Sunday, January 07, 2007
The Nation on Active Duty "Dissidents"
Don't have time to comment, but check it out here.
Yep. They can't win the argument on the merits, so they need some poster children to trot out before the cameras. They've always been whores for that. So much so that when they can't find enough poster children, they invent them.
That said, I don't have a problem with these servicemen and women exercizing their First Amendment rights as they're doing. They're fine in my book.
Now, Ehren Watada on the other hand ...
Therein resides the power of the Appeal for Redress. Its signers don't marginalize themselves as lawbreakers, resisters or deserters. Potential signers have been assured they are sending a communication to Congress protected under the Military Whistleblower Protection Act and will not be subject to reprisal. The result has been electrifying. In the two months since it surfaced, almost three times as many people have signed it as are members of the two-year-old Iraq Veterans Against the War. Almost three-quarters of the signers are active duty (the rest are reserves), and include several dozen officers, of whom a handful are colonels.
Interviews with more than two dozen signers, both in Iraq and on domestic US military bases from Fort Stewart in the east to Hawaii's Hickam Air Force Base, reveal a movement that includes low-level grunts and high-ranking officers, as well as a rich diversity of racial, economic and educational backgrounds. The signers offered a variety of motivations--ideological, practical, strategic and moral--but all agreed the war was no longer worth fighting and that the troops should be brought home. As the debate on Iraq sharpens in the wake of the Baker-Hamilton report and as a new Democratic Congress is seated, the collective voice of active-duty opponents of the war is likely to add considerable clout to the antiwar movement.
Yep. They can't win the argument on the merits, so they need some poster children to trot out before the cameras. They've always been whores for that. So much so that when they can't find enough poster children, they invent them.
That said, I don't have a problem with these servicemen and women exercizing their First Amendment rights as they're doing. They're fine in my book.
Now, Ehren Watada on the other hand ...
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