going to serve some goddamned purpose.  Perhaps we should remind ourselves that, once our soldiers do finally get to come home, many of them are returning in no condition to participate in society again.  Thanks to the damage war has done to many of them--physical damage and psychological damage--they, like other generations of soldiers before them, are having a difficult time reintegrating (it doesn't help, no doubt, that there are no jobs here waiting for them; it helps somewhat less that many of them are stop-lossed).  Some portion of these people, we can be reasonably sure, due both to the failing economy and to the psychological damage I mentioned earlier, will end up on the street corner near your local Wal-Mart with a sign offering a blessing from God and a plea for any change you can spare.  People who have risked their lives to defend the "American dream" and our constitutional rights (not that either is actually at stake in this particular conflict, but they haven't *really* been in most of the wars we've engaged in) deserve better, man.

And we haven't even talked about what we're doing to Iraq or to the Middle East in general.  Or to our long-term relationships in the world.  Sorry, but these ain't the Reagan years anymore.  This isn't the dread Communists we're fighting, and we are no longer the world's only superpower.  We're throwing the future of our country down the drain, mainly to appease a bunch of elderly, rich white men who talk daily to God--oh, and to appease hawkish pundits like you. 

As a former conservative, frankly, it makes me pretty sick.  As the proud daughter of a Marine who went for two tours of duty in Vietnam, it makes me quite ill.  As an American who is not especially interested in being the world's only superpower (nice syntax, eh?), it just disgusts me.  This is not where we need to be going.

Not to mention--Hitch, lay off God, alright?  Your self-assured self-righteousness and bitter bigotry is no better than that of the Christian fundies you despise.  You make me sick, man.  You used to be witty and have a decent head on your shoulders, but Clinton seems to have screwed you up, bad.  Maybe you have some kind of political PTSD?  Maybe you're just jealous that Monica didn't blow you.  Whatever.  I can no longer even pretend to take your shit seriously. 

That's right.  Henceforth, Christopher Hitchens is DEAD TO ME.

P.S. Speaking of infiltrating sovereign nations to overthrow their governments, does anyone actually know why the CIA infiltrated Australia?  Was it because of Elvis?  Also, why aren't Aussies more bitter about it?