Actually, avedis, I’d say no. The comment as I read it was a simple “you owe respect” in response to the lame “you’re fighting over there so I can be stupid over here” comment.
If that’s the point you’ve been trying to make – that we owe those serving respect – I’d say you’ve done a bad job of making it. But if it is the point you’ve been trying to make, I think a lot of people – including me – will have a different opinion of you.
I was thinking that too – I thought the comment in question was a response to Yglesias’ post, and the “got to leave a mark” was AL’s comment in addition.
But it makes more sense when you look for the comment left by mq (not the first lets-look-at-the-larger picture one, the second one). The thread quickly got off track from a somewhat reasonable “shouldn’t the DoD track casualties better?” to various other things.
Ah, for a comments section with limited threading…
“…..If that’s the point you’ve been trying to make – that we owe those serving respect – I’d say you’ve done a bad job of making it….”
That is partly the point I try to make, but you don’t understand the nature of the respect I’m talking about because you have a mythical/archetypical image of the service that doesn’t correlate with what I know to be reality. So the basis of our individual concepts of respect don’t mesh. I am not saying that I am not proud of my service, my father’s, my childrens’; only that the source of my pride is different from what you would make it out to be. It’s the difference between something personal and flag waving in the village square.
But more than that I have been saying that you *can’t* understand combat and war generally from the perspective of the warrior because you haven’t been there and that much of your posturing, flag waving, and war promotion and simultaneous “troop supporting” rings hollow to me because you don’t know; can’t know. Maybe someone needs what you do to feel good about what they do or have done. Not me and not many warriors I know. Sorry. Which is what the guy whose comment you like was saying – at least as I heard it. Only he was saying it to a spoiled little puke that doesn’t take the warrior seriously and respectfully for a different set of reasons than you. Him because he probably has a problem with authority and his own lack of testicles or something. You because you want to politicize, deify, put everything military on a high pedestal simply because its green – or digi as the case may be these days.
It’s an honorable profession – being a warrior – but the reality is that it is a job, like any other, with all of the warts and issues and then some.
And in the end all of the killing and pain is an undescribably terrible waste and there is no glory in it, I assure you. Necessary sometimes, but not glorious. Often enough, unnecessary.
People like you scare me because your hero worship of all things military causes you to be unable to discern accurately – or to decidely speak out about – those instances where the killing is unnecessary.
Rather falls in the category of “Be very, very careful of what it is you wish for”….
Speaking of the precision use of firepower…that sounded pretty on target to me.
Gosh, AL, that retort that you like so much over there sounds an awful lot like things I’ve said over here and caught flack for.
It even sounds dreadfully close to falling over the line and into the forbidden “Chicken Hawk” zone.
Doesn’t it?
Considering that the comment had exactly nothing to do with the post in question, i’m unsure as to how much of a mark it left.
Actually, avedis, I’d say no. The comment as I read it was a simple “you owe respect” in response to the lame “you’re fighting over there so I can be stupid over here” comment.
If that’s the point you’ve been trying to make – that we owe those serving respect – I’d say you’ve done a bad job of making it. But if it is the point you’ve been trying to make, I think a lot of people – including me – will have a different opinion of you.
A.L.
*Chris P at #4*
I was thinking that too – I thought the comment in question was a response to Yglesias’ post, and the “got to leave a mark” was AL’s comment in addition.
But it makes more sense when you look for the comment left by mq (not the first lets-look-at-the-larger picture one, the second one). The thread quickly got off track from a somewhat reasonable “shouldn’t the DoD track casualties better?” to various other things.
Ah, for a comments section with limited threading…
“…..If that’s the point you’ve been trying to make – that we owe those serving respect – I’d say you’ve done a bad job of making it….”
That is partly the point I try to make, but you don’t understand the nature of the respect I’m talking about because you have a mythical/archetypical image of the service that doesn’t correlate with what I know to be reality. So the basis of our individual concepts of respect don’t mesh. I am not saying that I am not proud of my service, my father’s, my childrens’; only that the source of my pride is different from what you would make it out to be. It’s the difference between something personal and flag waving in the village square.
But more than that I have been saying that you *can’t* understand combat and war generally from the perspective of the warrior because you haven’t been there and that much of your posturing, flag waving, and war promotion and simultaneous “troop supporting” rings hollow to me because you don’t know; can’t know. Maybe someone needs what you do to feel good about what they do or have done. Not me and not many warriors I know. Sorry. Which is what the guy whose comment you like was saying – at least as I heard it. Only he was saying it to a spoiled little puke that doesn’t take the warrior seriously and respectfully for a different set of reasons than you. Him because he probably has a problem with authority and his own lack of testicles or something. You because you want to politicize, deify, put everything military on a high pedestal simply because its green – or digi as the case may be these days.
It’s an honorable profession – being a warrior – but the reality is that it is a job, like any other, with all of the warts and issues and then some.
And in the end all of the killing and pain is an undescribably terrible waste and there is no glory in it, I assure you. Necessary sometimes, but not glorious. Often enough, unnecessary.
People like you scare me because your hero worship of all things military causes you to be unable to discern accurately – or to decidely speak out about – those instances where the killing is unnecessary.