Stars & Stripes letters: Many liberals in the ranks

[lebkuchen]

Last week a RW Chief Warrant Officer's letter blasted the democrats, and liberals in particular. He's incited quite a response. Letters below over three paragraphs have been excerpted but are well worth a read in full. One is written by a Navy Commander against the war in Iraq.

All Dems want defeat? Hardly

This is in response to http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=43301">“ ‘Rags,’ Dems want U.S. defeat,” letter, Feb. 5) I could not believe what I was reading, that this chief warrant officer actually believes all Democrats want the U.S. to lose in Iraq.

So using this narrow thought pattern, we can conclude that Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, whose son is a Marine fighting in Iraq, is cheering for his defeat, and that Army Maj. Tammy Duckworth, a well-known Democrat from Illinois and helicopter pilot who suffered catastrophic wounds in Iraq, is encouraging our failure.

What I find most disturbing about this letter is the way the writer equates the death of a couple of military members a day as no big deal, since 125 people die every day on America’s highways. I am sure this will make all the widows and fatherless children of this war feel much better.

Chief Petty Officer Marion Boyanton
Camp Arifjan, Kuwait

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=43382

Some on the right didn’t serve

...Let’s look at those the draft never caught:

George W. Bush joined the National Guard .
Dick Cheney could have served in Vietnam but for student deferments and that he “had other priorities.”
John Ashcroft was busy teaching business education.
Rep. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., a super-patriot, all-American guy who, during the Vietnam era had student deferments and then a football injury to his knee; Lamar Alexander, former governor of Tennessee; ex-Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga.; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas; former House Speaker Dennis Hastert; Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. — all could have been drafted.
And let’s not forget Roger Ailes, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly of Fox.

More...

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=43424

Many liberals in the ranks

After reading the Feb. 7 letters, I felt it my patriotic duty to hop on the First Amendment rights bandwagon as the writer of “Liberals couldn’t handle draft” chose to do.

How dare he push his criteria for serving in the armed forces as the norm? The “special breed” he describes is a wildly romantic notion. People enter the service for a multitude of reasons. They include money for school, see the world, get in shape, etc. And a fact that would cause even the most delusional “special breed” to get weak in the knees: Many among our ranks are as liberal as any Birkenstock-wearing, granola-eating, Eastern religion-loving, yoga-practicing, Prius-driving, homosexual tree-hugger living at Haight-Ashbury (and they all made it through boot camp).

More...


‘Seditionists’ was a stretch

“Liberals couldn’t handle draft” left me confused. Was he trying to be funny when he labeled an entire portion of the United States (liberals) as “seditionists,” or, scarier, was he serious?

Patriots not only have the right to free speech but, as they perceive it, the duty to speak out. Does the writer believe everyone in the military is conservative? I have made the Navy my career — even though I’m a “liberal.”

Maybe his excuse for this liberal will be that I’m an officer. However, I worked my way here from abject poverty as a child to multiple jobs during college while my classmates were partying or dating, to finally getting my commission in the Nurse Corps. I’ve never bought my way out of anything and I’m more proud of my service to my country than almost anything else.

More...

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=43462

[jmowreader]

1. I think the Stars and Stripes employs trolls

When I was a Stars and Lies reader, I noticed that a couple times a year, someone would write a letter to the editor that was guaranteed to bring in about a million letters rebutting it.

In the late 1980s, some asshole accused men with pierced ears of being purse-carrying nancyboys, whatever the hell those are, and the letters in rebuttal came in for at least six months. It was worth it in one way,though; that's how I learned ancient sailors received their travel pay in the form of a ring of gold which they shaved metal from to pay debts, and they learned that by wearing their travel pay as an earring in a pierced ear they wouldn't lose it in a storm at sea.

So what I finally decided was that the guy in charge of the rollstand (the device that feeds paper into the press) on the printing press is occasionally tasked with stirring up the troops.

[truedelphi]

5. Always wondered about the meaning behind the gold earring thing

that a gold earring indicates you are gay <gay = sailor?>

Nive to have someone trace backt he real origins fo this

Thanks

[lebkuchen]

6. You're probably right

Since Bush took office, and because of his policies, he provided the greenlight for all the RW whackjobs to come out of the closet. There's a DJ over at Camp Casey, Korea, not sure if he's still there, who used to post on the Freeper site all the time and tell folks who he was. His posts were extremely conservative. He wrote a letter to Stripes once, very similar to the one I posted above...somewhere in my files...which amounted to a couple of paragraphs of name-calling. It was so SS.

[Trajan]

2. EXCELLENT contribution, Leb ...

I am always mocked when I point this out, but I always stand my ground based on pure statistics ... The US Military is NOT pure RW .....

There are atheists in foxholes, and there are Liberals who sacrifice their lives for country ... Case in point: George McGovern, one of the most derided Liberals of the last century, was an absolutely bona fide war hero .....

Thanks Herr Lebkuchen ....

[Jonathan50]

3. I've been lurking on this really great military blog for quite a while now

It's called Intel Dump and it is mostly military officers and retired officers. I gotta tell you that I've been really suprised to see how liberal they sound.

Here's a sample post from a guy that posts as FDChief, I don't know what he does but he's smart as hell and damn funny too.

http://www.intel-dump.com/posts/1170884245.shtml

FDChief (mail):
See comment for preceding Max Boot post.

IMO it's time to stop kidding ourselves about how our cunning counterinsurgency tactics can turn the situation in the Mess-o-potamia into the Little Diddling Church Fair and Fete. The political situation there is mindbendingly complex and seems to me to be lending itself to a widening gyre of betrayal and counterbetrayal. And American soldiers, deaf to the cultural complexity, dumb to the Arabic crosstalk, are the perfect patsies. You want your girlfriend's lover kacked? Tell the stupid infidels that he's an Al Qaeda mastermind. Business rivals? Pesky Sunni shopkeepers? Irritating Shia Amway salesmen? Hi-diddledy-ho and it's off to Camp Victory they go!

And the hapless G.I.s, who come from a land where feuds are something that happen in hillbilly cartoons and tribes are from cowboy and injun movies, wind up ducking and shooting and wondering why the hell the natives are so fucking pissed all the time...

If the current Administration had two geopolitical brain cells to rub together this military effort might have a chance. But given the Deciderer's Krewe's level of competence there's not a snowball's chance in hell. These idiots could start a bodice-ripping, hair-pulling catfight in a convent.

So Counterinsurgency 101 and 201 are being taught on the behalf of the clueless Chancellor and a shifty Provost of the American University to a bunch of shiny-faced Yanks in the middle of a class of Arab post-grads who cut their teeth on intrigue, plot and counterplot starting somewhere in the 15th Century.

Now that's gonna work!

[lebkuchen]

4. I'll have a look at that site

A few years ago I was reading an article over at Military.com. The end of the article sent me to a chatroom to comment. The comments posted were like the RWer's letter starting this thread...frightening. The monitor of the board was a self-described arch conservative and removed people from the board who weren't.

I was about to swap out my old computer for new, so posted a few times. I was sent a virus, which I know was from that site, which destroyed my old harddrive.

[Jonathan50]

9. Sounds like you may have gone to Blackfive

Blackfive makes Atilla the Hun look like Karl Marx.

[SeattleGirl]

7. Great letters!

Thanks for posting them, lebkuchen. :thumbsup:

[Doondoo]

8. bump