Soldiers as Victims

[darrels joy]

Best of the Web Today - April 5, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO


Soldiers as Victims
Our item Friday on blogger Markos Zuniga's post about the four Blackwater Security Consulting contractors murdered in Fallujah, Iraq, last week--"They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them," Zuniga said--brought this response from reader Josh Waxman:

It would be "fair and balanced" if you also mentioned that Markos explained that the reason he was angry was because the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq got second billing to the deaths of these individuals.

But that might not please your master, would it? It's really nice when facts are things you can use as you wish, and discard when they're inconvenient.

We don't want to get into any trouble, so if you see our master, please don't tell him we published Waxman's letter. Anyway, we're not sure how Zuniga's professed sympathy for soldiers is a mitigating factor. "Screw them," he said of four men who had been lynched. Is such an attitude less despicable because there are other people whose lynching Zuniga would object to?

The distinction between soldiers and civilian contractors seems like mere hairsplitting when you consider that all four of the Fallujah dead were retired U.S. military special forces officers. Reader Ray Gardner puts things in perspective:

Blackwater and security firms like them are a place where former Marines, special forces soldiers and other high-speed types from the U.S. military go upon leaving active duty.

Going back in the Marines myself is just not feasible at my age but I have considered going to work for such a security firm since 9/11. Such employment for me would be the next best thing to going back to active duty.

Others go into such work for a variety of reasons, but one thing is common among them; they are hardworking Americans, mostly military veterans, who have given their lives to defending this country.

To speak out against Blackwater's employees is to speak against veterans one and all. When they were active duty, these guys were the 5% that did all of the dirty work.

Zuniga's rationalization is interesting, though, for what it tells us about the way the left views the U.S. military. Back in the Vietnam era, the antiwar movement vilified American servicemen; as we noted in February, when John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, he charged his fellow veterans with all manner of war crimes.

Somewhere along the line, it became politically incorrect on the liberal left (as distinct from the radical left) to disparage members of the military. The operative principle became: We support the troops, though we oppose their mission . Members of the military thereby achieved the status of accredited victims, entitled to liberal "compassion." And in a February interview with CNN's Judy Woodruff, Kerry reinterpreted his 1971 views to absolve soldiers of any guilt: "I was accusing American leaders of abandoning the troops. . . . It's the leaders who are responsible, not the soldiers. . . . I've always fought for the soldiers."

The San Francisco Chronicle has a revealing profile of Susan Galleymore, a 48-year-old Alameda, Calif., antiwar activist whose son, Nick, is an Army Ranger serving in Iraq. Galleymore doesn't approve of Nick's chosen career, and she's written about it:

In one essay, Galleymore asked for others to appreciate that the soldiers are in a dilemma, "caught in a military culture that encourages the numbing of most emotions but anger. Whip up enough anger in young men emotionally isolated, denied friends, family, lovers, even civilians [sic] clothes, physically exhaust them, nourish them inadequately, expose them to extreme temperatures and violent behavior, confine them to base and portray everyone else as murderous and you create impossible stress."

Nick told his mother that wasn't his experience.

Indeed. The idea of soldier-as-victim might have made some sense in 1971, when the draft was on and some soldiers were in Vietnam against their will. But today's military has not a single conscript; everyone fighting in Iraq and elsewhere is a professional who has voluntarily chosen a hazardous line of work. They deserve our gratitude and respect, not our pity.