Do Liberals Think Our Troops Are “Contract Killers?”

Popular lefty cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall, who has a knack for saying what liberals really think but are afraid to say, has a message for his fellow travelers on the left:

“You can drop the “support the troops” shtick now.”

That’s from Rally’s latest column. So is this:

“What if they gave a war,” a poster of the Vietnam era asked, “and nobody came?” If we are, as Jean-Paul Sartre posited, defined by our actions, most of the blame for the murder of more than 100,000 Iraqis belongs to our top government officials. But Bush’s armchair warriors couldn’t have invaded Iraq without a compliant and complicit United States military–one that, it should be noted, is all volunteer. These individuals, who enjoy free will, fire the guns and drop the bombs. If personal responsibility is to have any meaning, the men and women of our armed forces have to be held individually accountable for the carnage.

…Soldiers, they say, must obey orders. However, “just following orders” wasn’t an acceptable excuse at the Nuremberg trials, where the charges included waging a war of aggression. Do our government’s poorly paid contract killers deserve our “support” for blindly following orders?

…What are members of the military to do? They should certainly refuse to applaud when Bush uses them as backdrops to his logo-ridden pro-death pep rallies. Moreover, just as Muslim leaders were pressured to speak out against Islamist extremists after 9/11, soldiers ought to step forward to condemn the atrocities at Bagram, Fallujah and Guantánamo in letters to newspapers and other public venues.

The military used to be an honorable calling. Not under Bush. Ethical Americans considering a military career should seek a civilian job until a lawful, elected government has been restored in Washington and we have withdrawn our forces from occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Those who are already enlisted should refuse to reenlist. Soldiers trapped by “stop loss” orders should apply for conscientious objector status (which is difficult to obtain) or refuse deployment based on the unlawful order principle. And if all else fails, there’s always desertion.”

So, the troops are “poorly paid contract killers” who should desert from the military? To say that’s not very diplomatic is a huge understatement, but at least it’s brutally honest. That’s more than you can say for a lot of liberals who feel just like Rall does, but pretend to publicly support the troops.

Hat tip to Robin Mullins Boyd for pointing this column out to me.

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