Ack!!

The thing to be careful about, when discussing political matters with the kind of folks who read Mother Jones and the like, is not biting their heads off over their forthright assumption that they are not just morally superior to the hoi polloi, but they've got a finer understanding of the facts.

despite widespread media coverage of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the friendly-fire cover-up in the case of Pat Tillman's death, and alleged retribution killings by Marines at Haditha.

Such a truckload of unexamined assumptions in that statement. Just one: it ignores the fact that first authority to stop and bring attention to the Abu Ghraib abuses was the Army itself, which had issued press releases about the matter almost six months before the pictures showed up. The media only cared when it had pics to sensationalize the story with. No matter; we are supposed to believe that this one event involving a tiny number of non-combatant troops is indicative of the entire Army's culture and spirit (never mind the notion that we're supposed to believe that being forced to wear women's clothing before your peers is an intolerable excruciation, as the image most frequently used by such scolds would have you believe.)

As far as I can tell, the only event that comes close to being what this brand of leftist assumes it is may be the Pat Tillman affair; I haven't looked into it lately to see what its current status is. In any event, I wouldn't take Ma Jones' word for the truth of the coverup or what it says about the Army other than that sometimes people try to cover their butts for stupid things they did.

It is both striking and disturbing that there still are people who trust their representatives to represent them. The representatives who feather their nests with porks they earmark for their cronies who return them as contributions.

It is both striking and disturbing that the representatives actually voted to send the military to risk their lives, then disavowed their votes and tried to undercut the same military to fit their own political ambitions.

Americans, to some, may be naive, but they are not stupid. They know who is protecting them, who is fleecing them.

The author makes some very good points, and misses one.

I strongly agree with his observations about diversity and tolerance in the military. We might have had the same clothes and the same haircuts, but if you knew your stuff and carried your weight, you could enjoy an intellectual freedom undreamed-of in the civilian world.

We may call to mind Smedley Butler, a renowned Marine Corps General, who picked up multiple CMH's and held key commands running banana wars, all the while talking like a radical, left-wing pacifist.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
The article stumbles, I think, with that nod to "civilian control" of the military. Civilian control of the military is supposed to mean no Cromwell: it was not supposed to mean civilian interference with tactics or even operations, and it does not mean that politicians may lightly transform the institutions of the military culture.

Smedley Butler, was quite a character. He either was very sincere about his role in military expeditions from Cuba to Haiti to China as his statements in "Common Sense" suggest ; or he was an opportunistic charlatan. If he was sincere, it
was unlikely he would have been able to carry out
many missions. More likely considering the isolationist sentiment in the 30s; shared by former banker and diplomat turned American Fascist
Lawrence Dennis; a charlatan.

They miss the point as ever - the military has high standards and when the aberations are found, the military roots them out.

All of those sins (and such few sins!) were prosecuted by the military. Much higher standards are found in the five services than in the pages of any magazine or newspaper, and it is not a wonder that a profession that polices itself so well is in such high esteem.