NBC Nightly News story on US troops in Iraq

[Jolie Rouge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyqk1LsCDBQ&eurl=

[pepperpot]

My grandmother used to knit bandages for those in 'the war'. Sometimes I feel so guilty that these 'boys/girls' - children of 'ours', are over 'there' and we are here buying x-mas presents, going to movies, just 'out doing our usual lifel' type of things. I feel guilty that I thank the moms whose children are over 'there' and wishing that this will all be resolved before my children must go 'over there'. It's just not something that I ever thought I'd see in my lifetime...it was always 'history'....never a 'reality'....

How did we ever get 'here'?

[Jolie Rouge]

Here's Washington Post national security reporter/blogger William Arkin's screed against NBC's report, which quoted troops who want Americans to support their mission. An excerpt from Arkin's unhinged diatribe:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/01/the_troops_also_need_to_suppor.html


So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?

I can imagine some post-9/11 moment, when the American people say enough already with the wars against terrorism and those in the national security establishment feel these same frustrations. In my little parable, those in leadership positions shake their heads that the people don't get it, that they don't understand that the threat from terrorism, while difficult to defeat, demands commitment and sacrifice and is very real because it is so shadowy, that the very survival of the United States is at stake. Those Hoover's and Nixon's will use these kids in uniform as their soldiers. If I weren't the United States, I'd say the story end with a military coup where those in the know, and those with fire in their bellies, save the nation from the people.

But it is the United States and instead this NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer - force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.


"Obscene amenities?" What the...?!?!?!


WaPo blogger to U.S. troops: Be thankful we don’t spit on you, mercenaries
posted at 7:00 pm on January 31, 2007 by Allahpundit

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/01/31/wapo-blogger-to-us-troops-be-thankful-we-dont-spit-on-you-mercenaries/

He supports — or rather, “indulges” — the troops, despite their raping and murdering and delusions about victory and youthful naivete. But they need to support him too by not expressing their opinions about what it means to “support the troops” because that makes him feel guilty about his defeatism.

Oh, and they’re also filthy mercenaries who are in it for the money and should be grateful they’re not being called baby-killers.

He’s writing about that NBC video that Bryan posted yesterday:

I’m all for everyone expressing their opinion, even those who wear the uniform of the United States Army. But I also hope that military commanders took the soldiers aside after the story and explained to them why it wasn’t for them to disapprove of the American people…

These soldiers should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President’s handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect.

Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha [”Every”? — ed.], through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order.

Sure it is the junior enlisted men who go to jail, but even at anti-war protests, the focus is firmly on the White House and the policy. We just don’t see very man “baby killer” epithets being thrown around these days, no one in uniform is being spit upon.…

[W]e support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?…
If I weren’t the United States [sic], I’d say the story end [sic] with a military coup where those in the know, and those with fire in their bellies, save the nation from the people.

But it is the United States and instead this NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer - force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.

Exit question one: What does he have in mind when he describes the “obscene amenities” that are being provided to soldiers in Iraq? And exit question two: Who is William Arkin?

:mad:

John Hinderaker tries to decipher Arkin's incoherence: http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016662.php


In other words, I guess, "screw them." I still don't get it, though: what is the "price we pay" for having a volunteer army? The fact that soldiers are disappointed if the folks back home don't support their mission? Wow, that's a heavy price all right!

---

Ed Morrissey: http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016662.php

Of course, the worst part of this -- besides the incoherent writing style -- is the characterization of the NBC report. Not one of the soldiers in the clip remotely suggested that Americans "give up their rights and responsibilities". They didn't say that George Bush should make everyone who opposes the war shut up, or else. They were asked about their take on people who say they support the troops but oppose the war, and they expressed their views.

Unfortunately, Mr. Arkin can't handle free speech. He incomprehensibly calls them mercenaries because they volunteered for the military, and apparently because they have the audacity to offer their opinions when asked.. (By definition, a mercenary is someone who hires himself out as a soldier for a nation not his own.)

