Though its name (Red America) sounds vaguely like some Tony Kushner one-acter that imagines a forbidden tryst between Joseph McCarthy and Lillian Hellman (“He Loved His Country, But He Loved Her Communist Dewpatch Even More!”), in actuality it is the moniker of the Washington Post‘s spanking new political blog. Run by RedState co-founder Ben Domenech, former Capitol Hill political journalist, contributing editor to National Review Online, and—after 9/11, the youngest political appointee of President George W. Bush, the blog promises to provide some ideological balance against, say, MSNBC’s collection of frothing progressives, Kevin Drum’s (sometimes measured, sometimes not) Washington Monthly, and Andrew Sullivan’s Time -backed “Daily Dish,” best described as pro-Kerry, anti-GOP conservatism.
Ben describes the venture this way. From “Pachyderms in the Mist: Red America and the MSM”:
This is a blog for the majority of Americans.
Since the election of 1992, the extreme political left has fought a losing battle. Their views on the economy, marriage, abortion, guns, the death penalty, health care, welfare, taxes, and a dozen other major domestic policy issues have been exposed as unpopular, unmarketable and unquestioned losers at the ballot box.
Democrats who have won major elections since 1992 have, with very few exceptions, been the ones who distanced themselves from the shrieking denizens of their increasingly extreme base, soft-pedaled their positions on divisive issues and adopted the rhetoric and positions of the right—pro-free market, pro-business, pro-faith, tough on crime and strongly in favor of family values.
Yet even in a climate where Republicans hold command of every branch of government, and advocate views shared by a majority of voters, the mainstream media continues to treat red state Americans as pachyderms in the mist – an alien and off-kilter group of suburbanite churchgoers about which little is known, and whose natural habitat is a discomforting place for even the most hardened reporter from the New York Times.
[…]
While the mainstream media has been slow to recognize the growth in conservative America, smart Democrats have not. Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner and Hillary Clinton are not alone in recognizing that the unhinged elements of their base, motivated by partisan rage, Michael Moore conspiracies and a pronounced feeling of victimhood have dragged down the Democratic Party for far too long. It’s a political anchor apotheosized by the founders of leftist websites Daily Kos and MyDD, whose recently published book on political strategy and the Internet (an odd publication when one considers that DKos endorsed candidates are 0-19 in elections) opens with the sentence “Five years ago, the Republicans took over the government through nondemocratic means.” Smart Democrats read this kind of rhetoric and recognize that if they continue to be the party of Howard Dean, the floor may be nonexistent.
The reason there are political openings for these neo-triangulation strategies, however, is almost entirely the fault of Republican leadership. On issue after issue, Republicans have given in to the wisdom of the MSM and the beltway talking heads instead of listening to their constituents and the conservative political base. On the size of government, on immigration and on issues of federal power, Republicans have adopted the same Washington strategies that doomed the Democrats in the 1994 cycle, as this article yesterday illustrates. They’ve grown fat and happy on pork contracts, and forgotten why they were sent to this town in the first place.
Even President Bush is guilty of this—would a White House that put principle before patronization, listened to its base, and remained focused on election season ever make the gargantuan mistake of nominating Harriet Miers? Of course not—and smart Democrats are determined to use this split to their advantage.
Red America’s citizens are the political majority. They’re here to stay. It’s time to start paying attention to what they believe and why.
If I could presume to add to Ben’s opening salvo, I’d note that, though it is evident from the left-liberals who comment here that they believe “conservatives” (which they often use as an all-purpose term) are a monolithic group of Jesus-worshipping gun humpers who place greed and piety before the good of the poor and oppressed, so-called “Red Staters” are in fact a far more diverse group, ranging from the hard-core social conservatives to classical liberals to the type of libertarians who, though they wish to nothing more than to legalize heroin and read the dirty parts of Ayn Rand novels, nevertheless wish to do so in a sovereign nation—and so support a strong military and a robust foreign policy that doesn’t wait on permission from the Chinese or the Russians or the French to act.
