Posted on 11/26/2006 12:07:17 PM PST by Doctor Raoul
Yesterday, Sun Columnist Billy McMorris argued that, as students, we should take time away from partying and sleeping, and express our gratitude to the nearly 3,000 soldiers who have died so far in Iraq. Billy does what George Bush does: instead of defending the Iraq War, he points to the sacrifices of our soldiers. It’s a crafty strategy of misdirection, to channel our grief for dead soldiers into support for the ongoing war in Iraq.
There was a time when such sacrifices might have been sensible. Maybe at first, we could justify soldiers’ deaths for dethroning a tyrant; destroying chemical weapons; or smokin’ terrorists out of their caves. But three years later, Saddam’s statue has been toppled, and he’s about to be hanged; the WMDs have been revealed as the stuff of myth; and we’re breeding terrorism rather than eradicating it.
Even David Brooks, the columnist for The New York Times who had previously supported the war, recently conceded that our current invasion will simply not succeed: “The war was an attempt to lift a unified Iraq out of its awful history,” he wrote, “but history has proved stubborn. It’s time to adjust the plans to reality.”
Just yesterday, insurgents dressed as Iraqi policemen rounded up over 100 people from a college office in a mass kidnapping conducted in broad daylight.
When John Kerry stuck his foot in his mouth and told students they’d “get stuck in Iraq” if they didn’t study, he broke the cardinal rule of opposition to a war: protest the war, but don’t cricitize the troops. With the recent election returns reflecting calls for withdrawal as the number of American casualties in Iraq approaches the 3,000 mark, I wonder how much longer we can separate the actions of our troops from the White House’s stubborn policy of “Stay the Course.”
When the war started, dissent was seditious; when the Iraqis didn’t greet our troops with flowers and hurrahs, we saw some measures of dissent. Now, with the situation in Iraq dissolving into chaos, condemnations of Bush are commonplace. Yet questioning the actions of those on the ground remains taboo.
Why?
Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant military drama, A Few Good Men, explores the legitimacy of “just following orders” in the rigid military hierarchy. At the end of the trial, when Jack Nicholson’s Col. Jessup incriminates himself by spitting out “the truth,” the tribunal still holds Pfcs. Downey and Dawson culpable for carrying out an illegal Code Red.
In the aftermath of the real-life Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Specialists Lynndie England and Charles Graner tried to argue that they were just doing their jobs. I thought the Nuremberg Trial of Eichmann had put to bed the defense that you can just “follow orders.”
Of course, all this is not to say that our men and women in the Middle East should be held accountable for our government’s policy decisions. After all, they’re just following orders — and dying for them.
Consider the case of Cpl. Jason Dunham, who will posthumously be awarded the Medal of Honor after perishing in Iraq in April.
If the four Marines hoisting the American flag at Iwo Jima embodied the struggle of the Greatest Generation, then Dunham’s death will surely come to represent our generation’s conflict overseas. What better metaphor for the undermanned and under-equipped invasion in Iraq than a 22-year-old desperately trying to blunt the force of a grenade with only his helmet and his torso?
We’re not going to succeed in Iraq, so why are we still sending troops there to die? Without an underlying cause, these soldiers’ sacrifices amount to little more than assisted suicides. If my generation is guilty of anything, it’s not failing to thank our troops; it’s failing to castigate our government for sanctioning so many senseless deaths.
Billy writes that Dunham “will be the second service member to receive this award since hostilities began in Iraq in 2003. He will, however, certainly not be the last.” Why not?
It’s a pernicious paradox that the Bush Administration flaunts: when the war’s not going well, there’s a fresh supply of bodies to glorify, so in the public relations war, the Republicans can never lose. But for the war’s opponents, criticizing the war is unpatriotic, and questioning the logic behind the soldiers’ deaths is unheard of. So while Bush and his cronies exploit the connection between the war and the troops, people who oppose the war are merely supposed to say “thanks.”
The imagery that gave the Bush Administration so much political capital — firemen and police offers on 9/11 running into the wreckage, instead of out — is still driving the neoconservative ideology today. “So when an insurgent’s grenade hit the deck, so did Jason,” Billy wrote yesterday, “but he did not dive out of harm’s way as one would think … He, instead, dove on top of the grenade without so much as blinking.”
The metaphor has simply outlived its usefulness. We’re creating victims, not saving them.
With control of the Congress, the Democrats need to inundate the American public with symbols that illustrate the realities in the Middle East. Releasing pictures of the thousands of coffins that have returned from Iraq — images that the Bush Administration has worked hard to suppress — would be a first step. But moreover, we need to be reminded that, like Pfc. Dunham, the Bush Administration is trying to contain an explosive region with just a few helmeted human bodies.
After three years in Iraq, semantics no longer matter. Whether you’re supporting the war or supporting the troops, in the end, you’re just supporting George W. Bush. And in glorifying heroics on the battlefield, we’re consenting to being on the battlefield in the first place.
Rob Fishman is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at rbf25@cornell.edu Agree to Disagree appears Wednesdays.
They teach a lesson that Mister Ivy League isn't fit to teach, that there are five Marines...and one Navy Corpsman depicited on the memorial.
Every Corpsman that was I was ever with, deserved the title if only honorary.
Yup. Jack is always a treat, even when he's munching scenery in a Tom Cruise flick.
Heck, I even liked him in *shudder* Easy Rider *shudders some more*
Hey Fishman, that was fiction! Written by a pot head, doper, stoner, coke snorting liberal.
Sorkin's only brush with combat was dating Maureen Dowd.
Fishman is a supercilious twit who wouldn't last 5 minutes in Basic before whimpering and begging to go home to Mommy.
LOL
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
"the WMDs have been revealed as the stuff of myth"
Really?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/848341/posts?page=141
.
No Joke.
JOHN KERRY =
Pictures of a vietnamese Re-Education Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
.
.
The Words
http://www.Freerepublic.com/~ALOHARONNIE
The Pictures
http://www.RickRescorla.com/The%20Statue.htm
The Heroism
http://www.ArmchairGeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24361
.
And don't forget, directed by Meathead.
Mark
"I thought the Nuremberg Trial of Eichmann had put to bed the defense that you can just 'follow orders.'"
What a stupid pissant! Eichmann was tried in Israel in 1961, not at Nuremberg.
I hope you realize that things you write that are on the web remain for a very, very long time.
Someday you will be applying for a job you desperately want and someone will show this piece of garbage you just wrote to your prospective employer....a former Marine.
What is it with lefties and using fictional movies as the basis for real life discussions?
Because many of them live in a fictional world.
There she stands ..Cornell
That smell is not Cayuga's waters
That smell is ..Cornell"/music
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