The Average Soldier

I get a lot of military email, some positive and some negative. I was impressed by this one from Johnny:

Hi Mr. Rall,
I saw you on Foxnews a few times, and while I disagreed with some of the things you said, I went to your site and check back on it about once a week. I know that you can’t just always believe everything you are told and sometimes the opposition is right. I do have a problem with how you treat the military though. I have been in ROTC for the past four years and as soon as I am done my masters I am going to commission fulfilling my contract. I contracted four years ago because I wanted to serve my country and “fight the good fight” against anyone who tried to do our country harm. Many of my fellow cadets are in the same boat as me, came from an average family, good students, ( I have a 3.9 cum GPA now ), just wanting to do our service, finish it, and move on with your lives. We could have never predicted what we would eventually have to end up doing and where we would be going but it is the government, and you can’t back out once you’ve signed the dotted line. We were not recruited and lied to, we went into it knowing full well what we were getting into. There are many many many great people in the Army ( and other branches ). Many joined for training opportunities or just to do their duty. Yet all I ever see in your comics/other writings, is disdain for the military, continually calling all of us torturers and gun wielding fanatics. While some have done such things, it embarrasses many of us to be in the same military as them. They are not soldiers out of line, they are criminals. But you must see that many of us are just normal guys that signed up for a job because we wanted to, and therefore we must do what we are required to. Foreign policy is not our fault, it is the governments. We are supposed to clean up the mess when the government can’t seal the deal. Please reconsider your stance on the average soldier, blame the government for where we are all you want, but I know that when you portray soldiers in the light you do, it really hurts me and many of my colleagues that someone would look down on us, when we are just trying to do something positive for our country. I am sorry for the length of this e-mail but after following your web site for a little over a year now, I felt it was time to voice myself and hopefully get your opinion on this subject at hand. Thank you

Point taken. The vast majority of soldiers have not (presumably) engaged in the sort of atrocities committed daily at US concentration camps like Abu Ghraib and Bagram. But let’s get real: people join the military in order to kill people. Or, at bare minimum, they’re willing to kill people. That’s what the military does, and everybody understands that. I doubt that even the lyingest son-of-a-bitch recruiter claims otherwise.

Unfortunately, dutiful soldiers get lumped in with the sadists when they refuse to stand tall, in public, to denounce those whose behavior disgraces the armed services. Especially disconcerting to those of us who wish to believe the best about the men and women serving in uniform is the way they applaud criminal mass murderers like George W. Bush at public appearances–e.g., the notorious “mission accomplished” appearance. It is also sad to see so few soldiers prosecuted for refusing to serve in the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Mass resistance, even from 1 percent of the armed forces, would prompt the kind of national reconsideration that might bring an end to Bush’s madness, and yet it’s not forthcoming.

One last point: career soldiers who enlisted before Bush can be excused for being stuck fighting wars which they may or may not believe to be justified. But anyone who enlisted since–or in the future–is fully aware of what he or she is getting into.

Boston Globe Mention

It came out a few days ago, but Alex Beam’s Boston Globe piece references my reaction to being listed as one of Goldberg’s America-screwer-uppers.

Have I Gone Too Far?

For the record: If I don’t write something, I don’t take responsibility for it. To wit, this letter from om****@yahoo.com (he would have deserved total anonymity, but since he sent his email unsigned I have to identify it somehow):

“Today’s military is a far cry from the draftee-heavy Vietnam-era force. These guys are volunteers, hired guns. Make no mistake about their “limited job opportunities”…the military pays less than McDonald’s, and McDonald’s hires even in West Virginia. These troops are there by choice.
It’s hard to hear the radicals when they’re not given airtime–but I don’t see them hanging out in the streets, either.”
Your comments above show just how little you know of the U.S. military. First, how dare you say such horrible things about the men and women who take an oath to defend you and die for your freedom if need be. Second, the military is not a bad paying job at all, especially for those who are deployed overseas. They pay no state or federal tax, they make tons of extra money in combat pay and imminent danger pay, and they’re usually very busy with their job (a job you were obviously too scared to do yourself), so there’s not a whole lot of time to blow all their money. I’m in the Coast Guard and have friends who did year long deployments on CG patrol boats in the Persian Gulf within the past two years, and they all came back with tens of thousands of dollars saved up. We’re not a bunch of back water yokels who joined up for the opportunity of kill some little brown people.
This mother fucker “Jack” you you replied to (in quite a friendly manner I might add) openly endorsed the murdering of military officers. What’s worse, you did not even show the least bit of outrage at the idea of enlisted members turning on their officers. You should be ashamed to call yourself an American, you America hater you.