In short, we are an incredibly diverse bunch—and our voting bloc, to put it mildly, is but a marriage of convenience: Democrats, even those who try to hang around the political center, are either unelectable to their party base, or else are forced to make a number of concessions to that base that many of us on the right find abhorent and, from a Constitutional perspective, anti-individualist (and so philosophically “anti-American”). And so voting for them isn’t even an option.
But having said that, Ben is absolutely correct to note that the current national GOP has too often capitulated to the advice of Washington insiders—a function of adapting to the insular power politics scene of the Beltway elite that tends to affect any party in power. And these capitulations have alienated them from their own base on a number of key issues upon which almost all strains of “conservatism” agree: the need for smaller government, less spending (or, perhaps, better spending), and a legal conservatism in the judiciary, one that will interpret the law rather than finesse it to fit a preconceived state of socially engineered utopian life guidelines.
On this last point, Bush—though he had to suffer the ignominy of the Miers debacle—has been successful, and should he manage to place one more legal conservative on the Supreme Court during his second term, his changing of the SCOTUS could very well prove to be his most important legacy. Although a middle east beginning to slough of the cold skin of tyranny ain’t bad, either.
In any event, I look forward to the new site. And I recommend giving it a try if you haven’t already done so.
Did you say something, Jeff? I was busy worshipping Jesus and humping one of my many firearms.
Mmmmmmmmm…firearms.
So far, it doesn’t appear that an open comment thread is planned. Hell, that’s 99% of the fun!
The other side has a marriage of convenience also. It has a hard time functioning though because of the high proportion of fucked up components.
I love ya Jeff, but I must do this…
Did you really put two dashed clauses together, back to back? I’ve never seen that before in my entire year of literacy.
Still love ya.
Sorry, I was momentarily distracted by the sexy new Dyson.
Never loses suction. At least, not so far.
Hey, Jeff, could I borrow a cup, er..couple of your homos? I’ve got a new Ruger .44 Magnum that I want to try out.
I’ll pay you back the second Tuesday of next week.
Duncan Black isn’t being fair to Jeff.
“Since the election of 1992”? The turning point was 1980, at the latest. The Dems just didn’t realize it till ‘92 (which would explain the Mondale and Dukakis debacles).
Ben! Are you, by chance, French? The French are always prepared for the last war. As you post about all of the non-represented conservatives, they are disappearing. I was one of them. I am a regular church attender, an evangelical, a hunter and fisherman, married with three children, and I cannot think of a worse President nor a worse group of crooks than the Republican’s we have in office. My take is that the press is so fearful of loosing a big interview or oherwise get into trouble with these monsters that they aren’t investigating them nor investigating their press releases nor are they telling us the whole story. An example? The last TWO claims of twarting a terrorist attack were nothing more than crib sheets from a whacko website occupied by a buch of Islamic nutcases (http://www.jihadunspun.net/newsarchive/ and http://www.muslims.net/index.php/Main_Page). Anyone with a home PC can, thus, do as good a job of uncovering “terrorist plots” as our entire intelligence community. And where is this being reported in the MSM? Hum? We are sick to death of being lied to about the state of the economy. It is awful! Rolling into the jobs reports numbers “guest workers” here on H1-B and L series visa’s, rolling into them jobs created by American companies OFFSHORE and not employing even ONE American worker sort of makes us mistrust those figures. And where is this being reported in the MSM? Certsainly not in the Washington Post! Being lied to about enlistment quota’s being met when we have a huge board in our church with men being FORCED to serve three, sometimes four, tours of duty in Iraq, being illegally transferred from a branch of the service they signed up for to another branch (say – as an Army nurse being made into a Marine combat medic like MY SON). In our church, we have returning veteran who tell a very different story than we hear in the media. Our Iraqi “allies” steal everything that isn’t tied down. Much of what are called “terrorists” are simply crooks who will sell a captured solder or civilian to the highest bidder. Wounded verteran are treated like anuimals – one man in our church was dumped into the active reserves and his family had to pick up the expenses for his wounds incurred in Iraq. A young man had most of his face and his entire lower jaw blown off, lost his new wife and child, and the VA wont pay for counseling, much less most of his medical needs. And that is isn’t being reported in the MSM either! We are sick to death of delusional thinking and just want Bush and his people gone. No one believes Rove’s garbage about Bush’s “faith” any longer, that silly book “The Faith Of George Bush” has been pulled from the shelves of every Christian bookstore in the country. A lot of people, formerly the same fundimentalist who supported him, think he is the actual anti-Christ right now.
