"laestadian, apostolic, gay, lgbtq, ex-oalc, ex-llc, llc, oalc, bunner" LEARNING TO LIVE FREE: Where is the Country?

Monday, August 18, 2008

Where is the Country?

Above, retired army colonel and conservative historian Andrew Bacevich, whose son was killed in Iraq. See the whole interview or read the transcripts here. Highly recommended.
There are many people who say they support the troops, and they really mean it. But when it comes, really, down to understanding what does it mean to support the troops? It needs to mean more than putting a sticker on the back of your car.

I don't think we actually support the troops. We the people. What we the people do is we contract out the business of national security to approximately 0.5 percent of the population. About a million and a half people that are on active duty.

And then we really turn away. We don't want to look when they go back for two or three or four or five combat tours. That's not supporting the troops. That's an abdication of civic responsibility. And I do think it - there's something fundamentally immoral about that.

Again, as I tried to say, I think the global war on terror, as a framework of thinking about policy, is deeply defective. But if one believes in the global war on terror, then why isn't the country actually supporting it? In a meaningful substantive sense?

Where is the country?

1 comment:

  1. This is interesting. I read the transcript today, along with the biographical information on Andrew Bacevich. He reminds me of Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, and Russell Kirk, and sure enough - "Leviathan" is mentioned in Kirk's "Ten Convervative Principles".

    The conservatism that he is talking about is not the neocon focus on foreign policy, but one that is more isolationist. This is what Ron Paul has been talking about. It's interesting that Bacevich will vote for Obama rather than Paul or a third party candidate. I gather he thinks that the Democrat party is the only hope of withdrawing from the war, and changing the direction of our foreign policy. I don't know if that will happen.. as he himself said - nothing changed with the last several Presidents whether they were Republican or Democrat. He voted for every Democrat he could in 2006, the Democrats became the majority, and yet nothing changed.

    I do agree with the conservative principles as he presented them, but I don't know if it's possible to steer the country in that direction.

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