The Boston Globe’s James Carroll—still upset that an endless barrage of sparklers and fire crackers wielded by spoiled bourgeois strip mall brats ruined his own July 4th celebration of a career spent highlighting America’s failings—pulls out his angry, flaccid little post-Independence Day penis and pisses all over the country whose armed forces have fought for his right to condemn them, even as he pretends to speak in their interests:
The “bursting in air” of July 4th is an implicit glorification of war. On the day after, can we think of those combat survivors who will carry the real cost of the Iraqi war in their bodies forever? And how can we think of those American daughters and sons without thinking of their even more numerous Iraqi sisters and brothers?
What kind of nation does our flag fly over now? Not a less innocent one, because American innocence was never the truth. Not one less reluctant to go to war without a good reason, because we have foolishly credited bad reasons in the past. But now the nation lacks even that. As our president demonstrated last week, we have become a people who wage unending war—killing and maiming our young ones and theirs—without being remotely able to say why.
Leaving aside the idiocy of a formulation that insists that because war itself is hell, all those involved in fighting it are equally deserving of both its glories (such as they are) and its shames, Carroll’s real rhetorical transgression here—over and above the shots he takes at veterans—is to insist, against all reason and in the face of the billions of words spilled in its defense, that no one is able to say why we are fighting in Iraq. Which, like the rest of his piece, is utter nonsense.
That Carroll has decided to cover his ears to the arguments of war supporters and instead engage in a verbal offensive of strained prose he hopes will cow the ignorant pro-war masses into questioning their own convictions, speaks to his own prejudices and anti-intellectualism.
Sadly, it seems such is all many on the anti-war left have to offer these days.
(via The New Editor, which has much more; see also, Ace, Wizbang, and Say Anything)
Jeebus.
I thought “Hey, did I read this guy’s column earlier?” Turns out I did, sort of, here:
http://blamebush.typepad.com/blamebush/2005/07/libert_galit_fr.html
America, Fuck Yeah!
And fuck Carroll if he don’t like it!
Turing: held, as in maybe he wasn’t held enough by his parents.
without being remotely able to say why.
Maybe he is remotely able to say why. But I have a feeling he isn’t remotely able to say why Gitmo is different from the Soviet gulag, either. So, probably not a good gauge of the nation’s ability to say why we’re at war.
s/b Maybe he is not remotely able to say why.
pimf!
“What would the Rosenthal (Marine Iwo Jima flag raising) image be if the Marines had lost their arms?”
What a clueless twerp. All but two of the Marines in that timeless image were killed in subsequent combat at Iwo Jima. They knew the reason they were fighting. I daresay they knew why they were fighting, as do our service men and women do today.
What’s really sad is that he invokes the kind of language reserved for describing the youth of Europe during and after WW1– a “lost” generation that had been robbed of its “flower and bloom”.
Except, of course, we suffered 120,000 casualties in nine months during our involvement in WW1, thanks to a Democratic President who promised to “keep us out of the war.” Its pretty clear why the left has nothing more to offer at this point than the emotional appeals such language wroughts– they no longer have any logical basis for their support of a medieval philosophy that has as little place for them as it does for any modern sensibility. As Zarqawi reported at Iowahawk, “Just because we plan to kill you last doesn’t make you our buddy.”
Hey, Carroll, thanks a bunch for pissing all over my grandpa’s service in the Pacific, you clueless fucking twerp. “Refusals” to take prisoners? If you’d ever even watched 10 minutes of the History Channel, you’d know that the Japanese generally refused to surrender, you cock-sucking moron. And that air war sure was pretty “savage,” what with Kamikaze pilots flying planes full of fuel and explosives into the decks of ships like the ones my grandpa served on, you fuckwit.
Carroll, you’re not worthy enough to wipe the asses of any veterans, least of all the HEROES of the Hell that was the Pacific in WWII.
James Carroll, pathetic little cunt.
“it may help to recall that America has never been an innocent nation” writes Carroll. Yes, Mr. Carroll, that line certainly does “help” explain why you write such vile garbage. You loathe your own country.
This piece is one of the most self-despising, idiotic rants I have ever read. It also bears all the hallmarks of contemporary moonbat thinking about Americans at war: we must always fight by Marquis of Queensbury rules, and never, never celebrate victory, or honor those who fight for us because, because, . . . war is bad, and unless our combatants are victims, they are evil too.
These people are soooo tedious—go tell it to the Marines, you JERK.
Unending war, implicit glorification???
Will these geezer 60s has-beens ever shut up??
The history of Man has been, and his future will be, primarily shaped by two simple facts:
1) You can’t have a unilateral negotiation.
2) You can have a unilateral ass whoopin’
It is beyond me why that is so hard for so many people to grasp.
The Americans in the Pacific War, not heroes?
Wonder what Mr. Carroll thinks of the man who provided sanctuary to hundreds of Chinese civilians, all of whom would have been slaughtered in the Nanjing massacre? I mean, George Rosen was a Nazi diplomat. So, is he better or worse than the sailors and marines who beat the IJA? This might be a real poser for some lefties, who have been consciousness-raised right out of their effin’ wits.
Turing = century, as in Jeez! Some people spent the bulk of their entire adult lives in the twentieth century and didn’t learn anything!
BURSTING IN AIR is NOT a glorification of war as much as a symbol of it’s horror… The song itself is a song about perseverance and our ability to endure.
I swear, the author of that piece has GOT to be white.
*without being remotely able to say wh*
I am honestly to the point where I want to violently shake anyone who repeats that memme.
Its been explained, ad naseum. If you don’t agree with finding and killing terrorists WHEREVER THEY ARE then say that instead of “I don’t know why the imperialist chickenhawk warmongers are advocating the killing of innocent peace loving brown people”
Here’s the key graf:
As our president demonstrated last week, we have become a people who wage unending warâ€â€killing and maiming our young ones and theirsâ€â€without being remotely able to say why.
A more compact exposition of the failings of the post-modern Left I have yet to find.
1. Intellectual infantilism. Carroll refuses to engage his intellectual opponents by dismissing the possibility that they even have an argument for their position at all.
2. Dismissive elitism. It is no longer the Chimpler who uses the jack-booted thugs of the Marines and Army to subjugate the poor huddled masses of the Middle East, it is you and I, it is the Kalamazoo housewife, the Shreveport bartender, the Topeka barber who have lost their moral bearings and lash out at an imaginary enemy, becoming brute barbarian murderers in the process.
3. Narcissistic self-righteousness. The bourgeois American masses can succumb to the blandishments of a Chimpler or a Cheney McHitlerburton but not I, NOT I, the philosopher-king who casts a pox on both houses from the security of an office protected by the most powerful military in the history of planet Earth.
I almost feel sorry for the old codger.
Almost.
I am honestly to the point where I want to violently shake anyone who repeats that memme.
That would be a form of child abuse.
“Innocence is wasted on me. I don’t believe in it.” –Roscoe Lee Browne, THE COWBOYS