And I say this as someone who voted for Bush. He ought to be REALLY glad that we canot recall him like a can of bad fish.
See guys, we have our nuts too. Can’t we get along?
Yet surely it’s being reported by their local newspapers—perhaps you’d be kind enough to link us to one of those stories.
TW: I smell a movement, and not the popular kind.
“You don’t wanna fuck with me, boy – I got me a FULL LOAD of bat-shit crazy on board!”
— My DI
I find it very annoying that, as a life long Republican, practically every pundit including this guy says I’m anti-abortion. When will this circle jerk between conservative pundits and the religious right end? Conservatism would win every time if it weren’t for the lip service for limited government except for pseudo-conservative ideals.
I wonder which Army Mr. Brooks is speaking of? Sure doesn;t sound like the one I’m in…you know, the US Army.
Anyway, I fear that Red America will end up like Comments Unlimited in the Grauniad. A nice little corner for those to the right of Mao to go play. Then the WaPo can say, “see, we have balance!” I sure hope I am wrong.
A great article on how the IRaq War has a very small death toll compared to historical wars.
See what happens, Jeff? You mess with the bull, you get the bullshit.
Dear Mike:
I think you made up 90% of that comment and I can’t tell what the other 10% might be.
Sorry. I’m just sayin’.
Fred, John –
The usual tractics of right wing nuts is to attack the facts of anyone disagreeing with them, or even anyone reporting someting they find troubling; thereafter they engage in attacks on the persons integrity. These tactics were drawn up by Karl Rove, who actually read about them in college when he was studying Joseph Goebel’s writings on propaganda. I am not at all certain, but I certainly wouldn’t put it past the RNC to have you two on their payroll, doing this sort of stuff for a living. That you would choose to associate yourselves with Nazi’s is typical of the few nut cases on the right that remain.
As for what I state, I assure you it is the U.S. Army and it is all too true. My son was recruited as a nursing major from college. He signed up becasue he was told by the recruiting officer he would serve as a trama room nurse. The U.S. Army made him intoi a medic immediately following bootcamp. When his mother and I complained, he was moved to Ramadi. When we wrote our Congressman (Peter DefAzio, who can confirm every biut of this and is further trying to get some answers) our son was re-assigned to a Marine Combat unit. Now, he is doing daily patrol in a 12 man squad, dressed as an Army Medic, armed only with a handgun. Now, any thinking individual will understand that all of this is the direct result of this government, the government of the United States, using it’s ower to twart any and all criticism of it and its actions.
Well, I haven’t seen this Sweeney Todd-like allegation used before against Dubya, so you have to give points for that.
Hey Fred, you may already be aware of this, but something called MCCS1977 is commenting using your name on the Hitchens thread.
I’m with Fred. You’re full of shit, Mike. Document or STFU!
Glad to see someone pandering to us. About time!
That’s why there are no red ideas in the national press. Right.
Now…Larry, Fred, and John….
If you think I am going to post my sons name on the this web site, knowing what I know now, that the evil zealots ruling this country would place his life in further jepardy, you are just plain crazy. As for everything else, it is sadly true and easily verified by anyone who reads or listens to a media outlet beyond FOX news. For now, I and others pray that you will come to know Christ and will see that your lives do not need to be lived wallowing in hatred and filth. God can lift that burden from you but you have to open yourselves up to it.
Mike,
Quick thing to point out, is that being assigned with a Marine unit is not anywhere near the same thing as being transferred from one branch to the other “illegally”. Without belaboring details, cross-attachment has a long history.
The other, admittedly, nit-picky point, is that the Marines don’t have medics. Those responsibilities are performed by Navy Corpsmen.
