trying to grok

NAUSEUS

Just keep scrolling through LGF today.
Everyone's there: Hitchens, Simon, Hanson, etc.

The short version for my mama: Daily Kos is the biggest left-wing blog out there. When the contractors were killed in Fallujah, he wrote this:

I feel nothing over the death of merceneries. They aren’t in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

Then he deleted it (but not before lots of people saw it) and put a longer more nuanced post up instead. I read it and dove into the comments section until I felt like choking and had to look away.

Here's what I don't like:

Back to Iraq, our men and women in uniform are there under orders, trying to make the best of an impossible situation. The war is not their fault, and I will always defend their honor and bravery to the end of my days. But the mercenary is a whole different deal. They willingly enter a war zone, and do so because of the paycheck. They're not there for humanitarian reasons (I doubt they'd donate half their paycheck to the Red Cross or whatever). They're there because the money is DAMN good.

Kos, if I may use your own words, Screw you.

I don't want someone like Kos even thinking of my husband. I don't want him commenting on his bravery or defending his honor or talking about him or even thinking about him. The thought makes me sick, to be honest. The idea that someone who doesn't care one bit about the death of Americans who are working in Iraq to try to bring infrastructure and economic growth gets all sappy and noble when talking about soldiers makes me sick. I don't care for Kos' empty Support Our Troops claims, and I'm fairly certain my husband doesn't either. My husband is not there to "make the best of an impossible situation"; he's there to clean up the Middle East so that people like Kos never have to face a terrorist.

A commenter:

It doesn't matter what the Falluja attackers saw in these 4 men. I see in them war profiteers who's interest in Iraq is soley pecuniary. I am not obliged to consider them my representatives nor to feel any sympathy for them. As a member of the human race, I am obliged, and I do, feel sympathy for their families; no one should have to see the bodies of their loved ones desecrated in such a way. These guys should've thought of that possibility before signing up.

What is conspicuously absent from Kos' comments section is a condemnation of the f-ing Arabs who burned these bodies and beat them with sticks. Instead, these four deserved what they got because they were out to make a profit.

I'm so nauseated right now I can't think straight.

Posted by Sarah at April 3, 2004 08:42 AM