{"id":1894,"date":"2008-09-19T03:36:25","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T03:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-09-19T06:26:22","modified_gmt":"2008-09-19T06:26:22","slug":"ah_its_fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1894","title":{"rendered":"Ah, It’s Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

…and it’s time for the “college fiction teacher explains why he’s sorry for the troops<\/a>” oped. This one is in the Boston Globe.<\/p>\n

My first impulse is to say, “I’m sorry to hear that.” Because I am. I’m sorry to know that the person I’m talking to might someday be maimed or killed on the job, or might someday kill someone else. Or refuel a plane that drops bombs on buildings.<\/p>\n

\nI can’t see how anyone who calls himself or herself Christian – or human, for that matter – wouldn’t be sorry.<\/p>\n

\nThe fact that we have an army, that we need an army, is inherently tragic. It’s an admission that our species is still ruled by fear and aggression.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gosh, that’s just too bad. But he’s just getting started. He’s obviously been reading the media about what depressed, enraged brutes our soldiers are.<\/p>\n

It remains unthinkable for a politician (or public official of any sort) to say aloud that our troops sometimes commit atrocities, that they are not all worthy of support, that some of them – faced with a terrifying and ethically incoherent mission – are driven to savagery. This grim duty has been left to the soldiers themselves.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And he managed to blame them for war profiteering.<\/p>\n

The problem with the knee-jerk militarism of the past several years is that it has led to an absence of financial and moral oversight that is fundamentally undemocratic. Our troops have become human shields for war criminals and profiteers.<\/p>\n

\nConsider the $1.39 billion contract awarded in 2003 to a subsidiary of Halliburton. The reconstruction project was secretly bid – to one company. There was much tough talk in Congress about preventing such sweetheart deals. But five years later, the US government continues to pay vast sums of our money to firms with ties to the administration.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And he finishes up with a moral Klein bottle where he manages to invert the morality of his position without actually turning himself inside out…<\/p>\n

Americans have often looked to heroic violence as a means of spiritual regeneration. Our most powerful national myth is the notion that anyone fighting on our behalf is a hero. I understand why friends and families of our soldiers feel this way. But for the rest of us, too often “supporting the troops” isn’t about the troops at all. It’s about the childish desire to feel morally exempt from the violence carried out in our names.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let me retort.<\/p>\n

By thanking the troops, the average citizen – like me – is actually reaching out and helping to carry the moral burden that soldiers must – of necessity – carry on our behalf. It is Mr. Almond whose position manages to position him neatly on the other side by throwing up his hands and claiming that his moral insight is obviously keen enough to ensure that he sees through the mythology.<\/p>\n

Now I haven’t read Mr. Almond’s books, and I’m unlikely to. But I’ll bet that he’s no Jainist<\/a>. He lives the luxury of a life in a society built on violence – violence that is a part of all of our histories. And he thinks he can scrub himself clean of that history with this kind of public declaration. I think it’ll take more than that. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, fall. When the moral twits emerge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}