There’s a lot to what this Marine says -
I voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004 and I’d sooner die than be Democrat,
yet what he says holds weight.
I fear that it is as Reagan once said of Democrats:
I didn’t leave them - they left me
This country has become a cheap, made-in-China parody of itself -
on the entire political spectrum….
From Andrew Sullivan’s Blog:
I was deployed in my reserve unit (USMCR) as part of operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield.
Marine infantry, and we were on the front lines, supposedly to guard a gunship base,
but really, though, the gunships guarded us.
Not too much later, it was time to take prisoners.
One of the platoons went north, and when they came back,
there were stories about how Iraqi soldiers lined the roads, trying to surrender.
Looking back, I think that one of the main drivers in these men’s heads was that they knew, absolutely,
that they’d get fair treatment from us, the Americans. We were the good guys.
The Iraqis on the line knew they had an out, they had hope, so they could just walk away.
(A few did piss themselves when someone told them we were Marines. Go figure.)
Still, they knew Americans would be fair, and we were.
Thinking hard on what I now know of history, psychology, and the meanness of politics,
that reputation for fairness was damn near unique in world history. Can you tell me of any major military power that had it? Ever?
France? No. Think Algeria. The UK? Sorry, Northern Ireland, the Boxer Rebellion in China… China or Russia. I don’t think so.
But America had it. If those men had even put up token resistance, some of us would not have come back.
But they didn’t even bother, and surrendered at least in part because of our reputation.
Our two hundred year old reputation for being fair and humane and decent.
All the way back to George Washington, and from President George H.W. Bush
all the way down to a lance-corporal jarhead at the front.
Its gone now, even from me. I can’t get past that image of the Iraqi, in the hood with the wires
and I’m not what you’d call a sensitive type. You know the picture.
And now we have a total bust-out in the White House, and a bunch of rubber-stamps in the House,
trying to make it so that half-drowning people isn’t torture.
That hypothermia isn’t torture.
That degradation isn’t torture.
We don’t have that reputation for fairness anymore. Just the opposite, I think.
And the next real enemy we face will fight like only the cornered and desperate fight.
How many Marines’ lives will be lost in the war ahead just because of this asshole
who never once risked anything for this country?
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