On 11/25/05, Gar Lipow <the.typo.boy at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
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