Arkin finishes by suggesting that America rethink what it owes the troops, so I'll oblige. We owe them our support because they risk their lives to ensure that we retain our freedoms. They don't get paid all that well to do it, either, but they do it because they love our country. I'm fine with them expressing their opinions when reporters stick cameras in their faces and ask for them, even if they don't agree with me. I still respect them for what they do, which apparently is the difference between Arkin and myself.

[tngirl]

http://www.bigbigforums.com/vent-whine/533869-troops-also-need-support-american-people.html

Yeah, I was venting about this over in V/W

[YNKYH8R]

Nice topic...I still don't support the war.

[LuvBigRip]

That's the liberal elite for you. We do so spoil our soldiers :rolleyes:

[Jolie Rouge]

Nice topic...I still don't support the war.

That is kinda like saying "I support the Chicogo Bears but don't want them to win the Super Bowl" :rolleyes:


( PS - haven't 'seen' you much - how's the baby ?? )

[Jolie Rouge]

[QUOTE=Jolie Rouge;95521679]Here's Washington Post national security reporter/blogger William Arkin's screed against NBC's report, which quoted troops who want Americans to support their mission. [QUOTE]

"WHO IS WILLIAM ARKIN?

I note you left out your history of defending Communist organizations. Never mind that your biography page on the Washington Post doesn't mention your actual membership in those organizations.

And when evidence of such links is posted here, they're deleted.

So, here they are again.

Here's documentation of Arkin lying about General Boykin:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/279oetfg.asp?pg=1

For starters, he is the scribbler who launched the assault on Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin a week ago by providing NBC with tapes of Boykin speaking in churches, and then followed with a Los Angeles Times op-ed that accused the general of being "an intolerant extremist" and a man "who believes in Christian 'jihad'" (Arkin later admitted on my radio program that Boykin never used the term "jihad").

Arkin also wrote that "Boykin has made it clear that he takes his orders not from his Army superiors but from God--which is a worrisome line of command." This statement, like the "jihad" quotation appears to be pure fiction.

But we can't know for sure because Arkin hasn't released the full transcripts of the talks Boykin gave. Arkin promised to do so when I interviewed him, but has since told my producer he won't be providing them because I have misquoted him on my website--another lie from Arkin, to go along with his broken promise of full disclosure."

Look here to see Arkin's tortured logic where he blames the US (and implicitly "Bush and company", to use Arkin's own condescending tone) for 9/11:

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/10/11/arkin/print.html

Also, Arkin was a member of the Institute for Policy Studies. Here's a description of that group:

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6991

"The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) was founded in 1963 as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization with seed money (derived from a fortune made in cosmetics sales under the Faberge trade name) from the Samuel Rubin Foundation. Samuel Rubin (1901-1978) was a Russian Bolshevik and the father of Cora Weiss, who headed the Samuel Rubin Foundation from its inception and is currently the principal financier of IPS. Weiss' husband, Peter, is Chairman of the IPS Board of Trustees. He is also a member of the National Lawyers Guild and the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, both of which were created as Communist Party fronts. The Weisses selected Richard J. Barnet and Marcus Raskin to be the first Co-Directors of IPS, with the aim of transforming the United States by altering public attitudes, changing laws, and reversing foreign policy through an Academy that reached every nexus of the national nervous system.

Throughout its history, IPS has committed itself to the task of advancing leftist causes. It worked with agents of the Castro regime and championed environmentalist and anti-war positions in the 1960s and 1970s; it declared against the Reagan administration's efforts to roll back communism in the 1980s; it joined the vanguard of what IPS hails as the "anti-corporate globalization movement" in the 1990s; and, most recently, it has furnished policy research assailing the U.S.-led war in Iraq."

Will the Washington Post delete this again?

Why is the Post now trying to hide Arkin's past?

