Dear Atlantic Magazine:
Please cancel my subscription.
My son – serving in the US Army – is not a part of a group that needs to justify that “most of them are not sociopaths”.
Marc Danziger
Dear Atlantic Magazine:
Please cancel my subscription.
My son – serving in the US Army – is not a part of a group that needs to justify that “most of them are not sociopaths”.
Marc Danziger
A.L.:
The implication of the link to the 1949 article is that rape and other atrocities committed on subject peoples is typical, or at least widespread and longstanding. The actual article is about lax discipline on Okinawa, including bad conditions for military families stationed there. I can’t find a single word about any crimes committed by Americans against Okinawans in 1949, although I admittedly skimmed the piece. This entire accusation of a policy/agency dysfunction appears to be based on a single case that was, in fact, dismissed. This sort of thing has become typical of the left press, unfortunately. Recently, a SNAFU resulting in a letter to a veteran demanding a refund of his signing bonus, after he’d been wounded too seriously to complete his term, was interpreted by KDKA News it Pittsburg as a broad policy to deliberately short-change wounded vets.
The story, however, doesn’t cite any data suggesting thousands of cases. it cites a single case, which the DoD corrected once it had been brought to their attention.
This is why I don’t post much any more. It’s demoralizing to think people routinely fall for this stuff. And I’m afraid that if someone like Obama is elected the “mighty wurlitzer” will institutionalize such nonsense, embedding it so deep in the national psyche it’ll be impossible to dig out. I don’t think Michelle Obama’s statement about lagging pride in her country was a slip of the tongue. That’s what she was taught at Princeton. That’s what over 90% of the faculty of elite universities actually think.
Sigh…
_The story, however, doesn’t cite any data suggesting thousands of cases. it cites a single case, which the DoD corrected once it had been brought to their attention._
Well, it’s a bit more than that. “Here’s a video”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWqhlDIHPqk with what sounds to be the General in charge – it sounds like both Fox got calls about this, and the line in question has received many calls. The man in question was not evacuated, but treated in Iraq and later released – and seems to have been caught in the hole. I think I remember reading that 800 or so were reviewed shortly after this report came out.
The thousands mentioned are bought up in “A GAO report”:http://www.gao.gov/htext/d06494.html – really, only 1300 at the time, caught up in the same awkward DoD finance system. I’d think it reasonable that the journalists could have pulled more information in the year and half later to make it more.
If nothing else, you could argue the “Personality Disorder discharges:”
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3368726“, with signing bonus repayments could be lumped in as well – depending on where you fall with PTSD/PreOcurring discharges.
*AL*, you may want to adjust your quote up there, since you’re paraphrasing tone and not quoting directly. I think it would have been better served using something like ‘a vast minority of people who serve’ instead, so that the article’s focus would not have been lost.
Sucky column, all in all.
The Atlantic Monthly hasn’t been the same since Michael Kelly died. That article was a hit piece on US servicemen, plain and simple. The editors allowed it. I’m canceling my subscription today, too.
Was this actually printed in the magazine, or just written in blog space? Is this article actually covered by editors? I lost my subscription when I moved a few years ago.
I ask because this reads like a speedy, poorly written blog article. If so, this is exactly why I feel journals and newspapers should only engage in ‘blogging’ as a professional endeavor. When a reporter (who tries to cast himself as objective) then displays a poorly written (& controversial) ‘opinion’, it casts a shadow on entire news agency. Even though I’m not a journalist, I prefer blogging under a pseudonym to avoid any connection between a stupid internet comment and my everyday life.
I’m apparently still fuzzy on which of our troops are occupiers and which are just stationed/peacekeepers. I had thought we all agreed that if a Democrat president sent them, they were peacekeepers, and if a Republican sent them, they were occupiers. But Harry Truman was a democrat, so i’m all confused.
_Was this actually printed in the magazine, or just written in blog space? Is this article actually covered by editors?_
I don’t think it appears in the magazine, it’s part of a blog feature called “The Current”:http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/the_current.php
bq. _The idea behind the feature is to provide quick and useful takes on the obvious and not-so-obvious news of the day, with items that simultaneously offer brief commentary from a member of the Atlantic family (I’ll be writing a couple a week, as will some of my fellow bloggers, and our OnDeadTree staff will be contributing frequently as well) and a round-up of some the best opinion on and around whatever the subject of the item happens to be. It’s a work in progress – as you can probably guess from the “beta” tag adorning it – and it will doubtless evolve over time._
Generally, its not been good. Somewhere between a news entry and a blog entry, it seems less than the sum of its parts.
I didn’t like the piece, but my reaction is nowhere near A.L.s.
I let my sub lapse when it considered James Fallows credible enough to discuss China and Iraq.
Oh, they support the troops, they just don’t want people to know _whose_ troops they support. That’s really what it all comes down to.
Regarding the KDKA news report: SNAFU is right! Situation Normal, All Fouled Up. Emphasis on NORMAL. The military has a long and (dis-)honorable history of screwing up discharge payments…. When I left in the Navy in ’81 I was shortchanged $1000 dollars because Payroll used an old pay grade to pay 52 days of terminal leave. When my wife got a medical retirement from the USAF in ’93 they tried exactly the same thing. We pushed back and the demand was quickly dropped.
This looks like another paper pusher following the rules exactly and not looking at the Medical discharge angle…
The price of empire, eh?
I suppose we’ll next hear from the Atlantic about the price of UN peacekeeping forces.
Oh, wait – no, we won’t.
What Jeff said. I also let my subscription lapse like Gabriel after enough nonsense by Fallows and others there. The thing turned into garbage.
Demo, you wrote “I can’t find a single word about any crimes committed by Americans against Okinawans in 1949, although I admittedly skimmed the piece.”
It was on the first page, in the 5th paragraph. It reads, “In the six months ending last September, U.S. soldiers committed an appalling number of crimes—29 murders, 18 rape cases, 16 robberies, 33 assaults.”
So the “implication of the link” is sound. How germane a 1949 article is to the argument is another question.
Still, I can’t quite see the need to cancel a subscription to an entire magazine because of one signed, two-paragraph, piece of commentary on a website. That’s not a direction we want to go in, is it? Keep your offensive opinions to yourself, buddy. What d’ya think this is, a marketplace of ideas or something?
Gabriel: I have not trusted Fallows judgment since his book on defense policy (called National Defense I think). He was proven spectacularly wrong when he advocated moving towards a Soviet style military with masses of simple cheap planes like the F-5 in place of fewer more sophisticated planes. He claimed that complex aircraft would break down if used in combat and that vast numbers of simple machines would overwhelm fewer more sophisticated ones. The last couple of decades of military experience have shown he got that exactly backwards and he has never to my knowledge explained why we should now trust his judgment.
Dave:
Thanks for the information. I don’t think this GAO report was cited in the article, although I may have missed it. The report suggests “hundreds” were affected, so it’s not clear how that got ramped up by a factor of ten, and that may be why they didn’t cite a source. Also, the summary doesn’t mention how the debts were incurred, or what they were for, just that they were connected to a cumbersome pay system. At least some of them might be connected to overpayments, etc.. There are 19 case studies, but the summaries of a few don’t mention how the debt was incurred, nor do they even imply that the debt was not actually owed. Again, it’s not at all clear how the authors of the news article got from this to an accusation that there was a deliberate policy, affecting thousands, to short-change soldiers due signing bonuses. The article appears to be based on a single case.
What d’ya think this is, a marketplace of ideas or something?
That’s exactly what this is. Complete with my right not to buy junk merchandise sold by idiots.