While I’m thinking of it, your line:
I imagine you might want to rephrase that. It appears that you’re upset with the idea of people making arguments based on facts, or with people pointing out when an argument isn’t based on fact – merely supposition.
BRD
*I am not at all certain, but I certainly wouldn’t put it past the RNC to have you two on their payroll, doing this sort of stuff for a living. *
You are a fucking psycho. Could you remove the tin foil hat please ?
Also, soldiers go where they’re sent. Mom/Dad don’t generally get a say so in where son/daughter is stationed. Thought you should know that.
Noting the quantum goal post shift re your son between your 12:27 and 1:12 posts pretty well confirms to me you’re full of shit, Mike. No one expects you to expose your son to nuts, but nice try on distraction. How about some, like, um, facts regarding your other bullshit allegations?
*For now, I and others pray that you will come to know Christ and will see that your lives do not need to be lived wallowing in hatred and filth. *
I know Christ and shockingly, as a conservative, I find myself wallowing in substantially less hatred and filth then I do say, visiting KOS’s site for an hour, where Bush is called Hitler and the troops (including your son) are called Nazis.
For now, I and others pray that you will come to know that you are batshit insane and will see that your lives do not need to be lived walloing in the hatred and filth that has become the modern day democratic party.
Mike wrote:
“Now…Larry, Fred, and John….
If you think I am going to post my sons name on the this web site, knowing what I know now, that the evil zealots ruling this country would place his life in further jepardy, you are just plain crazy. As for everything else, it is sadly true and easily verified by anyone who reads or listens to a media outlet beyond FOX news. For now, I and others pray that you will come to know Christ and will see that your lives do not need to be lived wallowing in hatred and filth. God can lift that burden from you but you have to open yourselves up to it.”
I pray for your son’s safety. However as the wife of a Army reservists I have to question your account. There is no illegal transfers between Military branches it happens often and is not out of the ordinary.
As for signing up for one thing and getting another, well that is life. My husband is serving in a post other than what he trained for.
He believes in what we are doing in Iraq and has VOLUNTEERED to extend his tour from one year to three years. We have given up our cushy civilian lifes to do this. I am assuming your son volunteered for whatever reason but the bottom line is that he volunteered.
I feel for you and understand your pain but you are not endearing any one to your cause with your attacks and conspiracy theories. Calling others you disagree with “ right wing nut[s]” makes you seem like the one “wallowing in hatred and filth”. I know that it is hard to take a step back and look at the situation rationally when your emotions are in high-gear. But if you want others to at least understand and perhaps side with your argument you need to do so.
I will keep your son in my prayers as I do for all our men and women serving in harms way.
Bravo Romeo Delta,
Thank you foir the additonal information, this has been my point to begin with. So, pray tell, why is my son, an ARMY NURSE, serving as a COMBAT MEDIC with the Marine’s? I submit, it is for one of two reasons, and this is why Congressman DeFazio is investigating this to begin with – either (a) this action was taken to punish my wiofe and myself for our vocal opposition to Mr. Bush and this insane war or (2) the Bush Administration and the Pentagon are outright lying about their meeting manpower requirements. The people at my church and my neighbors believe it is for both of these reasons. However, any way you look at it, something is wrong with this and the MSM, even though I have offered to send them documentation (and they could always call Congressman DeFazio’s Office, too) wont touch this story. Let’s see: I’ve written to Senator Clinton, Senator Kerry, Senator Smith, Senator Wyden, Congressman DeFazio, the Inspector Generals Office at the Pentagon, The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, NBC News, CBS News, Joe Scarborough, the Portland Oregonian, and I can’t rememeber who else. So far, Congressman DefAzio answered and actually investigated this and has uncovered what we know. Oh, and I got a form email solicitation from the Kerry Campaign for money. That’s it!
So, please don’t confuse me for a Democratic operative or a liberal; I have pretty much given up on them, too. If I did not have faith in God, I don’t know what I would do right now.
Great to see Ben blogging over there in the belly of the beast. The Washington Post has been hemorraging money since going over to a more liberal editor a few years back. This isn’t going to stop that, obviously, but it is a step in the right direction.
