April 02, 2006

I Am So Sick Of This (UPDATED)

"Our troop's time is better spent doing this or that rather than rescuing him/her."

Oh, STFU.

Our military, which you statistically never bothered to join, takes pride you will never have, rescuing civilians from harm, no matter their ideology.

Idiot commenters like that fail to grasp the basic concept that our military is designed to protect us. All of us.

Not just here, but there as well.

That's what they do. We do (er, I did heh). Kill people, break things, and protect Americans. Not leftist Americans, not conservative Americans, not American Indian African Irish Indo-Chinese Jamaican Arabian Pashtu Tobrukian Americans.

Just Americans.

And, truth be told, they like doing it.

Here, or there.

So give us a goddamned break on the You-Think-You-Know-Best-What-The-Military-Should-Spend-It's-Time-Doing-Thing.

Unless you have 4 stars on your epaulettes. Then I might listen. But probably not, I have an issue with authority figures.

Updated with revised and extended remarks.

First off, I'm not calling anyone a chickenhawk. However, it helps to have an insider's view when telling the military what you think they ought to be doing.

Sorry for the misperception.

Second, perhaps the phrase "they like it" was the wrong one to use. "They take pride in it" would probably have been more appropriate. For example, if my ship had been tasked to rescue a sinking yacht filled with liberals, and we brought them all back safely, we would have taken immense pride in a successful mission.

Third, the whole notion that hostage rescuing is a waste of military manpower and resources is specious in my view. The job over there is to kill terrorists. Terrorists are taking people hostage. If the military gets a tip on a hostage's whereabouts, and a team is sent in to rescue them, isn't that also an opportunity to kill terrorists? I honestly don't believe that the military is actively looking for these people, otherwise we'd have stories of them busting down doors all over the place in house-to-house searches. Which, btw, I would think would be a waste. After all, the CPT people were rescued after the military received a tip, not from a massive search effort.

Finally, I keep reading that people like Carrol shouldn't be over there in the first place, or, if they are, they should ride with military units. Well, that's not for me to decide. Does anyone read Mark Steyn? He toured postwar Iraq, and wrote about it, and he didn't ride with the military either. He had a driver/translator. I don't recall anyone saying he had no business being there. If he had been kidnapped, I will go out on a limb and speculate that no one would have claimed rescuing him would have been a waste.

There are thousands of things going on in the world that are a waste of manpower and resources for the military. My view is that rescuing hostages from terrorists isn't one of them. Unless it can be proven, of course, that it's a bona-fide Giuliana Srgena setup.

I now return you to your Vinnie bashing. I still heart you all.

:-)