I’m not sure that there’s much signifcance attached to the question of whether the item appeared in the dead tree magazine or in The Atlantic’s blog. Both have continued their steady decline in quality and substance over the past couple of years. Their blog, in particular, has accumulated quite a collection of oddwads and nitwits, beginning with Andrew Sullivan, whose daily descents into paranoia and Hillary-Hatemongering border on the clinically insane…..and Yglesias proves daily that he’s not ready for primetime.
Mark:
Thanks. Missed it. Still, the context of 1949 article is about poor military administration, or rather about correcting a sloppy military administration on the Island. The number of crimes is probably not terribly out of line with civilian crime statistics of the period, back on the home front. In fact, if the ’49 article implies anything, it’s that civilian crime rates, and civilian-like administration, should not be acceptable in a military occupation. That’s a long way from the “price of empire.”
No one is questioning your rights, Treefrog, just the wisdom of closing one’s eyes/ears to an entire magazine because of a single opinion expressed by an individual in its pages — or in this case, on a website.
“What d’ya think this is, a marketplace of ideas or something?”
What part of their article do you equate to an idea? No one suggested they be stopped from spewing their venom. We hope you aren’t too offended if some of us spread a little in return.
Demosophist (& willis),
I think Gibney’s point, to the extent that he makes one at all, is that one price of empire, as he calls it, is a bad image. Now I’d’ve thought that would be assumed to naturally come with the territory, so to speak.
This is a pretty weak idea, willis, but I really don’t see it as “venom”ous. I am at a loss to understand the strength of the reaction to it.
Accusing our troops of being rife with rapists an equating their work with empire building is quite enough to draw venom. Allowing something so egregious to remain on your website, and allowing the author (who’s views i doubt come as a surprise to his bosses) to remain employed must say _something_ about the editorial stance of the magazine.
Mark are you suggesting the Atlantic holds no responsibility for what its employees do in its name on the website? Im just trying to establish how far apart we are on this- is it just an overreaction in your view (the Atlantic deserves some amount of censure but not this much) or a complete disavowement of any finger pointing at all? Just curious.
I get the Atlantic Monthly for free, God knows why.
I’m cancelling my free subscription today.
My son – serving in the US Army – is not a part of a group that needs to justify that “most of them are not sociopaths”.
Indeed.
A.L.,
Yes it seems the Atlantic Monthly has gone off the rails. I don’t subscribe, but if this is in fact the prevailing attitude over there, then I’ll keep it that way.
Anti-military hit piece, that tries to pretend it’s not. An outrage.
The problem with the article was lampooned on the site’s comments:
“Atlantic Monthly journalists have been raping women since 1857.”
Yes, the overwhelming majority of Atlantic Monthly writers aren’t sociopaths.
Still, I’m not cancelling my subscription. AM still has one of the most-pro military writers in popular pring, Robert Kaplan, as well as personal faves like Mark Bowden, Christopher Hitchens and even James Fallows. I’m not sure who this James Gibney guy is (other than Deputy Managing Editor), but he doesn’t appear to have ever appeared in print.
_#4 alchemist asked: “Was this actually printed in the magazine, or just written in blog space? Is this article actually covered by editors?”_
That article appeared in _The Atlantic’s_ blog, “The Current.” (thecurrent.theatlantic.com)
The author, James Gibney, has the title “Deputy Managing Editor” at _The Atlantic._ (www.theatlantic.com/a/masthead.mhtml)
So IMO the piece falls in between: it does not appear in the paper magazine, but it is the work of a very senior employee there.
Well, _Atlantic_ personnel have been distorting the truth for the last 60-plus years.
Sure, turn your back on Sullivan, Fallows, Kaplan, Bowen, Hitchens, and all of the other great stuff in The Atlantic, because of one ambivalent comment in a sponsored blog.
As a veteran, I find this worship of troops and veterans cloying.
The soldier-worship is an analogue to all the “celebrate diversity” mushiness. It’s just another type of political correctness.
Military service does not make one perfect, and large concentrations of young males are going to cause problems, especially as enlistment standards are lowered to admit felons. Can I say that?
Did anyone besides me realize the author of the 1949 Time article was Frank Gibney, father of James ? The late Frank Gibney was a well-known journalist focused on Asian and Japanese affairs for decades.
Metrico, you made a well reasoned, contextually defensible point that i doubt anybody would raise an eyebrow at around here. That is far different from the article in question, which is rife with loaded terms and unquestioned stipulations.
Its a fair question to ask whether other social groups would ever be subject to an article like this and what the reaction would be. If the Atlantic were to post an article saying homosexuals have been molesting children since 1948, there would be justifiable outrage and a lot of cancelled subscriptions, especially if immediate action werent taken to correct the situation.
The idea that this should be shrugged off is what is really stirring us up I think. If we have to live in a PC world at least it shouldn’t be hypocritical as well.
Bowden’s good, Hitchens, you can read most of his stuff elsewhere.
Sullivan, are you serious? Fallows
was wrong on the main issue he covered in the 80s, the Japanese
juggernaut that was going to take over the World; that was an overstatement. His flacking the
esteemed Richard Clark’s dystopian
“Iraq is responsible for the next
9/11” piece in the spring of ’05;
which was partly due to a grant
to the Atlantic Council, that came
from the CIA Counter Terrorism Center; is just one of the sticking
points
Mark B.,
I think we’re probably pretty far apart on this. There are two separate issues, as I see it.
One is the content of the two-paragraph opinion, which I see as pretty mild and pretty weak but not exactly controversial. The other is how allowable is it for a website, magazine, newspaper, etc., to offer the expression of individual opinions without being held responsible for those opinions.
To tackle the 2nd issue first. I don’t see the purpose of a magazine like the Atlantic to be promoting a unified ideological front. I see it more as a collection — a vehicle — for individual opinions on a wide variety of subjects. So to that extent, to answer your question, I don’t hold the editors at all responsible for the opinions of one man. Nor do I think that, as a general rule, anyone should be fired for his or her opinions, especially if they work at a magazine of opinions and commentary. I don’t see Gibney as offering his opinion “in the name” of the Atlantic. Otherwise, all you’d end up with are propaganda organs of various political factions. I mean, did A.L. subscribe to the Atlantic in the past because they always printed opinion that he agrees with?
As for the content of this particular opinion, I personally don’t find it offensive. I don’t see it as accusing our troops of being rife with rapists…in fact, one of the two paragraphs begins with a sentence the explicitly denies such a view. As far as equating the work of our troops with empire building, I don’t see this as an unusual or controversial claim. To the extent that we station troops overseas, I believe we are empire building and we use our troops to do so. Just because we believe our own motives for imperialism are good, doesn’t mean it isn’t imperialism. It means that we don’t perceive imperialism to be necessarily a bad thing. All Gibney is saying, and it isn’t much, is that there are downsides to imperialism and that…OMG…sometimes troops stationed overseas behave badly…what a shock.
I can read Bowen and Hitch all over the place. Excitable Andy is yet another reason to drop the sub, his credibility left when his mind did back in 2004.
metrico wrote:
“Military service does not make one perfect, and large concentrations of young males are going to cause problems, especially as enlistment standards are lowered to admit felons. Can I say that?”
You absolutely can say that. However, it doesn’t fit the facts. Those large concentrations of young males in the military are far less likely to commit crimes than any equivalent cohort of peers in civilian life. Statistically, they are more law-abiding than, for example, college students.
Since the Atlantic Monthly is now free on-line (as of 1/22/08), I imagine most subscribers are wondering what they are paying for.
As to the soldier who was wounded and was challenged on his signing bonus; the DoD has explained that they have two computer systems that are not compatible and therefore a medical discharge would not register when checking a discharge against pay records. That is a weak excuse; since anyone properly trained/doing their job would check the two computer files before allowing such a letter to be sent. That is unless the letter is auto generated without a program hold for a medical check. Regardless, someone’s butt should be in a sling.
