O-u-c-h

Yes, I do have to admire it. Thanks for pointing it out, because, even for an anti-Iraq-war liberal like myself, that column is exhibit A in any proof of the proposition that Joel Stein is a dick. (And there have been a lot of exhibit B’s.)

Y’know, I’d like to agree with you, but I can’t. There’s no defense for this:

“But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they’re following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.”

The people who are presently dying for our moral obligation to fix our screwups are not “ultimately responsible” for those screwups, nor are they “ignoring morality” by volunteering to defend their country and then following legal orders. Those distinctions belong to the people who made the decision to send them in the first place.

Joel fell for the very false dichotomy that he blames the “hawks” for using to prolong the war.

There is nothing illogical about honouring and respecting the soldiers whilst at the same time believing that they are being sent to the wrong target. It is not a matter of washing one’s hands of responsibility. Indeed, claiming that the “soldiers lose honour because of their target” is the cowardly attempt to absolve responsibility. It suggests that, the executive having failed to stop the unjust war, it is now the responsibility of the soldiers to stop it. That’s crap. The responsibility still rests with the citizens.

Hugh Hewitt does an excellent job ripping him apart. My only problem is that he rips Joel apart, not his thesis.

“HH: I’m not being interviewed. I haven’t criticized the military. But I make a lot more than $75,000.”

It was at that point I would have hung up. You’re being interviewed solely because you criticised the military ? Time for a little feet to the fire ?

And yet you can’t ask your President a question because he doesn’t comment on an ongoing investigation?

The funny thing is, that interview totally makes it clear the dangers in your media right now. You’re either for the war or against the troops. God help you.

Wow, a radio talk show host with time to prepare hostile questions pwns a writer invited onto the show. Shocking!!! Perhaps the host would like to engage in a weekly written discussion with the columnist, then we’ll see who comes out on top. (Although, it’s not obvious who would dominate.)

Of course, it’s easier to appeal to emotional arguments than it is to make logical ones. This is something both sides of this dicussion is guilty of.

Ironwood wrote:
The funny thing is, that interview totally makes it clear the dangers in your media right now. You\’e2\’80\’99re either for the war or against the troops. God help you.

Which is pretty much what the columnist, Joel Stein, was writing about. The answer to this is “I’m against the war AND supporting the troops.” Of course, this means that opposition to the war falters because it becomes harder to navigate the minefield of opposing the war and supporting troops. In essence, the war supporters have defined the terms for discussing the war so that they’re always right. So, when someone pops up their head and says, “Hey, wait a minute! I don’t think it’s that simple!” it’s the duty of every loyalist to invalidate that person’s opinions. Therefore “hey, maybe saying you oppose the war and support the troops is a cop-out” is just as suspect as “hey, maybe front-line soldiers have a moral responsibility when pulling the trigger” in everyone’s eyes. Witness the death of intellectual discourse.

Yes, God help us. God help us all.

Now let’s watch people say, “ZOMG U R TRATOR 4 NOT SUPORT WAR!” even though I haven’t said if I support it or not.

And by merely looking at death count, Iraq is NOT better than under Saddam.

What a fucking crock of shit that interviewer came out with.

There should be more stonings.

“Now let\’e2\’80\’99s watch people say, \’e2\’80\’9cZOMG U R TRATOR 4 NOT SUPORT WAR!\’e2\’80\’9d”

When in doubt, end a post with flame bait.

I support the troops is an absolutely bullshit statement. Flat out. Do you support the guys who hand out emergency rations to people who are about to starve to death? Do you support the fuckers who torture completely helpless detainees for shits and giggles? Its a blanket statement so fucking broad that it is meaningless.

True story, I was down with my dad in florida over the weekend. He is in the Marine Corps Veterans League or some shit like that. They were collecting money to buy deploying marines sun glasses, since you know its more important to fund one fucking Joint Strike Fighter than it is to make sure the entire goddamn corps deploys with the basic equipment the marines need.