[Jolie Rouge]

Advantage: Blackfive : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CgxTsZc3fs&eurl=


Allah links to Johnny Dollar's audio of Arkin on John Gibson's radio show. You really have to listen the whole thing as Arkin gets shriekier and shriekier, but here's my rough transcript of the exchange half-way through the segment...

http://homepage.mac.com/mkoldys/iblog/C168863457/E20070201193102/


GIBSON: The general tone of this piece is that the troops owe us, that we continue to support them through the war that they are losing.
ARKIN: Oh, come on, John, that's your characterization! (Voice rising) I don't say they owe us anything! I just say that when the troops start to express their dissatisfaction with the American public, they should look in the mirror and ask themselves whether or not the American public is their servant or they're the servant of the American public. (Voice louder) I nowhere suggested that the troops shouldn't have the right to speak up. I merely said we shouldn't put them on such a pedestal that they are above criticism IF THEY SAY STUPID THINGS!

GIBSON: Well, what is so stupid about...[plays NBC segment...Staff Sergeant: "If they're going to support us, support us all the way."]

GIBSON: What is so wrong...

ARKIN: (Going bananas, sputtering at top of his lungs) HE'S JUST TOTALLY WRONG, JOHN. PEOPLE CAN SUPPORT THE TROOPS AND NOT SUPPORT THE WAR. AND THE FACT THAT THESE GUYS IN UNIFORM DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT TELLS ME THAT THEY ARE BADLY SCHOOLED IN THE REALITIES OF [unintelligible].

Such anger. And hate. "Badly schooled." Taking a page right out of the John Kerry botched joke book. ???

[stresseater]

Exit question one: What does he have in mind when he describes the “obscene amenities” that are being provided to soldiers in Iraq?
Maybe copies of hustler are finally getting thru. ;) :D

[Jolie Rouge]

Anyone else notice the irony of what Arkin said “I said I was bothered by the notion that “the troops” were somehow becoming hallowed beings above society, that they had an attitude that only they had the means - or the right - to judge the worthiness of the Iraq endeavor.”

as compared to what Maureen Dowd (and others) have said in the past “the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.”

Arkins claims that troops don’t have absolute moral authority but Dowd says they (or their parents) do…so which is it ???

[YNKYH8R]

That is kinda like saying "I support the Chicogo Bears but don't want them to win the Super Bowl" :rolleyes:


( PS - haven't 'seen' you much - how's the baby ?? )
No...that's like saying 'I support (whatever NFL team you like) but the Super Bowl is an over blown commercial cesspool not worth watching." Or another anology would be an NFL team playing in the World Series.

*I come in now and again but Iraq is hardly worth debating any more. You support the war? Fine. You think we're doing good against what the liberal media says? Fine. You think we should stay as long as it takes? Fine. No matter what you or I believe about what we percieve to be the truth changes the fact that this war needs to come to a resolution.

[Jolie Rouge]

No matter what you or I believe about what we percieve to be the truth changes the fact that this war needs to come to a resolution.


That much I DO agree with ...

[Jolie Rouge]

Poet/war veteran Russ Vaughan is inspired:
http://www.oldwardogs.us/2007/02/wapo_weasels_ii.html


Want to slam our soldiers, Arkin?
Well here is one to slam.
I got used to Lefty slamming
When I came back from Vietnam.

So you want to put a muzzle
On our brave fighting men?
Well try muzzling me you jerk,
Just tell me where and when.

Your profession needs a lesson
In basic free speech rights,
For those you worms all hide behind,
For those who fight your fights.

Like all your soft and smarmy kind,
You really have no clue,
Who American warriors truly are,
What our warriors truly do...

How many times in your four years
As a chair-borne analyst,
Were you within an ocean’s width
Of combat’s hard mailed fist?

How many medals did you earn
In those warrens at Fort Meade?
In four years of four-eyed service,
Just what was your bravest deed?

FOX news has combat warriors
To help us understand the score,
While MSM uses clerks like you,
Who have never been to war.

Your resentment of your betters,
Seeps through your bitter writing,
And shows you have no clue or care
Of those who do the fighting.