A lot of mass politics is about projection… sociopaths.. narcissists.. the people at the Atlantic don’t really know the difference….
I let my Atlantic subscription of 22 years standing lapse last fall. There’s only so much “Bush is horrible” I can take. Michael Kelly R.I.P.
The Atlantic Monthly was a really engaging publication for many, many years, with a variety of viewpoints and an interesting range of topics. It peaked under Michael Kelly and has been in a steep slide since. It has degenrated into just another repository of leftist convention. I call it the “James Fallows Monthly,” because nearly every issue has a Fallows diatribe on yet another vast subject in which he has become an expert. Fallows was very good when he was writing travel pieces from Asia and articles on obscure software or private airplanes. But he has been consistently and spectacularly wrong since his absurd predictions of Japanese supremacy in the late 80s. His articles are silly compilations of leftist boilerplate, and he himself is an intellectual lightweight. Yet they print more of his stuff than anyone else’s.
Yes, they still have Kaplan, but they mostly only allow Hitchens to review books. People like Jonathan Chait and now Sullivan, for goodness’ sake, are now the magazine’s staples. They are too far gone now. Like most other publications, they have been fatally infected with leftist groupthink. Boring and irrelevant. Buh bye.
mark –
I obviously take deeper exception to the post than you do (for reasons that are probably readily explainable); but the reality is that as was pointed out upthread – that had the same words been written about Afican-Americans, gays, lesbians, Hispanics, or any other protected group, it is unlikely that the author would have written it and certain that no editor would have approved it.
And I don’t need to support that with my cash…
A.L.
Mike S,
I agree with you that a sample of the military as a cohort would be less likely to commit crimes than a demographically identical US civilian cohort, but you are confusing statistics of a dispersed cohort with what I was talking about.
Concentrations of young males almost always cause problems. Having been in garrison towns in Germany during my military service, I observed that we generated more than our fair share of broken windows, car accidents, drunk and disorderly behavior and assaults relative to the populations that we lived among.
The effect is more pronounced when you place tens of thousands of more-unruly American young men in a more-orderly society like Japan, concentrated in Okinawa.
If everything is so great, why is the US military presence so unpopular in Okinawa, and why does the US military command itself impose more strict curfews and pass and liberty policies than elsewhere?
Is this the same Atlantic Monthly whose newest issue has Britney Spears on the cover? I jest not.
_I had thought we all agreed that if a Democrat president sent them, they were peacekeepers, and if a Republican sent them, they were occupiers. But Harry Truman was a democrat, so i’m all confused._
Don’t be. Truman was a problem, but once Ike became President and didn’t bring the troops home from Europe and Japan they became GOP occupiers… just like Vietnam was “Nixon’s War.”
As we are told again and again by Clinton supporters, it doesn’t matter what the Democratic administration BEFORE the GOP administration did…
A.L.
There is something deeply wrong and disingenuous in the comparison between troops and groups like blacks, gays, & hispanics. (there’s something troubling, too, to about referring to them as “protected” groups –but that’s another issue.)
US troops are a self-selecting group that is screened, trained and asked to perform an important function. It’s perfectly reasonable for anyone to advocate more or less screening or training, or to advocate stricter codes of behavior. It is reasonable to call for higher or lower standards depending on circumstances and national needs. It is reasonable to expect HIGHER standards of behavior than in average or general populations and most especially in populations that are defined by characteristics that are inherent such as race, ethnicity and sexual interests.
If someone believes that there is too much criminal activity within the ranks of enlisted men, e.g., there’s nothing wrong with saying so. Maybe you disagree on what amount is allowable and what amount should be considered too much. In this respect, the troops are like the police. Certainly you would expect a lower crime rate within a given police force than you would among the general population. But when you have any crime rate within a police force, that is a problem that needs to be corrected. How much is considered acceptable is going to vary from person to person, but we can all agree that there is some limit. To a much lesser extent, the same goes for behavior among military personnel. There is quite naturally a lower level of tolerance for criminal behavior because of the role they play in life and as official representatives of the US when oversees.
For an interesting Japanese perspective, I recommend this “link.”:http://www.observingjapan.com/2008/03/okinawa-problem.html
bq. _Aside from a problem with indelicate phrasing — Danziger is right to complain about the phrase “…the overwhelming majority of U.S. military personnel aren’t sociopaths” — Gibney’s post more or less misses the point._
What’s the point? Well, the problem is not the mere presence of U.S. troops.
Mark #20:
That might well be a fair point, but the Japanese haven’t exactly demanded that we leave. (I’m sure there are some Japanese who will argue for that, but the relationship is really pretty amicable. To employ it as a means for attacking McCain’s point about military presence in a democracy fostered by, and allied to, the US just doesn’t pass the smell test. The point is far below the historical literary standards of The Atlantic. Moreover, I think the obvious subtext of the article is that empire is corrupting, for there’d be little point to it were that not the essential claim. And frankly, there is not only precious little evidence of that, but a good deal of evidence that our so-called “empire” is, all else being equal, undermining authoritarianism. Indeed, it might be argued that our reluctance to take on some authoritarians is more suspect than our aggressive posture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not that I buy this argument either, mind you, but our virtue isn’t pristine.
PD #24:
Good point about Kaplan and the Hitch. Has anyone among the contrarians read Eastward to Tartary or The Arabists? If you had you might not be very quick to condemn US interventionism.
Amr #34:
Thanks for the information about the DoD’s “excuse.” Speaking as someone who has actually built database crosswalks, I think you’ve oversimplified the task of bringing two databases (computer systems) into correspondence. Also, I can’t imagine that they have people actually penning these letters individually by hand. Can you?
Conquered by America:
1. The Philippines
2. Japan
3. South Korea
4. Germany
5. France
6. Belgium
7. Holland
8. Italy
9. Sicily
10. Libya
11. Iraq
12. Afghanistan
Plus a few others. Could some one please explain how we made an empire of all that?
Are we practicing mercantilism on them? Extracting taxes? Forcing them to follow our foreign policy? Stationing troops in their country against their will? What?
How is this empire thingy supposed to work?
Demosophist,
“The point is far below the historical literary standards of The Atlantic. ”
I couldn’t agree more. As I’ve said, his point is weakly made and insubstantial. On the other hand, it’s just two short paragraphs on a website. Much ado, if you ask me.
I have solved my problem with James Fallows’ Atlantic by: having no subscription; but checking inside the magazine to see if Kaplan, Hitchens and/or Bowdan are that month’s contributors. I can tell, this month, that the lead articles on Amerikkkkka’s soldiers, is a hit piece, so I have not bought it. There. My life goes on, my bloodpressure remains at normal.
In fact, to keep up with The War, I read the following men, and pay $$$ towards their support: Bill Roggio; Michael Yon; Michael Totten; Ardolino. So I don’t NEED Atlantic. Unless they carry something by Robert Kaplan, of course. Or Bowdan.
US troops are a self-selecting group that is screened, trained and asked to perform an important function. It’s perfectly reasonable for anyone to advocate more or less screening or training, or to advocate stricter codes of behavior. It is reasonable to call for higher or lower standards depending on circumstances and national needs. It is reasonable to expect HIGHER standards of behavior than in average or general populations and most especially in populations that are defined by characteristics that are inherent such as race, ethnicity and sexual interests.
The military is an organization that’s supervised and managed by a government bureaucracy.
Other organizations that are supervised and managed by government bureaucracies include the Post Office and our nation’s public schools and universities.
These two organizations have become notorious, for the plague of violence and criminal activity that infects them. The post office seems to be getting itself in order, but what about our schools? Does a single day go by without some news of an attack brought on by students whose behavior could, in many cases, be termed sociopathic?
It might be a logical fallacy to note that school violence has increased along with the left wing indoctrination within these institutions, but there is a correlation.
