[lbo-talk] We can lose, or we can just lose later

[Gar Lipow]

On 11/25/05, Louis Kontos <Louis.Kontos at liu.edu> wrote:
> If you have genuine respect for military personnel, for whatever reason,
> then it makes sense to speak honestly with and about them. Thanking them for
> a military adventure that you yourself call unjust seems rather hypocritical
> -- and condescending -- to me. I feel no need to thank anybody for doing
> something I consider unjust, notwithstanding everything you said about the
> military code. While you seem to appreciate the military code (at least
> those parts of it that mandate obedience and sacrifice, not anything else),
> you seem to lack an understanding of hypocrisy.
>
>

That is true as far as it goes.  But "gratitude" towards the military
is not only  hypocritical; it is truly dangerous as well.   Zell
Miller repeated a well worn right wing meme when  he  said at the last

 Republican Convention:


>It has been said truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter,
who has given us the freedom of the press. [cheers] It is the soldier,
not the poet who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the
soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest. It
is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose
coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom he
abuses to burn that flag. [cheers] No one should dare to even think
about being the commander in chief of this country if he doesn't
believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and
defenders of freedom at home

Do you see how dangerous this  will be if it succeeds? Establishing
the military as some superior caste to which the rest of us owe
gratitude for all the  freedoms and rights we possess?  Seeing the
military in fact as the basis for those rights, and thus able to take
them away on whim?  That is what  lies behind the whole "gratitude"
line.