What’s “horrible” about noting that the military pays poorly, especially at enlistment? It’s hardly a secret, and there’s no crime in getting a bad salary. Of course, being called too “scared” (if that’s a way of noting that I prefer not to get killed without reason for some psycho “president,” than I’m guilty) by a Coast Guard dude who’ll never see as much combat as I have as a civilian journalist is, well, droll.
Jack didn’t “endorse” fragging officers. He predicted that we’d start seeing it soon, and I said I doubted it. Hardly the same thing, and I think his email was interesting enough to warrant sharing.

The Parable of the Bus

But there’s also love, this from Donald:

The August 4th comic is your best since the one — damn, wrote to you about it before but I forget the date — the one that showed us attacking them, and then when they retaliate (mildly) we say something like “That’s it!” and we attack them even more.
I’m in Mexico now (had to leave U.S.) but I remember well being a New Yorker and going through the do-I-keep-waiting-for-the-bus dilemma. This is exactly what’s happening now with our attitude towards Iraq, I
can’t think of a better way of capturing this than your comic today.
I don’t often write you dude, but I just want to say, you are like the only person out there and who gets widely published who expresses the kind of rage I feel over what is going on in Iraq. I was against
Afghanistan too. And the war on drugs before the war on terror. I always look forward to your next comic because I know it will help relieve a little bit of the aggravation I feel over everything that is
happening today.
(you do irk me a little when you tweak the libertarians, but hey, nobody’s perfect.)
Keep up the great work!

Actually, real (i.e., liberal) libertarians who just want the government out of their lives are pretty cool. Who doesn’t? It’s the phony (right-wing) libertarians who want everyone but their rich bow-tied selves to fuck off and die who piss me off.

Tarantoad

Darrell writes from the US Air Force:

The “America-hating” label pisses me off, as well, since the implication is that all those who agree with you hate America, as well. Actually, I used to love America, but ever since they re-elected President Bush, I’ve begun having serious doubts about the American people’s ability to self-govern. Perhaps it’s not ability, but rather willingness, which is actually worse in my view.

My two cents not needed here.

Will Things Change?

Jack writes:

“Why, then, don’t we pull for the Iraqi insurgents?….Where the heck is our sense of empathy? Why can’t we see ourselves in the faces of those kids firing RPGs at convoys of Halliburton trucks stealing Iraqi oil?”
Mr. Rall,
You apparently don’t choose to see us.
True, we are not now, not yet, as numerous as those tens of thousands of us who in the Viet Nam era used to march down Fifth Avenue chanting the name of Ho Chi Minh and calling for “Victory To The Viet Cong.”
That time, with the continued exposure of this government of mad dogs, is now well on the way. So is the time when the poor suckers doing military duty in Iraq will express their understanding of their position in suckerdom by turning on their own officers just as they did with the Viet Nam era fraggings.
Make no mistake, there are many of us who ardently hope for the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Iraq, which situation is likely to lead straight down the rails to Socialist revolution in the U.S. with the British working class in the lead and showing the way.

Today’s military is a far cry from the draftee-heavy Vietnam-era force. These guys are volunteers, hired guns. Make no mistake about their “limited job opportunities”…the military pays less than McDonald’s, and McDonald’s hires even in West Virginia. These troops are there by choice.
It’s hard to hear the radicals when they’re not given airtime–but I don’t see them hanging out in the streets, either.

The Parable of the Bus

Josh writes:

Nice work on this week’s cartoon! Incisive and funny. Did you base the cartoon off of a classic parable or was this an original formulation? In either case i think it’s a great comic, i’d just be interested if you drew on a traditional parable.

I’ve lived in New York a long time. The bus is often late, forcing one into the dilemma described in the cartoon, and I’ve often used that analogy to attack those who say we have to stay in Iraq to “get the job done.” Why throw good lives after bad? This thing is no more winnable now than before…and that’s being optimistic. Hell, Bush is so fucking incompetent that, at this rate, we’ll be living under Iraqi occupation before long.

Don’t Read Immediately Before or After Eating

Here’s one hell of a story.
And yes, it does occur to me that the guy may be lying. But why? Oh, I know: he did it to himself to make a point. Uh-huh. But even if he is lying: Why shouldn’t this dude get the same access to the media as, say, the government? After all, we already know the government lies. This random dude, on the other hand, is still on the up-and-up as far as we know.

God Screw The Queen

Grey writes from the UK:

as you probably know…. Incredibly, under Tony Blair’s new rules, you could be (feloniously) deported from britain (to some hell on earth) for the empathy article. (if you lived there of course) He proposes to make “justifying” (or appeals for empathy?) a deportable offense!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4747573.stm

Since I live here, I’m pre-deported. Hey, that worked out fine.

Saturday New York Daily News

There’s supposed to be a piece mentioning my reaction to Bernie McCarthy’s “100 People” book in tomorrow’s New York Daily News.

Psst…

Guess what’s coming next Spring?

Hint: Good things come in threes.