It would not be a logical fallacy to note that the military is traditionally supported by the right-wing, while educators and their interests have been supported by the left wing.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that, when one individual commits a crime within the military, the left-leaning press blames the entire military (and the ‘system’) But when a student commits a crime, the press blames the individual (or the individual’s family).
If the Atlantic said:
“Public school students have been slaughtering each other and their neighbors for decades. Is this the price of marxist indoctrination and insipid self esteem programs?….Yes, the overwhelming majority of professional educators and their students aren’t sociopaths….”
…how many readers would cancel their subscriptions?
Mary,
I would point out that students are NOT a self-selected group like the military or like teachers. If you were to change your comment so that you used teachers instead of students, I think you would be making a stronger point. But since education is mandatory in the US, you are just talking about the general population when you talk about students. But the problem with that, of course, is that there’s not a lot of examples of public school teachers gone wild. I would certainly agree that we have every right to expect a higher standard of behavior among teachers than we would among the general population.
Being a teacher, like being a soldier, is a chosen occupation, and subject to a particular set of performance and behavioral expectations. Being a student, like being black or gay, is simply being in the general population, subject to the same general expectations. You can fire a teacher. You can courtmartial a soldier. You can’t unblack a black person for misbehavior.
We’re on Okinawa because of Imperial Japanese military aggression, not “Pax Americana”.
I wonder if Okinawans think that the price of fascist Bushido militarism was too high. I suspect the younger ones have been assured that no such thing ever existed. And I doubt Mr. Gibney’s college taught him much about the subject, either.
In the Atlantic article, the “empire” and “U.S. military personnel” were blamed for a campaign of rape that would seem, from the article, to rival the Japanese Rape of Nanking.
As is customary for these reports, the empire and US military personnel, soldiers and leaders alike, are to blame for this problem.
The US education system is also a part of our “empire”. As a system that consists of leaders indoctrinating followers, it can also be held to blame for the violence it inflicts.
There are examples of schoolteachers gone wild, but those numbers are small compared to the number of their followers who’ve done the same thing.
If we compared the criminal record of soldiers to a comparable number of indoctrinated high school students, I’d guess that the high-school students would prove to be more violent. The question is, why? What are we teaching these kids?
And when will Chalmers Johnson write about the ‘Blowback’ in our educational system?
Sorry to disagree with Buehner but I find metrico’s point neither contextually defensible nor well-reasoned. But I’m not here very often so . . . . . perhaps others generally agree with the “soldier worship” slur. But that mis-characterisation of those who defend the general character of soldiers, seems to me remarkably dumb. Here’s why. A.M. publishes (endorses?) a barely concealed smear against the U.S. military–the logical fallacy in the piece is called “biased generalisation,” in spite of the pretend qualifying phrase (“yeah, not all soldiers are rapists”)–and Metrico characterizes those who point out indirectly the fallacy and defend the troops’ character generally, as engaging in “worship of troops and veterans” and “soldier-worship.” The A.M. smear, like metrico’s mischaracterisation of the soldiers’ advodcates, is not motivated by any factual grasp of the overwhelming majority of those who serve or the motives of those who defend those who serve. But the reality cannot tolerate the misrepresentation either in the article or the description of the article’s critics. As someone above suggested, you might as well say, “The price of a free-press is that journalists have been raping women for 250 years. Is the tyranny of a free-press really worth it?”
The soldiers’ defenders above, are not remotely engaged in anything like worship, even metaphorically, and one wonders what the motive behind the false characterization might be. The critics of the article have simply pointed out that the article is not only stupid, but ideologically driven; e.g., “pax americana” and “empire.” The article’s critics are likely motivated not only by a genuine desire to publicize the truth of the matter, but also by gratitude and admiration for what an overwhelming majority of our troops have done, and continue to do. Gratitude and admiration may be components of worship, but not every instance of gratitude or admiration is an instance of worship. Anyone who has served knows there are bad guys in the military: those few do not characterize the entire group. Unlike A.M., which does not seem to have policed itself with regard to this article–they allow the article, unqualified, to remain publicly available–the military, as a general rule, vigorously prosecutes those who don’t follow, for example, a set of combat engagement rules designed to protect against immoral conduct on the battle-field, that could plausibly be seen as overly strict. Furthermore, those who defend the troops may well be motivated by an admiration for those who have secured for us a set of political luxuries and benefits enjoyed by U.S. citizens, thanks in very large measure to our soldiers, particularly those who fought in the Pacific.
Mary, again, I would point out that everyone is a highschool student. Not everyone is a soldier. We weed out the violence-prone — or at least try to — when we select soldiers. If there is a violence problem among high school students, the cause is one that would be found to operate in society at large. If there were a problem with violence among soldiers, we would try to fix the screening system, or impose stricter discipline. The two groups are just not comparable: everyone is expected to go to highschool. Soldiers are selected and trained and expected to behave as an elite subgroup.
Pauly, very nicely articulated. As a regular reader of this site, I could wish you commented more often.
mark, I find it very amusing that when it serves anti-military purposes to cast soldiers as an abused class (children really), certain activists are more than willing to do so.
And when it serves anti-military purposes to paint soldiers as volitional adults, then comparing them to those who have no volitional choice in their associations is a strict no-no. (Wonder how your argument works with religious affiliations? “While certainly most American converts to Islam are not terrorists…”. Run that up the pole and see the reaction you get.)
And when a small fraction of soldiers transgress(much smaller than the percentage of adult Americans who are expected to, for instance, have proof of identity to vote) then it is perfectly acceptable to treat those incidents as an indictment of the whole U.S. military enterprise.
Frankly, I’d be a lot happier if those on the other side of the political spectrum from me hadn’t taken the phrase “by any means necessary” so much to heart. The debate would be healthier.
The problem mark, is that there probably _is_ less criminal behavior among troops than a random selection of the populace and certainly than their peers. But there will always be some incidence. And then that incidence is used – not to talk about improvement or specific issues – but to slam the role and placement of the military.
A.L.
Mark, it seems to me that the mistake you are making in #55 is in comparing the arguments of “certain activists” with those of others, as though everyone who you choose classify as “anti-military” are somehow bound to make identical arguments and their subsequent failure to do so signifies an internal contradiction.
In terms of my painting soldiers as volitional adults, I only did so to emphasize the difference between soldiers as a class and, say, blacks as class because A.L. –inappropriately, to my mind — compared them. If you were writing a piece about terrorist acts committed by American converts to Islam, it would certainly be appropriate to say, “While most American converts to Islam are not terrorists……” I for one wouldn’t have a problem with such a statement and it is hard for me to imagine what kind of argument could be made against it.
Finally, I don’t see where anyone has claimed that it is “perfectly acceptable to treat those incidents as an indictment of the whole U.S. military enterprise,” or, for that matter, offered such a treatment. All Gibney said was that the behavior of some troops overseas can have two negative effects (“less savory dividends,” he calls them): 1. on the US image. 2. on relations with the host country. Clearly, to some small extent, this is happening in Japan, where, I understand, there has been some tension between the local community and the US authorities. How these 8 sentences have come to be perceived as troop-bashing or as slurs against the troops is beyond me. It feels like paranoia. What ever the cause, the reaction to this brief commentary is way way way over the top. I would describe it as irrational.
A.L.:
What it seems to me that you are saying, A.L, is that people will sometimes make bad arguments. And that they will. But I don’t see any slamming going on here. I agree that the reasoning in the commentary was weak. But a subscription-canceling outrage? I don’t see it. Be that as it may, I don’t own stock in the Atlantic, so be my guest in depriving them of your hard- and well-earned dollars.