The next step would be HONEST coverage about Iraq and a science correspondent who correctly refers to the big bang and evolution as theories. But one step at a time, I suppose.
Sure, Mike, the Pentagon has a special office that reassigns personnel based on the political opinions of their parents. To be honest, you pegged yourself as seriously disturbed when you pulled out the Nazi shit.
Oh, and I call BS on another thing: You’ve contacted a laundry list of politicians, reporters, etc. about your son but won’t provide any facts here. Just what did you expect the reporters to do? They would have published the facts you gave them.
If you really have a son in the military, I wish him the very best, and hope the problems his parents are having aren’t causing him any distress.
Ayn Rand novels have dirty parts?
[all that onanism? You BETCHA!]
What do they use now to refer to widely accepted and repeatedly tested principles with explanatory power?
yeah, i gotta chime in on the something smelly about Mr. Brooks’ tale. Maybe you could try appealing to some milbloggers? the thing is, too much of your story sounds made up/paranoid. as others have already stated, it’s not uncommon for people to be reassigned. and maybe most personell needs are being met, except for the area your son is in? i don’t know. but anyone who expects to join the military and not see combat should have their head examined.
Theories.
See also “Theory of Relativity”.
Jeff,
Why did you change “lovebox” to “dewpatch”? Do you have standards or something?
Mike,
Enlisting in the Army and being assigned to another branch is quite common indeed. Perhaps a different way of asking the question is this – does he now wear a Marine uniform? What is the name of the paying agency on his paychecks? Department of the _____? For instance, there are Air Force personnel who serve in Army units.
There is no, and never has been, any sort of cordon sanitare around branches which prohibit people from being assigned to units based on the needs of the military.
BRD
Right. But leonidas said the WAPO doesn’t use the word “theory.” So I ask what they DO use.
I’ve been Googling every combination of DeFazio, soldier, reassignment, Brooks, Marine, medic and Iraq that I can think of, and I come up with zilch. Nada. Goose-egg.
Nothing in the national press. Nothing in the Oregon press. Nothing in the Eugene locals. Nothing in the activist newsgroups. Nothing at all.
Either Mike Brooks is the victim of the most successful cover-up operation in the history of Western press, or he’s a delusional paranoid who really needs to remember to take his meds every day.
TW: That’s a hour of my life I’d like to have back.
I think the WaPo avoids the term theory with the following construction:
Or just someone attempting to screw with the regular commenters here ala DougJ. I think there has been quite a bit of that lately, and its a shame considering Jeff provides well thoughtout, sourced, and enjoyable posts on a daily basis, and these juviniles find it nescessary to throw around nothing more than electronic grafitti. This person seemed like a spoof from the beginning, but like someone pointed out up-thread, the Nazi reference probably clued most folks in on the “joke”. Nice try though, “Mike”.
*he’s a delusional paranoid who really needs to remember to take his meds every day.*
Yeah, I think I’m going with option B on this one.
Conspiracy? Maybe. I certainly wouldn’t put much of anything past some of the evil men and women serving with this President, but for the most part I think it is simply a matter of not caring. To begin with, if you post something like this, ytou will end up with the right wing lunatics attacking it because it makes their side look bad (sort of like a ruling by an umpire in a game against THEIR team…and with an equivalent amount of meaning). By the time it makes it through that mill, ANYTHING at all looks suspect. These are the same sorts of people that Christ appeared to those people slandered Him, cast doubt on what he said, and condemned themselves and many who listened to them. I think I am wasting my time here. I was merely trying to make a point that what the right calls the MSM isn’t liberal, it is merely self serving. And, I wanted to point out that the conservative movement appears to be pretty spent because more and more people see it as morally bankrupt. It has always been nothing more than a small group of people who were very good at misleading large groups of people and, njow, that people are seeing them for what they are, it will end up on the garbage heap of history. Now, clearly, you could say the same thing of “liberalism”, and it certainly appears to be in it’s death throws, but that was not the point of this.
