What Joel Stein Said
"Support Our Troops, Bring the Home Alive
- Protest Chant, Heard from time to time during Gulf War I, circa 1991 (was it?)
Courtesy of a pair of conservative sites (Instapundit and, again, the RCP Blog), I came across Joel Stein's commentary titled "Warriors and Wusses." While Stein's piece is more than a little tongue-in-cheek, that doesn't significantly alter the fact that he's fairly true throughout to his opening sentence, which reads:
"I don't support our troops."
Stein's argument is pretty basic: he doesn't support the war, so how can he say that he actually supports the troops? I've dabbled around this issue before (can't find it on the blog though) and have always found it problematic. To be honest, though, I take Stein's side on this one. I started with the chant at the top of the page because I find it to be a more honest formulation of how the anti-war Left "supports" the troops. That's not to say that they want them dead - and Stein seconds that one - or that they blast them as imperialist swine. But it's pretty clear that the anti-war Left would prefer that the troops were doing something else. And, in my mind, if your basic message to the people in the field is, you're wasting your life on a lie - and one doomed to fail - that will, or ought to, get them thinking (if not today, then perhaps when they return).
Unlike Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, I don't think Stein's statement makes him somehow unpatriotic. That's the sin of the Right. This is a democracy and, while it'd be nice if we were all behind the Iraq policy, the fact is we're not, nor are we obliged to be. Opposing the war isn't unpatriotic, fer Chrissakes, and anyone who tells you it is has an agenda. As such, I credit Stein with two things: 1) He's calling the Left on a tortured CYA (cover-your-ass) talking point that has no real meaning; 2) for not playing the Right's rhetorical game.
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posted by The Manly Ferry @ 4:16 PM
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4 Comments:
I appreciate Stein's comments because I believe he is being more honest than most Dems and others on the Left. They believe the troops are as guilty as the president and that's why they feel justified in undermining the war effort and encouraging the enemy.
You've probably heard, they loathe the military.
Nope. You're overstating it, Mr. Malott. I couldn't find a Dem or other on the Left - nor do I think you could find anyone anywhere inside the farthest fringes - who "believes the troops are a guilty as the president." That doesn't remotely add up. The Left doesn't loathe the military; they may disagree with, or even loathe, what's being done with it and they clearly loathe the man directing it. But that's nothing like the same thing.
You're not talking about real people; you're talking about strawmen and fantasy opposition. If you don't understand what motivates the Left, you'll never be able to communicate with them, thereby contributing to the polarized dynamic that Carl Cannon describes here.
Well called, BF.
To say that Liberals/progressives/democrats loathe the military is disingenuous at least.
As a self-identified liberal, I've got to say I'm also an unabashed fan of law and order as justly applied by well-trained policement and adjudicated by a just judiciary.
Only such an evironemnt can guarantee the freedom we've taken for granted for so long.
I've got to give Stein props for having the guts to say what he said. I don't quite agree; I think 'supporting the troops' is a wide open term which can mean many things. In my case it means giving due respect to all veterans and thanking them for making the sacrifice of giving up a comfortable life doing what they want to go for in exchange for a life of doing what you're told and becoming a target. That's a tough call to answer.
Stein's column was an exercise in black humor and sarcasm aimed at a public who is too numbed to understand it.
SJK said:
"Stein's column was an exercise in black humor and sarcasm aimed at a public who is too numbed to understand it."
Bollocks. It was the publicity stunt of a cynical twerp whose motives were so serpentine and whose logical texture was so tenuous that less cynical people could be forgiven for not adequately deconstructing it.
If there's one thing that makes me sick (apart from the virus raging in my body right now) it's the defense of the unjustifiably supercilious by the even less unjustifiably supercilious. At best Samuel John Klein mistakes a particularly shifty and unscrupulous application of mere cleverness for real and noble intelligence.
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