_Is this the same Atlantic Monthly whose newest issue has Britney Spears on the cover? I jest not._
Egad, he’s right. But look what else there is:
A Robert Kaplan article on Calcutta;
A critique of Hollywood and the Iraq War from Ross Douthat;
A piece on dubious Iraq War statistics from Megan McArdle;
A story on Russian uranium smuggling on the Georian border;
And nothing by Andrew Sullivan!
(No I don’t own stock either)
Well, mark, the conflation of “…the price of Pax Americana has been very high indeed” and the hed of “The Price of Empire” seems very much to argue against your assertion that “I don’t see where anyone has claimed that it is ‘perfectly acceptable to treat those incidents as an indictment of the whole U.S. military enterprise'”.
This is what I meant when I talked about accepting “by any means necessary” as a valid modus operandi. Either you’re missing an obvious slander-by-association (which I doubt) or you’re engaging in some very not-nice doublespeak, albeit in support of a cause I feel you think just.
The road to hell and all that. (I’ll admit, it’s not the one less traveled by, but hey….)
metrico wrote:
“Concentrations of young males almost always cause problems. Having been in garrison towns in Germany during my military service, I observed that we generated more than our fair share of broken windows, car accidents, drunk and disorderly behavior and assaults relative to the populations that we lived among.”
Well, I’ve lived in garrison towns in Germany, as well, and have visited Kadena and environs a number of times since my first TDY there in 1972. Anybody who thinks our troops are rowdy now would be aghast at their behavior back then. Still, even at their rowdiest, the troops are mostly law-abiding.
Sure, “single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints.” But that don’t make ’em all rapists.
As to your comment about curfews: The military is a one mistake career field, especially for commanders. Curfews and restrictions are, at least in part, self-protection devices, even if they can be justified by any number of other very good reasons. It’s why, for example, no US military facility in the entire Middle East allows beer, even in countries where it wouldn’t be frowned upon.
Gibney states his truth perhaps a little too harshly and inartfully, but it seems self-evident to me that if you put disproportionally large numbers of young single males in an area, you’re going to have trouble.
When you put them in a foreign land, they are going to be harshly judged.
When he says “U.S. military personnel have been raping Okinawans for the last 60-plus years,” he could have been trying to illuminate how the Okinawans might be looking at it. Because for the Okinawan with memory, there are too many rape charges – a little Googling reveals the two latest incidents, one involving a 14 year old (yes, dismissed, I know), pending court martial charges against 4 Marines for a gang rape, a 2001 incident in which Americans were suspected, and of course the 1995 gang rape of a 12 year old girl.
But God forbid we would ever try to look at the issue from the foreigner’s point of view, which was Gibney’s point: you put a lot of GIs in a foreign country and some of them are going to do bad things and piss the local populace off.
Plus, as I said before, Americans are much less well behaved than Japanese, so it doesn’t make much difference that servicemembers are better behaved than their age-mates in the USA. By Japanese (or German) standards they are more unruly, destructive and assaultive than those societies are accustomed to.
One thing is, I regularly read Stars and Stripes, and GI crime in a foreign land is a regular feature, mirroring U.S. domestic social pathologies.
“From tomorrow’s Asian S&S:”:http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=53107
_CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — An Okinawa sailor charged with soliciting and conspiracy to commit murder pleaded not guilty at a general court-martial Wednesday._
_Petty Officer 2nd Class Sheila Daniels, based at White Beach Naval Facility, is accused of asking Marine Sgt. Michael Avinger, a friend she knew to be a gang member, to arrange the death of the girlfriend of her husband, Darian Daniels, during the summer of 2005._
_Daniels was pregnant with the couple’s second child and was fed up with her husband’s affairs, particularly his affair with then-Staff Sgt. Christine Miller, who was also pregnant with his child, prosecutor Maj. Robert G. Palmer said during opening statements._
_The Danielses lived near Avinger and his wife on Camp Courtney. The two couples became friends, and Sheila Daniels learned that Avinger was a high-ranking member of the Crips gang, Palmer said._
_“Sgt. Avinger is a killer. She knew it, and she asked him to kill for her,†he said._
_A team of fellow gang members was in place to “make the hit,†Palmer said. They called it off only when they saw that Miller was pregnant, knowing Avinger had a “soft spot for children†and would not want them to kill the unborn child, Palmer said._
_A Naha District Court judge recently sentenced Avinger and Darian Daniels to eight years in jail for robbing and cutting the throat of an American civilian on Okinawa in October 2006._
Didn’t anyone notice that to protest a case of rape in Japan that the Atlantic used a photo of Filipinos protesting last week’s joint US/Phil military training exercizes.
I guess all Asians look alike….
“Plus, as I said before, Americans are much less well behaved than Japanese…”
Obviously not someone who has been on a business trip to Japan that has included a night out with the hosts….
Generalizations like this are generally useless, but we can certainly say that Japan is not America, so they do not suffer the indignity of being judged based on a superficial examination of their popular culture.
Lucky for them, because a cursory examination of Japanese popular culture indicates that it is a mixture of pedophilia and graphic decapitation, and set to very bad music, too.
Maybe so, but salaryman drinking bouts, karaoke, hentai porn and gruesome comics are not as bad as what we have, which is a murder rate about ten times as much as Japan.
metrico, if you segment out poor urban African-Americans and poor rural whites, it looks a little better, doesn’t it? And so the homogeneous Japanese population stands as a pretty significant differentiator…
A.L.
Not to mention a culture where it’s considered obligatory to invite the police into your house once or twice a year (whenever they come calling). If you don’t, well, what have you got to hide, hmm?
Absolutely, AL. Japan’s homogeneity makes it a more peaceful society. And yes, poor whites and blacks are disproportionally represented among our criminals. That is the kind of fact deemed “politically incorrect,” by some. Like the fact that servicemen have been (occasionally) raping women in Okinawa for years. That didn’t seem to be a very controversial point to me, especially in the context that he provided, because the fact of the rape charges over the last years is well-known.
Your taking these sentences out of Gibney’s context is reminiscent of PC attacks on free expression, like where a professor uses a racial epithet to explain its history and is denounced for the mere expression of the epithet.
But this is the MO: take something out of context, blow it up as something the author never intended, start an offensive against the “MSM,” which is “on the other side,” led by Instapundit and his pilot fish bloggers. Try to force an apology, cancel subscriptions. Police all mercilessly, that they never express an “unpatriotic” idea or criticize Our Troops, who are always identified with Our Glorious Leadership.
metrico, please explain – using the actual words that Gibney wrote – how his actual meaning in plain language is different than my paraphrase. I don’t think you can, and will call bull***t.
A.L.
A.L., “if you segment out poor urban African-Americans and poor rural whites, it looks a little better, doesn’t it?” Yes, but this doesn’t argue for so much for the positive impact of a homogeneous society, so much as it argues for the negative impact of poverty, of which we have more than Japan. So really you are just reinforcing metrico’s point.
Your “most of them are not sociopaths” is a somewhat tenditious paraphrase of Gibney. He said “overwhelming majority” not “most,” which is both an implied factual difference (i.e. – more like 99% rather than 51%) and a rhetorical one, implying less knowledge and appreciation of the qualities of servicemembers. Your phrasing implies “damning with faint praise” rather than trying to accurately make the point.
What Gibney said is also true: is it debatable that “the overwhelming majority” of US servicemembers are not sociopaths? What do you object to?
Gibney also said “U.S. military personnel have been raping Okinawans for the last 60-plus years.” This is a sentence which makes one flinch, but it’s true – there are three pending rape cases involving US servicemembers in Okinawa right now, and a history of high-profile rape cases there.
When I judge another’s expression which annoys me, I apply this standard: is it basically true or not? If it’s factually true, I recognize the writer’s point, however tendentiously it may be expressed.