Like your ivy-cloistered Comrades,
your war’s between the classes,
Dialectics, speeches, theory,
your heads firmly up your



Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66

http://www.oldwardogs.us/2007/02/wapo_weasels_ii.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Interview with Acute Politics - Ramadi MilBlogger
By Matthew Currier Burden (Blackfive)
March 13, 2007 11:47 AM

http://www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom2/FrontPage%20Stories/Forms/AllItems.aspx

"What's the one story, currently not told, that you would want America to know about?"


One of the areas that has improved at CENTCOM Public Affairs is their ability to work with bloggers. http://www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom2/FrontPage%20Stories/Forms/AllItems.aspx I'd like to thank SGT Chris Keller for giving me the green light to interview Teflon Don at Acute Politics. http://acutepolitics.blogspot.com/

In my opinion, TD is one of the best writers in the military blog world. He's a combat engineer in Al Anbar (Ramadi/Falluja), Iraq, and, on patrols, serves as a gunner protecting IED hunters. The question at the top of the post is one that TD answers.


If you could, please read David Kilcullen's post at Small Wars Journal and tell us what you think of it - http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/02/the-baghdad-marathon/


Whatever we would have liked to believe four years ago, there is no quick win in Iraq, and that is more true now than ever. Mr Kilcullen succinctly summarizes the reality of the situation in Iraq: We need to improve security, work with the Iraqis and at their pace, and reconcile with the population at large. I further agree with his statement that the way of progress in Iraq is more like police work than classic COIN.

The one thing we must not do is to confuse the real country of Iraq, where there is a real war, a real population, and a real obligation to protect them, with the parallel-universe "quagmire Iraq" of popular imagination.

That pretty much sums it up right there.

A few comments down, there is a Comment from "bg" about measures of effectiveness (MOE). Would you please respond to the comment about polls in America as measures of effectiveness for the insurgency?

I think opinion polls in America are a poor measure of effectiveness. As another commenter to the article pointed out, such polls measure the effectiveness of communication about the war as much or more than they reflect actual conditions on the ground. In the end, though, we may find ourselves once again winning a war, but losing the public opinion. Public opinion is not a military battle to fight, but it has to be won.

As far as realistic measures of our COIN (Counter Insurgency) effectiveness, here are some things that seem like common-sense to me:

Employment: Are there enough jobs? Do people feel safe working? Can you earn enough at an honest job to dissuade you from spending a day placing an IED at whatever the going rate is?

Infrastructure: Is there power? Water? Sewer? Cell phone service? Is the infrastructure that does exist relatively secure, or is it often attacked?

Iraqi Forces: Are the IPs and IA willing to fight? Are they well trained? How is their morale? What is recruitment like?

What is most on the mind of the troops at the moment?

Beer and Women. Did you expect a different answer? :-D

Nope...glad to see that my Army hasn't changed. What worries you most about back home? And what are you hearing from friends or family about home and the US?

I have two main worries.

First, I fear that the violence and disorder of Iraq will find its way back to America. I worry that gangs will begin to attack each other and the police with IEDs, and that more veterans will return to commit crimes "to draw attention to the plight of Iraqis". I worry that more will return no longer able to distinguish colors other than their accustomed black and white- violence or no violence.

Second, I fear that our leaders back home will not allow us to finish what we have started; that we will leave Iraq before there is any hope of order. If we do, I fear that we will have a genocide worse than Darfur or the Balkans on our national conscience, as well as a terrorist threat far beyond our imagination.

What has changed in your area since you began working in Iraq? For the better or for the worse…?

Better - Ramadi, in essentially every aspect. Fewer IEDs, fewer attacks, more workers, more police, more coalition presence.

Worse - The rural areas surrounding Falluja. Part of this is due to another good thing- Falluja is primary patrolled by Iraqi forces now, freeing up American combat power to be exercised outside the city. We have quite the job for us in the countryside rooting up insurgent networks, bomb factories, and the like.