So we worked the drive thru line at a Wendy’s. We had a big ass fucking sign the resteurant let us put up so everyone knew why we were there. They’d pay and then we waited right where the building ended collecting change. Some people who were driving pieces of shit that I doubted were going to make it home dropped $20 in the bucket. Made you feel good about humanity and all that. But one thing that we had heard going in and proved true all weekend long, 7 of 9 (I counted) cars with american flags, yellow ribbons, I support the troops signs etc, gave NOTHING. Not a fucking penny. One winner was driving a hummer, had Marine Corps stickers all over the fucking thing, had a proud veteran sticker on the back, long of the free home a the brave liscence plate thing on the front, and drove right fucking by without making eye contact.

So support the troops by giving to the 8000 charities that actually do shit for them. Or agitate to bring them home if thats how you feel better able to help them (and I mean AGITATE logging on to dailykos and buying a BUSH LIED sticker makes you and equal fucktard.) But this whole yellow ribbon, doing the best we can by thinking happy thoughts for them, oh well life goes on, bullshit IS a copout.

The fight against al queda is neccesary. We have fucked up a whole lot prosecuting that fight. Have an opinion, make some basic value choices, and stop buying the fucking stickers. Really, its killing me.

You think the LA Times would hire me? I’m only half as grating as that moron author.

“Now let\’e2\’80\’99s watch people say, \’e2\’80\’9cZOMG U R TRATOR 4 NOT SUPORT WAR!\’e2\’80\’9d even though I haven\’e2\’80\’99t said if I support it or not.”

Nah, I just think you’re not willing to admit Stein went too far. His intent may have been to say “The statment ‘I support the troops but oppose the war’ is a cop-out”, but he went way beyond that by attacking the moral integrity of everyone involved. If he’d been willing to apologize for that aspect of it, I’d be willing to assume he just went overboard with the hyperbole. Since he refuses to apologize for any of it, I have to assume he really did mean what he said – and parts of what he said are indefensible.

Personal attacks (and make no mistake, calling everyone sent to Iraq a moral leper is a personal attack) tend to beget more.

Nicademus:
You say: “I support the troops” is bullshit. But what then can you call the act of donating money to buy the troops sunglasses? Sounds like an act of support to me.

I agree with you about AGITATE. Thoreau, when he objected to America’s senseless spanish war, didn’t just post to a blog about it. He also withdrew his funding of the government. That’d be a question I’d like to see asked of this Joel: “Did you pay your income taxes? Why did you fund a government you believe is doing evil?” So what if he gets imprisoned? Why should that stop him if he believed in this so strongly? After all, he’s asking soldiers to refuse their orders, and I suspect failure to pay income tax has a lesser punishment than that…

Yeah, ‘support the troops’ is a loaded, misused phrase, meaning everything from ‘get behind the President and shut up faggot’ to ‘I’m busy and don’t have time for this’ to ‘support the war orphans’ to whatever.

We all get to define this phrase for ourselves, as the interview clearly showed. For me, it is defined by some guys I met living in Montana, marginal folks who’d come back from Vietnam with busted souls. Maybe they went there that way, I don’t know, but in getting to know those guys, I realized that, whatever I thought of that war, those guys had taken America’s salt, and that gave us an obligation to care for them, as a country, if not as individuals. An obligation the country, the whole country, had failed, badly.

We are doing better this time out, a lot better. And while I despise the little flags and bumper stickers, charity means it is voluntary. If the country is doing the job of after care, which I think it is, although mostly that is the services caring for their own; and is giving people what they need, which it hasn’t, and I think the bulk of the blame for that places in the Executive branch; then I thinkj we are doing much better this time.

So I don’t have a problem with saying I support the troops, and appreciate their service and sacrifice, even though I think Iraq is a giant screw-up.