Otherwise, you just end up not seeing things as they really are and joining up with the Thought Police.
metrico: _If everything is so great, why is the US military presence so unpopular in Okinawa, and why does the US military command itself impose more strict curfews and pass and liberty policies than elsewhere?_
I agree that concentrations of young men are going to be a source of crime. I probably wouldn’t want to live near most college campuses. But I wouldn’t lay it all on one side in this.
The Atlantic Monthly linked to a “Times story”:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000625-1,00.html that pointed out a number of issues in Okinawa:
1) The positive attraction of the Americans: “Tourists and dream seekers from the Japanese mainland flock to the archipelago’s 60 tropical islands–called Okinawa, like the main island–precisely for its slice of red, white and blue. The biggest draws, especially for Japanese women, are the real live Americans. Amejo is local slang for girls who love Americans . . .”
2) Interaction with negative qualities of Japanese qualities: “Kokujo (girls who like black men) paint their skin cocoa, weave their hair in cornrows, dress like Lil’ Kim–all the better to attract the prime catch, the black military man. In a country notorious for its disdain for people of color–pale skin has traditionally been the highest mark of beauty–the emergence of a subculture fetishizing blacks raises numerous issues . . .”
3) Hypocrisy: “Of course, for a kokujo to say she was there to meet a man is not proof of consent. In the U.S. today, a woman’s lifestyle and sexual history aren’t relevant in such cases. In Japan, they can invalidate rape charges altogether. Given what is known about the events surrounding the incident, the case against Timothy Woodland may never have led to his indictment if he were a Japanese man.”
I would add a fourth, Politics: There is an unresolved issue about whether Japan and the U.S. should agree to remilitarization or whether Japan should become a truly demilitarized state or maintain the status quo. There appear to have been “five”:http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/257213.php reported rape cases in the past 13 years, which strikes as law given the size of the young male population. Each one is an opportunity to force the U.S. and Japan to confront these issues, and AFAIK they duck them each time.
When I judge another’s expression which annoys me, I apply this standard: is it basically true or not? If it’s factually true, I recognize the writer’s point, however tendentiously it may be expressed…
Otherwise, you just end up not seeing things as they really are and joining up with the Thought Police.
It is factually true that most aging Marxists are not sociopaths. It is factually true that most hippies smell, they don’t keep a clean house, and most people would not want to live next door to them for that reason. It’s also factually true that Marxism is a failed philosophy, and a lot of people who self-identify as extreme leftists are called ‘moonbats’.
It’s also a fact that Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism” is a best seller.
So, if Atlantic magazine ran an article titled “The price of Moonbattery”, containing all of the above talking points, quoting “Liberal Fascism” – would you think they had an agenda to sell?
Gibney was using this story to sell an agenda, using the obvious Leftist talking points. He’s trying to weaken public support for our military, a leftist tradition that began as an effort to help communism gain traction in the cold war – a tradition they continue, probably out of habit.
AL has a son in the military, and he objects. Why is this a problem?
I agree, PD. There is a lot of hypocrisy, racism and politics on the Japanese side of the issue.
I would add another factor: shame, disgrace, censoriousness, call it what you will. It is the disdain and embarrassment of “proper” Japanese for their countrywomen who interact with GIs in the bars. Since people all over the world are loath to examine themselves and their own kind (this thread being an example), a lot of these negative feelings about the “improper” Japanese are transferred to the Americans who “cause” the improper Japanese behavior.
I think Okinawa is a special case: way too many GIs on a small, densely populated island, even if the crime they commit is not as bad as the Okinawans perceive it.
For that reason, I think Gibney’s point about GIs based overseas causing hate and discontent against America is overstated. It’s not as bad in other places Americans are based.
Still, the resentment that foreign basing creates against the USA is real. I remember my platoon leader in Germany lamenting the lack of social and romantic opportunities, saying “the middle class and above will have nothing to do with us (GIs).” I remember the barfly women who were passed from soldier to soldier, some who spoke in a German-accented ghetto argot and only dated black GIs, like the “kokujos” in the Time story. I am sure these women were way outside normal German society. I remember the many Article 15s given out to GIs fighting in town, breaking windows, and beating out cab drivers for fares. I remember a GI court martialed for the mugging of a German. I would say we GIs brought a fair amount of trouble and perceived social deviation to our small city, along with the jobs we provided and some positive social interaction.
I often thought what I’d feel if there was a brigade of foreign troops in my community, if they monopolized most of the bars in town, occasionally breaking one up, loudly and drunkenly speaking their foreign language outside my window at 3 am, hitting on my wife on the street, screwing my barfly cousin, potential corrupters of my daughter; if I read the occasional news of a sexual assault by one of them, etc. A lot of human behavior comes down to the basic primate level: you don’t want strange males after “your” women. It’s kind of a hard burden to bear, and who do you blame?
Mary,
Doubleplusgood goodthink!
Mary, it is a problem to the extent that these accusations are based on unfounded speculations about motive and intent and not based upon the only evidence at hand, which is the actual words written by Gibney. The meanings that you and AL impart to those words requires all kinds of assumptions and projections. It requires the belief that the statement, “Yes, the overwhelming majority of U.S. military personnel aren’t sociopaths.” is ironic in its intent and does not mean what it says it means. I don’t see the foundation for such a belief.
It also requires the belief that this statement: “But the impact of these kinds of episodes on the U.S. image, not to mention on our strategic relationships, is one more reason to weigh carefully the hypothetical benefits of a long-term U.S. military presence against their very real costs.” means not what it says, but carries a hidden, coded message.
The context of this short piece is the debate over how long and much of a troop presence the US should maintain in Iraq. This is one of many issues in the currant presidential campaign. Arguments are being made that Korea and Japan are positive models for a longer US presence. Gibney is merely trying to cast some doubt on the suitability of those models and thus on the argument they are meant to support. If this is now considered somehow off-limits then our vaunted freedom of speech in this country is in deep trouble. Whether you agree or disagree it should be allowed to openly debate the value of stationing US military overseas. It should be allowed, too, to acknowledge that there has been some difficulties over the years with one particular base. Personally, I think Gibney presents a very weak and unconvincing argument, but it is not by any means beyond the pale.
in #78 “currant presidential campaign” should have been “current presidential campaign.” I will discuss the future leadership of the berry industry at some later point in time.
Mark, good point about the possible perception of irony where none might exist. I never think that might have been the origin of this curious outburst from AL – I was just looking at the plain words of what Gibney wrote.
Censors of both the leftist and rightist versions of Political Correctness seem to draw on deep wells of rage and resentment where they perceive sarcasm and slights where none are intended. See “niggardly.”
Or they are cool customers who know that by creating such kerfluffles they are forcing the rest of us to edit our speech continually so as not to offend them, create wide swaths of subjects too dangerous to discuss.
The result is the impoverishment of discourse.
mark, you’re being ridiculous. This isn’t “A modest proposal”; there’s a clear agenda starting with the title of the article.
Do you seriously want to claim that the author is being ironic?
And metrico, mary made a perfectly good argument by example; waving Orwell is particularly ironic given the nature of the political speech we’re discussing.
A.L.
A.L., You mistook my meaning — possibly because I was not sufficiently clear. In any case, no, I am not for a moment suggesting the piece was ironic. Quite the opposite, in fact. I was arguing that in order to believe that Gibney was slamming or slurring the troops, you would have to believe that the lead sentence of the 2nd paragraph was ironic. I don’t believe it was. I think that when he states that the vast majority of troops are not sociopaths he actually means exactly what he says.
If this is now considered somehow off-limits then our vaunted freedom of speech in this country is in deep trouble. Whether you agree or disagree it should be allowed to openly debate the value of stationing US military overseas.
Gibney and Goldberg can say whatever they please. I’m only pointing out that Gibney is selling an extreme leftist point of view, using the same tactics that advertisers use to sell toilet paper.