As an aside, I am no “traditional creationist”, but the most recent observations about the “Big Bang” have got me to wondering. If “the wall” for the speed of matter is the speed of light (the mass appoaches infinite as you approach the speed of light) AND considering that in a nano-second is about 16 inches AND considering that the current theory is that the universe expanded to it’s present size (several billion light years across) in under a nanosecond? Seems to me that scientists have just discovered that everything they ever thought about physcis is just plain wrong or they have just discovered the first miracle.
The Left has two basic problems:
1) Their base is made of competing interest groups who have shed their centrists and become quite extreme and loud.
2) They’ve become reactionaries. Bush is for removing Hussein? They’re against it! Bush is for democracy? They’re against it! This is the same thing that happened to Republicans in the Clinton years.
This is mitigated somewhat by generally favorable press coverage, but a crutch never signifies strength, and that crutch is getting weaker and weaker as the gatekeepers become more diverse.
I certainly wouldn’t put much of anything past some of the evil men and women serving with this President
Aha! Exactly what I’m talking about.
Remember the Clinton Death List? That’s what these people remind me of.
It’s sad in a way, but in another war it’s very very funny…
Mike wrote:
What part of “It is not uncommon for Military reassignments to occur” do you not understand?
You don’t get it do you? People here think you are sitting at your computer wearing a tin foil cap. Statement’s like “this action was taken to punish my wiofe and myself for our vocal opposition to Mr. Bush and this insane war” are outrageous and absolutely inane. My husband and I support the Iraq War and President Bush yet he is still in a position that he didn’t “train” for. The Army thought his skills would be better used in a different capacity. So your argument that the Bushies are out to get you is full of holes.
I am curious, how does your son feel about your involvement in this matter? If you really want to help your son you need to let go of the emotional arguments, the insane rhetoric and arm yourself with the facts. You aren’t going to get very far with conspiracy theories and “nazi” comments.
If “the wall†for the speed of matter is the speed of light (the mass appoaches infinite as you approach the speed of light) AND considering that in a nano-second is about 16 inches AND considering that the current theory is that the universe expanded to it’s present size (several billion light years across) in under a nanosecond? Seems to me that scientists have just discovered that everything they ever thought about physcis is just plain wrong or they have just discovered the first miracle.
No, you just don’t understand physics. The speed of light applies to movement of matter within space. Inflationary cosmology involves the expansion of space itself. Similarly, very distant objects in the universe at this time have apparent relative velocities many multiples of the speed of light due to the expansion of space between them.
Its still on the web, actually.
Mike,
Quick question, is your son enlisted or comissioned?
Thanks,
BRD
And to think I thought the Giant Pander was still over at the National Zoo!
I think Mike just solidly planted himself in Victorino territory.
Andrew Sullivan’s Time blog, best be described as pro-Kerry, anti-GOP conservatism.
Cultist.
BTW, firestorm ensues over new red blog. Liberals, once again, are pissed a “paper” would give Conservatives freedom of speech.
wow. a job at the wapo.com == freedom of speech.
I have become of the opinion that the baby Panda should have been named “Ying Ling”
From the statement actus has made, he apparently doesn’t like the idea of the WaPo giving a conservative a place to speak.
Shocking.
They have conservatives all the time. Its hard not to when they have 2 and arguably 3 branches of the government. But I’m shocked at the freedom of spee rationale. The guy runs redstate.org! And even if he didn’t, freedom of speech is what gets one in the post?!
Bravo Romeo Delta,
He is enlisted. He signed up and was recruited with the idea of helping the soldiers that have been wounded in this awful conflict. What I cannot understand is how the Army could so misuse someone with his training. It doesn’t make any sense. Beyond that, why on earth would they send him out on combat patrols with Marines when he has not been trained in their methods of combat, unarmed (well, armed with a 9mm pistol), different clothing, no body armor, etc. It doesn’t make any sense. If it’s not holding our son as hostage, an act of terrorism if you will, then what is it?
*buzz* no, i’m sorry, thanks for playing.
i know quite a few who have been over there both military and contractors and they don’t “let” much less “make” anyone go ANYWHERE, particularly outside a camp with armor.
I call bullshit!! Who is this guy, Jeff. Are we being spammed by DougJ?
