Liberals Hate the Military Until They Need or Meet Them

Libs amuse me when it comes to all things military. They are completely clueless and enjoy being that way whenever it comes to writing about or referring to the military.

By their reckoning, the only reason someone would join the military is because they are either too stupid to go to college, are trying to avoid jail or are jingoistic homophobes who have some stunted view of patriotism. In other words, they have the elitist view.

I know for a fact that liberals look at the officer corps in the military in a respect that is so distorted as to be laughable. People become officers because they weren't bright enough to get high SAT scores and get into Harvard or Yale according to their line of thinking. The fact that the majority of Ivy Leaguers would beg for mama after about a week at the Naval Academy or West Point due to the stress of grades, structure and expectations is thoroughly beside the point. The fact that these men and women attend the toughest schools in the nation is beyond them as well. Here's a slice of the degrees these men and women have in the Air Force:

-- 51.89 percent of the officers have advanced or professional degrees
-- 41.23 percent have master's degrees, 9.25 percent have professional degrees and 1.4 percent have doctorate degrees
-- 26.14 percent of company grade officers have advanced degrees, 19.33 percent have master's degrees, 6.53 percent have professional degrees and 0.28 percent have doctorate degrees
-- 85.56 percent of field grade officers have advanced degrees, 69.81 percent have master's degrees, 12.88 percent have professional degrees and 2.87 percent have doctorate degrees

Compare that to 9.4% of the US population with masters degrees.

Add to that the fact that these men and women are getting more educated in their not-so-spare time; you know, the time between standing watch, running a patrol and getting shot at. In fact, I took numerous courses while on the USS Schenectady (LST-1185) deployed to the Persian Gulf, Somalia and other noted shit holes around the globe.

Getting back to my original point; liberals hate the military. They think of those serving as redneck, gun loving, racist, homophobic robots who hate Muslims and kill for fun. That is, until they actually meet them. This from a self-described "Marxist" who is in Iraq and seeing just how bright these men and women are. He writes this in response to yet another reporter discussing how awful these military folks are without actually having met them:

The military has been surprisingly forthcoming with me and all I had to do was ask. Marine Corps Colonel Patrick Malay sat with me on three different occasions, for long discussions about security in his area of operation in Anbar. One thing I learned quickly is that the military's officer corps is filled with the best of America's minds--kids that aced their college entrance exams, were the captains of their ball teams, and had to be nominated by senators to go to the schools they did. These are the guys (along with their much more experienced superiors) that are deciding strategy--and they're fucking smart. I was allowed to sit in on a couple of their high level briefings--again, all I had to do was show some kind of aptitude for objectivity--and I can tell you their comprehension of the situation on the ground is apt, their thinking clever, and their intentions centrally wrapped up with the Iraqi people.

At the heart of it all, they're smart enough to be pragmatic. The first thing Malay told me is that we need to drop bullshit Eurocentric pretenses. Iraq is not America, nor even Europe, and it never will be. It will have a democracy, he said, but it will be an Arab one, likely Muslim, and the tribe will be a central component. Realpolitik is at the crux of the Marines' policy. The Corps knows that to win a modern guerrilla conflict, it has to win the hearts and minds of the people. To do that, it needs to clear an area of combatants, hold it (keeping the area clean) and build (i.e. give the people viable options for work and self support).

I'm phobically allergic to the conservative Republican types the military is rife with, but I've only been in country four months and already I hate liberals. There's plenty of ugliness to report in Iraq (as there are thousands of stories of hope and headway)--and the U.S. military certainly isn't beyond reproach. Nobody's telling you to report on one side or the other. But manipulating the truth because of your own personal biases is wretched and works in the face of progress. The other end of the political spectrum disregards you, Dahr, and now I know why. I thought it was because you're a liar--but you aren't. You don't have enough backbone to be a liar. You're a craven obfuscationist, intent on promoting your agenda at the cost of a menagerie of much braver men and women.