He’s pitching to a particular market, he’s using words and an outlook that resonate in that market, he’s referring to experts who share his point of view.
If people choose not to buy this brand of toilet paper, is that Doubleplusgood goodthink?
AL,
First, you missed Mark’s point. He didn’t say Gibney was being ironic, he said he thought YOU might have thought Gibney’s phrase “the overwhelming majority of U.S. military personnel are not sociopaths” was ironically (or sarcastically) intended, where he and I just took the plain words for what they were.
Mary wrote a series of non-sequiturs attacking “moonbats,” “hippies,” “liberal fascists,” “leftists” and “Marxists,” capped with a weird appeal to your entitlement as the parent of a soldier. I didn’t see an argument in there – it looked like “Duckspeak” to me.
I note you have no substantive answer to my points about your distortion of Gibney’s words, or anything else.
metrico,
I think what troubles me more is the damning of a particular argument because it is perceived to be part of an “agenda.” This way you can simply denounce the “agenda” without addressing the argument, call it a day and go home. But I do agree with you that whatever direction the attack is made from, left or right, the growing desire to place some subjects or ideas off-limits is troubling.
Mary, I don’t agree that Gibney’s point is all that extreme or all that leftist. His point is that there is an unexamined down side to having overseas bases. I will grant you that that is a pretty weak point and very unconvincing but I can’t see the associations that you seem to think are so firmly connected to it. I think if you are going to accuse someone of being a leftist, then, Good God, you better have some pretty darn strong evidence to back that up.
mark, absolutely.
When did the questioning of the extent and effect of US foreign military basing become the “extreme leftist point of view,” as Mary said?
It seems to me entirely uncontroversial that troops cause friction in foreign lands which redounds to the detriment of the image of the country sending the troops, but I guess any questioning of “empire,” “national greatness,” “Global Wars,” etc., is off-limits.
AL,
Maybe you should explain in more detail what you find so outrageous about what Gibney wrote
(not your “paraphrase” of it), rather than just throwing a little hissy-fit and then letting your amen-choir try and fail to justify trashing that fine old magazine.
metrico,
I have noticed, however, that flattering comparisons with Rome are encouraged.
yeah, Rome is supreme and the Emperor is an infallible God.
I fear AL has stepped in it. Let’s see if he can get out by making an honest and factually-based argument.
Otherwise people might think he’s a fool or a flack for right wing “memes,” like The MSM is Evil.
Now, now, metrico, I have nothing but respect for A.L. I just disagree with him on this. Let’s not get personal.
Wow, we have a new troll; welcome metrico!
I actually have been poking at the issues i think the Atlantic post toss up; when I get to it I’ll be happy to post it.
Meanwhile, both of you are clearly welcome to parse the ever-finer “meaning of ‘is'” (note: I’m referring to a style of argument that makes claims based on narrow deconstruction of the language of statements as opposed to the plain-read meanings audiences will typically bring to them).
And for grins, metrico, as long as we’re asking each other to dance in public, could you explain the context of American “empire” in the late 20th and 21st century? Why is is that all the other powers found empires so uneconomical that they had to be abandoned, and yet we somehow manage to stay determined to cling to ours?
A.L.
AL, I’m not interested in writing a treatise on American Empire, you can read Andrew Bacevich, Niall Ferguson, Paul Kennedy or Cullen Murphy on that topic.
I’m interested in _your_ hermeneutics: how you interpreted “the overwhelming majority of U.S. military personnel *aren’t* sociopaths” as meaning the opposite.
“Plain-read meanings,” indeed.
sorry, metrico, no one rides for free. You’re welcome to participate in debate all you like, but if you want to demand that I make arguments to entertain you – that I may well do the same thing.
At first blush, you left out Perkins and Johnson – nice reading list, tho. Why do I feel like I just stepped onto the set of “Good Will Hunting”?
A.L.
Metrico:
Ask what’s left of the 1940s residents of Nanking their opinion on this…
This must be why the crime rate at the Citadel, West Point, Annapolis, not to mention Andover and Culver, are so high.
And, of course, why the crime rate went down so precipitously at those institutions once they became coed.
I have to say, however, that you and Michelle Obama would certainly be in agreement… although we know she didn’t mean it.
Thanks for your invitation to change the subject to some turgid discussion of American Empire or whatever, AL.
I’d rather stay on topic.
The topic was your public announcement of your cancellation of a subscription to _The Atlantic._
By linking to the article, you imply there was something outrageous and intolerable about Gibney’s article, and that _The Atlantic_ must be punished by the usual right-wing-blogger auto da fe.
You posted the topic at 3:51 am on March 6, maybe late at night in the Pacific time zone.
You weren’t the first one to comment on the article: Michael Goldfarb of _The Weekly Standard_ posted on it at 3:18 pm on March 5, apparently objecting to Gibney’s factual assertion about “U.S. military personnel raping Okinawans for the last 60-plus years.” Now as I said above, that line made me flinch, but I have to concede that it is true, there has been a history of rapes by GIs in Okinawa.
Goldfarb also throws in the standard attack on the “MSM” – “journalists have been smearing the military for 60-plus years.”
Then Instapundit, that great propagator of right-wing “memes,” posts a link to Goldfarb at 9:24 pm on March 5.
That’s probably when you picked up on it, monitoring your master. You added your own moral-authority spin as the father of a soldier and threw your terse hissy-fit at _The Atlantic,_ implicitly inviting others to follow suit.
Then next morning, Instapundit rewards your fealty by a link.
Many of your commenters chime in with attacks on _The Atlantic_ , MSM, the UN, leftists, hippies, etc. Few of those read Gibney’s article.
Of course, now you can’t explain what is so objectionable about the Gibney article. You distorted Gibney’s words, and you and your linking buddies try to say that saying “the overwhelming majority of U.S. military personnel aren’t sociopaths” is saying the opposite. If that’s not Orwellian, I don’t know what is. Ignorance is strength and all that.
The whole kerfluffle is just another shot across the bow of the MSM, that they might never question things like “the Price of Empire.”
“That’s probably when you picked up on it, monitoring your master.”
O-kay. Nothing but rational logic coming from metrico, nosireebob.
FWIW, I stopped paying serious attention to him when he was getting all lyrical about the sainted Nipponese, but that last bit was just funny.
AL, I really hope you do have a check in the mail. metrico, I wish I had stock in aluminum foil.
Metricio:
Clearly you subscribe to the notion that A.L.’s (and my) subjective opinions carry the moral force of law, so it hardly behooves any of us to argue.
What’s the matter with you, anyway?
Like fun, he can’t. But it’s a lot more fun watching you try to make the case that Gibney’s article is not objectionable. That’s more entertaining than a good case athlete’s foot.
bq. Meanwhile, both of you are clearly welcome to parse the ever-finer “meaning of ‘is'” (note: I’m referring to a style of argument that makes claims based on narrow deconstruction of the language of statements as opposed to the plain-read meanings audiences will typically bring to them).
Just to add another data point, AL has traditionally had real problems with parsing arguments – the “plain-read meanings” he takes away usually omit key pieces of what he’s reading, and introduce biases that exist mostly in his own worldview.
The weird thing is, he even does this to guys he _likes_: check out his treatment of his former professor, John Schaar, where he quotes most of a Schaar paragraph to back up his argument, but conveniently omits the last line of that paragraph, which ends up completely undermining what he’s trying to say.
And, as you guys have recently seen, when challenged on these distortions, he retreats to the idea that his opponents are parsing things overly narrowly, and that by doing so they’re reduced to mere trolls. I’m still not sure if this phenomenon occurs because AL is being purposefully dishonest, or if he’s merely sloppy with his arguments, but either way it does make arguing with him fairly exhausting and fruitless.
