LA Times Columnist: I Don’t Support The Troops

From Joel Stein in the LA Times:

“I DON’T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

…But I’m not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they’re wussy by definition.

…But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you’re not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you’re willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it’s Vietnam.”

Stein’s sentiments may be reprehensible, but they’re also honest unlike those of so many other liberals who don’t have the stomach to fight the war on terrorism.

The truth is that a lot (but, not all) of the people on the left, have a deep antipathy towards the military that they refuse to reveal because it’s considered politically taboo, particularly after the way many liberals behaved after Vietnam.

So, they nibble around the issue without coming out and saying it. Hollywood makes movies that portray members of the military in the worse light possible. The media reveals secret plans that may put the troops’ lives in danger and hypes things like Abu Ghraib far out of proportion to their importance. Lefties protest military recruiters. We hear liberals comparing Bush to Hitler and comparing our actions to those of Al-Qaeda, which makes the troops what? Nazis? Terrorists?

But, of course, they never carry their arguments to their logical conclusions and admit that they don’t support the troops. Joel Stein did and unlike many of his compatriots on the left, that at least makes him intellectually consistent.

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