The more cheap shots, the better. During the Vietnam era, public discourse was thick with the acrid odor of cheap shots at the military, and a good thing it was. The aim was to ridicule the military as savage and inept, strip away its pretenses of public service and honor, and express utter contempt for it as an institution. Vietnam protests wasted no time expressing the slightest degree of respect for the nation's armed forces.
Today, public discourse is positively constipated with veneration for the military. Even the media's bolder voices of dissent, like Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann, feel the need ritualistically to genuflect when they interview some four-star blowhard: "Thank you, sir, for your service to our country!" Wrong. All officer-corps personnel should feel no doubt that public sentiment increasingly sees them as war criminals, connivers and dolts.
Four years years ago, the US military strutted on the world stage with "shock and awe." Today, using the faux ingenuousness of Gen. Pretentious (Mister Rogers' evil nephew) the military is trying to slink off that stage and evade all responsibility for the Iraq fiasco with shuck and jive. They should be hooted and jeered at as they go, not saluted.
Carl