From what I can tell, this guy seems to be the type of person that, once an idea crystallizes in his mind, its never going back into solution no matter how it’s treated. And those who challenge the beauty of his creation by pointing out its numerous flaws is, to use one of his terms that fits perfectly into this analogy, “slagged”.
chris,
I think AL is being dishonest. The key, in this topic, is his failure to acknowledge the Goldfarb hit piece on _The Weekly Standard_ blog.
I am sure that AL didn’t just stumble onto the Gibney piece on his own. He was led to it by Instapundit and/or Goldfarb. He will deny this.
I doubt he even read the Gibney piece. He just grabbed the bloody shirt Goldfarb was waving and added his personal emotional appeal to it. Just linking to Goldfarb would have been too obvious a “hat tip” to Goldfarb, the more crude right-wing propagandist.
AL’s part of the propaganda apparatus is to be the reasonable “liberal,” who will always turgidly agonize before he comes down on the right-wing side of the issue.
To return to Orwell, it’s like Minitrue in _1984_ producing different types of propaganda for the proles, party members and the Inner Party. AL tries to avoid the Duckspeak of say, Michelle Malkin or Kim du Toit, but ends up tying himself up trying to “reasonably” defend the unreasonable.
Oh well, _The Atlantic_ has been around for more than 150 years now. It published Emerson, Longfellow and Twain. I’m sure it will survive Marc Danziger. For my part, I’m renewing my subscription and giving a gift one to make up for Danziger’s inanity.
Metrico, I’ll confine myself to the observation that your use of the “censor{ship}” cant above is both inane and duckspeaklike. Carry on pillorying AL in the third person, by all means.
Gee, great detective work ‘metrico’ – NOT. If you’d been a regular here, rather than a drive by, you’d know AL has been regularly citing The Atlantic in its various forms for years. Try this truly difficult Googlesearch. That’ll get you dozens of WoC posts citing the Atlantic, most of them authored by guess who.
I marvel at how Marc’s seemingly through away posts have the ability to draw in initially rational sounding commenters who then morph into caricatures. Congratulations, you’ve beclowned yourself.
As far as the substance of the post, any of us have the right to withhold our business when we don’t like the use being made of our funds. That’s called ‘freedom’. Live with it.
Tim,
“As far as the substance of the post, any of us have the right to withhold our business when we don’t like the use being made of our funds. That’s called ‘freedom’. Live with it.”
This is an odd statement. You are suggesting that metrico “live with it” and refrain from dissenting comment on a political blog. This is what you understand by freedom? Commentary disagreeing with a post is discouraged. This is a sorry state of affairs, if you ask me. The type of personal abuse that has been heaped upon metrico around here for his opinion is disconcerting, to say the least. All argument seems to have been abandoned in favor of simply declaring an idea as part of the left agenda, narrative or meme. End of story. Say no more. ‘Nuff said. Don’t you guys every get tired of that? Doesn’t the cliche sort of grate on you after awhile?
Attempting to label an individual’s decision to withhold his money when he decides it’s supporting inimical activities is not ‘censoring’ (Metrico #80) and suggesting that it is either completely misunderstands freedom or is disingenuous. It’s certainly not intelligent commentary, nor are clueless attempts to ‘prove’ AL’s participation in some sort of right wing plot – attempts that can be exploded with about 2 minutes of Googling. That level of commentary certainly deserves laughter, if not abuse.
I frankly don’t understand why AL spends so much time in dialog with leftists who spend much of their effort dishing out facile abuse, but that’s his path and his life. I do find it amusing when lefties squirm if anyone dares to ‘deconstruct’ the texts carrying their preferred narratives.
Tim, You are missing the point entirely. (And, by the way, metrico’s comment in #80 was at least as intelligent as the opening statement of #103, to pick an example not quite at random.)
When AL publicly cancels a subscription because of one article, he is declaring the content of that article to be out of bounds. Metrico and others, including myself, have been questioning both the legitimacy of AL’s interpretation of the Atlantic comment and the wisdom of canceling a subscription based upon it. Both AL’s public act and your — well, I don’t quite know how to characterize your comments, let’s be kind and call them namecalling, are meant to stifle the opinions expressed without confronting them. You are both entitled to do so, but there’s nothing wrong with pointing out that both actions are intellectually lazy and more expressions of emotion than of thought.
The problem, mark, is that metrico isn’t arguing the point – i.e. that the Atlantic post was politically and rhetorically valid; he’s engaged in wild-eyed science-fiction writing about how I got there.
I’ve invited him to extend his argument, by explaining his view of “American Empire” – which was, after all, the key point of the Atlantic post. I’m still waiting, and when he does, maybe I’ll play if he puts some real thought into it.
A.L.
…and further, mark, mary’s comment in #75 are – extreme – examples of an argument by example that hsows the bankruptcy of the claim that the author was conditioning his rhetoric about “American Empire” by the throwaway qualifier.
The 70’s version of this was “Some of my best friends are…but…” and it was seen as the morally hollow claim that it truly is – and that was made in the Atlantic.
A.L.
I don’t know about that, A.L. Go back and read metrico’s first half-dozen comments. Especially #70. He WAS making those arguments. I think things then started to get a little personal and a little out of hand and he started reacting in kind. I also imagine that he got frustrated — as I did — that no one –including you, I have to say — was ever actually addressing the arguments. And you reached a pretty low point there with the “parsing the meaning of is” comments. That was an unfair attack that had no basis of support. Metrico and I were decidedly not parsing meanings. We were stating our belief that you were misinterpreting Gibney’s words and meanings–and we were quoting him to make our case. So far, your only response to that has been that what he really meant is obvious and everybody knows it.
I think a good case could be made that Gibney’s use of empire and pax americana is in response to one of the trends in political thought since the end of the cold war that celebrates america as the sole military superpower and the chief economic power and advocates using the us military overseas as an instrument to further us economic and political interests. many people have used empire and pax american in flattering terms to describe this situation. gibney is clearly attacking the general argument that us military deployment overseas is positive force. he is specifically attacking mccain’s argument for continued presence in Iraq by analogy to the continued presence in japan, korea, etc. what he is NOT doing is slamming or slurring the troops. My belief, and metrico’s, has been that a) you misinterpreted gibney’s 8 sentences; and b) you over-reacted to an opinion you don’t agree with.
why post such a statement as this one? did you not expect pushback? i think that if the discussion could be confined to the validity of the two points above (a & b) and to the merits of gibney’s opinion, and all this personal bs be dropped, it might actually be an interesting discussion.
No, mark, he’s being completely meta; he’s attacking the structure and form of my argument, and not the point(s) I was – I think clearly, if too briefly – making.
Maybe I’m missing something?
A.L.
I agree that he got to be meta –though he didn’t start out that way. But isn’t your argument largely dependent upon a meta one?
If you were quoting Mary’s #75 appreciatively (and I think you were), let’s take a look at the central part of it:
“Gibney was using this story to sell an agenda, using the obvious Leftist talking points. He’s trying to weaken public support for our military, a leftist tradition that began as an effort to help communism gain traction in the cold war – a tradition they continue, probably out of habit.”
The attack here is not against Gibney’s opinion itself but against how it is used, the hidden purpose behind it, the motive and intent behind it, that it is part of a grand scheme with malicious intent. There is no focus on the 8 sentences that Gibney wrote and what they actually say. This has been my argument all along.
Or am I wrong in my understanding of what you meant by “meta?”
All I know of your complaint against Gibney up to this point has been what I can glean from the original post. There has been no elaboration or explanation. I still don’t see how, taken in proper context, Gibney can be perceived as slamming or slurring the troops.
Nice try, mark, but you’ll get no answer from this guy.
Like a lot of right-wing propaganda, there is no supportable argument for the attack made.
Just quack along with the rest “MSM bad, smearing the troops.”