Another American Traitor in the Press.

(link)
Another American Traitor..Oops, I mean Journalist...
Mr. Arkin says the troops need to support the American People. I thought the that's what American troops have ALWAYS done. Usually in battle, with their lives.

While Mr. Arkin has the right to express his opinions, I also have the right to disagree. I think Mr. Arkin owes the American service men and women a HUGE apology.

Below is just a portion of Mr. Arkin's post. You can click on the link above to read the whole thing. I included the "highlights," for your edification.

William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
The Troops Also Need to Support the American People

I've been mulling over an NBC Nightly News report from Iraq last Friday in which a number of soldiers expressed frustration with opposition to war in the United States.

I'm sure the soldiers were expressing a majority opinion common amongst the ranks - that's why it is news - and I'm also sure no one in the military leadership or the administration put the soldiers up to expressing their views, nor steered NBC reporter Richard Engel to the story.

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.

Friday's NBC Nightly News included a story from my colleague and friend Richard Engel, who was embedded with an active duty Army infantry battalion from Fort Lewis, Washington.

Engel relayed how "troops here say they are increasingly frustrated by American criticism of the war. Many take it personally, believing it is also criticism of what they've been fighting for."....

...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, 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 don't see very many "baby killer" epithets being thrown around these days, no one in uniform is being spit upon.

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?.....

.....But it is the United States, and the recent 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.

The notion of dirty work is that, like laundry, it is something that has to be done but no one else wants to do it. But Iraq is not dirty work: it is not some necessary endeavor; the people just don't believe that anymore.

I'll accept that the soldiers, in order to soldier on, have to believe that they are manning the parapet, and that's where their frustrations come in. I'll accept as well that they are young and naïve and are frustrated with their own lack of progress and the never changing situation in Iraq. Cut off from society and constantly told that everyone supports them, no wonder the debate back home confuses them.

America needs to ponder what it is we really owe those in uniform. I don't believe America needs a draft though I imagine we'd be having a different discussion if we had one.

Why is it, when it comes to the American military service men and women, the vast majority will ALWAYS be graded according to the excesses and crimes of the pitiful minority? What I mean is, we have a SMALL number of people in our military who committed a small number of crimes. Barely a percentage, as compared to the vast majority of law-abiding troops. Yet we constantly have these few crimes tossed into our faces, as though we all participated in the crimes.

I guess when you have nothing else sensational to write about, you have to drag up the past, just so you can rub our collective noses in the dirt one more time.

Frankly Mr. Arkin, you can kiss my big, white, hairy ass.


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