As a former Marine doing recon patrols in Nam, I call bullshit! There is no way in hell that a Marine Combat Patrol would even allow a Corpsman (or medic) travel without armor. In my day he was the second most important (Comm man first) person out there.
Umm, a “nurse” in the Army is a commissioned rank, isn’t it? (I learned that from MASH)… Sounds to me that either your son is giving you a slightly bogus story or you’re not understanding what he’s doing.
Maggie’s right, based on every milblogger I’ve read going off-base without armor would be a serious violation of the rules. Also, generally “hostages” don’t volunteer.
The whole thing is a little fishy.
Tell us, Mike, was your son ever sent on a secret mission to Cambodia over Christmas? Was a lucky hat involved?
Mike,
I can understand being apprehensive, but the deal is that the military can guarantee an enlistee their MOS. And he signed as a nurse, he got his MOS, and that’s that. Past that, where you go, what your actual job is and all that are first and foremost subject to the needs and requirements of the service.
Full stop.
As a nurse, he’s doing stuff that falls in the purview of his training, and there you go. But I’ll tell you something else. With the military there’s no administrative provision for turning down jobs because it falls outside of the definition of one’s training.
So far, you’ve provided no argument that he’s anything other than cross-attached as a combat medic to a marine unit, and is serving substantially within the bounds of his MOS. Furthermore, if, as you say, that he enlisted with the intention of helping those who are wounded in this conflict, I would imagine that going from “helping” to saving the lives of people who would otherwise die from combat injuries right there on the spot can’t be too much of a moral disappointment.
As to the rest of the assertions about equipment, and so on, I am going to remain mute.
BRD
Mike,
Marine uniforms are different from Army uniforms but not by that much. However, the claim about the body armor or lack of it is ridiculous. As someone mentioned earlier in the thread NO ONE leaves the base camp without body armor. There isn’t a commander on the ground who is willing to risk his personnel by sending them out unprotected. Mind you, the medic is probably one of the most important members of a combat team and it is unimaginable that he would be the least protected member of the team. I just don’t buy it.
As for your terrorists and hostage remark, that simply boggles the mind. Are you calling our Armed Forces terrorists? Does your son believe himself to be a hostage? Can you honestly sit at your computer, type these words and believe them? If so let me explain the difference. Hostages do not volunteer themselves up for Terrorists. Terrorists seek hostages and then kill them. Are you saying that the Armed Forces are operating as terrorists? If so, I feel very sorry for you. You are starting to come off a bit like Ms. Sheehan and I am quickly losing any sympathy I had for you.
On a closing note, you never did answer my question: How does your son feel about your involvement in his “re-assignment” case?
That’s a common misconception. You’re thinking in Newtonian terms, as if the big bang exploded into a vast empty space that was already there when in fact the theory states that space itself is part of what so rapidly expanded in the first brief increments of time.
If anybody is interested in this kind of stuff, “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene does a pretty good job of explaining things. Plus I hear he has a follow-up on the way (The Fabric of the Universe? Something like that).
Mr. Brooks is suddenly quiet……..
I call double B.S. Army Nurses are commissioned officers. Period. No body armor – double Ha. Even the local national interpreters got freakin’ armor and helmets…
(You know, if you keep giving attention to this kind of trolling, then more of this kind of trolling is what you’ll get.)
On the one hand it sounds like a nice group to be part of.
On the other hand if any of the ‘other’ people are actually thinking, then what could they possibly be thinking of to drive them away from rationally working for “a sovereign nationâ€â€and so support a strong military and a robust foreign policy that doesn’t wait on permission from the Chinese or the Russians or the French to act.”
I wonder what junior’s MOS is, according to Mikey…
Getting back on thread though, I find myself in a conundrum. I disregard everything the WAPO has to say as a priori bull puckey. The WAPO just started a conservative blog.
Landru, help me…
An army medic with a Marine unit? Did the Navy stop producing Corpsmen? They were still training them at Great Lakes as of a couple years ago.
Sumthing musta happened.
I was at Great Lakes last month – still there and churning out Navy EMs…
Mike’s just recounting his hallucinations from his most recent extacy binge.