And I think the automobile was a very bad idea. And I think Iraq is part of why the automobile was, and is, a bad idea.

The Marine Corps Veterans League Fund, with enormous letters saying the money went to equip marines headed to iraq with sunglasses. Mr. Marine could have dropped a quarter in the bucket on faith. Having been on the scene I feel more than comfortable declaring the guy an asshat.

Of course, about half the posters here just proved my unstated point. Let’s say, for example, you use a bit of MMORPG-type humor on a site that generally talks about MMORPGs. Let’s say you write, “ZOMG U R TRATOR 4 NOT SUPORT WAR!” Instead of it being clever or funny as you would be in other posts on the site, people take it deadly seriously, as if that phrase were actually part of your argument. So, by attacking that bit of the argument they feel they’ve invalidated the whole argument, without actually tackling any of the vital issues. Look how many people did this to my post.

This is pretty much exactly what has happened to Joel Stein. Not to say that I agree with every point he makes, or even in general, but people are focusing on specific areas of his argument while ignoring any potentially important points he did state.

The problem here is that people want easy answers to a problem that has none. They want everything to be black and white: Either you support the troops or you don’t. Either you’re whole article is good or it is bad. Either you support the war or you hate people dying for your freedom. Every single one of these dichotomies is bullshit. The best way to come up with a solution is through intelligent discussion and discourse. Unfortunately, given that people will get attacked for the smallest thing, it tends to discourage discussion. So, we get the status quo supported, and the people who support the status quo win. Those of us that want to know more and give serious thought about the situation just lose, no matter where we fall in the political spectrum.

Ah, political discourse. It makes the MMORPG discussions on various blogs, including mine, look downright brilliant.

Scrolling up from that article takes me to an interview with Karl Rove, where the blogging dickhead proceeds to give Rove a total handjob on the NSA spying affair.

Just because a stopped clock is right twice a day, doesn’t mean I keep it on the wall to tell time- I throw that shit out.

Psychochild said:

“Instead of it being clever or funny as you would be in other posts on the site, people take it deadly seriously, as if that phrase were actually part of your argument. So, by attacking that bit of the argument they feel they\’e2\’80\’99ve invalidated the whole argument, without actually tackling any of the vital issues. Look how many people did this to my post.”

None of them. (Reread the ones that quoted it.) It was a handy and amusing tag to respond to, which was why you put it in there, right?

There were a few good points buried in Joel Stein’s essay, but good points tend to be overshadowed when they’re attached to personal attacks. I prefer to be more selective about my spokespeople, and Stein frequently makes me embarassed to be on the same side of an issue as him. (I imagine conservatives feel the same way about Bill O’Reilly.) I like my arguments to be about the actual issue at hand, not about unrelated things some commentator has confused with the issue. I am decidedly unhappy about being attached by association to personal attacks on people for whom I have a great deal of respect, and I’m not going to defend the person who made those attacks from people responding to them.

The legitimate points Stein made (That it’s not that simple, that the people responsible for the problem are interpreting support for the troops as support for themselves, that magnetic bumper stickers are an inadequate and nearly meaningless gesture that may send the wrong message) are in that essay, but they’re attached to a message I find repugnant. I don’t see a problem with rejecting the essay (not the individual arguments) on that basis, particularly since Stein seems to see no problem with defending the entire thing.

And yeah, Hewitt is an ass as well.

While I largely disagree with Stein on this and think it was a weak offering from him (I’ve generally enjoyed his humor columns in Time or EW), reading that interview actually marked him up in my book. I think he defended his position very well. Frankly, Hewitt sounded like the ass in that. Stein is a guy with a legitimate viewpoint with which I disagree, and rather than argue his view, Hewitt goes off on these murky implied ad hominem attacks.

In fact, Stein even acknowledged that his core viewpoint might be wrong and he could be convinced otherwise, and the interviewer ignored a chance to actually discuss the real issue in favor of trying to make Stein look bad.