Right wing ragers to troops - frag 'em
By Libby
Like Andrew Sullivan, I didn't really pay much attention to the Scott Thomas tempest the armchair warriors have been brewing up for the last week or so. But now that reliable White House apologist, the WaPo's own Howard Kurtz, has piled on, it's worth noting how truly pathetic they've become as they attack even the most inconsequential challenge to their crumbling alternate reality.
As Digby points out in her eloquent post, the stories Private Beauchamp had to tell were ugly, but hardly the worst accounts of war atrocities ever aired in the history of mankind. War is ugly and good men sometimes do bad things when put under extreme duress. Wow. Who would have thought that could happen?
Typical of the rager's response is UncleDimbo Jimbo who ominously warns the soldier to watch his back and promises John Cole a good beatdown for daring to defend the man's reporting. I guess that beats the hell out of consciously processing the real war news of the day. That being Pat Tillman was murdered by his fellow troops.
Yeah, the same Pat Tillman who was hailed as an exemplary American by these very wingnuts when his death was spun by the Pentagon as a heroic charge against the enemy. Now that evidence clearly proves Tillman was fragged, what do we hear from the outraged right? Sound of crickets.
Only one armchair warrior weighed in and he basically says, yeah he was fragged and the leftist commie deserved it and his brother should be next. In the good old days we would have beat his ass out of commission before he a commission to serve.
These are your self-styled true patriots folks. These paragons of keyboard courage are fighting for your freedoms, as long as you don't use them to contradict their carefully constructed fantasies.
Like Andrew Sullivan, I didn't really pay much attention to the Scott Thomas tempest the armchair warriors have been brewing up for the last week or so. But now that reliable White House apologist, the WaPo's own Howard Kurtz, has piled on, it's worth noting how truly pathetic they've become as they attack even the most inconsequential challenge to their crumbling alternate reality.
As Digby points out in her eloquent post, the stories Private Beauchamp had to tell were ugly, but hardly the worst accounts of war atrocities ever aired in the history of mankind. War is ugly and good men sometimes do bad things when put under extreme duress. Wow. Who would have thought that could happen?
Typical of the rager's response is Uncle
Yeah, the same Pat Tillman who was hailed as an exemplary American by these very wingnuts when his death was spun by the Pentagon as a heroic charge against the enemy. Now that evidence clearly proves Tillman was fragged, what do we hear from the outraged right? Sound of crickets.
Only one armchair warrior weighed in and he basically says, yeah he was fragged and the leftist commie deserved it and his brother should be next. In the good old days we would have beat his ass out of commission before he a commission to serve.
These are your self-styled true patriots folks. These paragons of keyboard courage are fighting for your freedoms, as long as you don't use them to contradict their carefully constructed fantasies.
posted by Libby Spencer at 2:00 PM
12 Comments:
And it may be they killed him for not believing in their god.
At the moment I'm so angry, it's better that I not continue.
So, there's no doubt that they murdered him? No doubt whatsoever?
Of course there's doubt. That it was murder is only conjecture at this point, but every legal case begins with conjecture, which leads to investigation, etc.
There are several points to be made.
1. the uninterrupted lack of cooperation and the constant obfuscation and withholding of information suggest there's something bad to hide.
2. the various lies about what happened suggest there's something bad to hide.
3. the fact of three shots between the eyes at close range don't suggest "friendly" fire, nor do other facts.
4. The trashing of someone who until now was a supreme war hero, simply because he doesn't believe in the Government Issue God is unrelated but supremely disgusting.
The hysterical hatred Christian America has for infidels goes unnoticed by those who do so much to promote it, but where I live, if you don't believe, you'd better carry a gun - and I do.
No doubt in my mind anon, though I'll admit it hasn't been proven. I doubt it will ever will be considering the scope of the coverup.
Fogg, I forgot he was an atheist. I suspect his fragging had something to do with both that and his anti-occupation views.
justin raimondo had a column on this yesterday. the right wingers are furious that their cartoon character "the troops" actually have good and bad human emotions and actions.
wv- yaxlwag
Really Lester. I think Digby is right. These people who love the manliness of war but are afraid to fight themselves have turned the troops into a sort of GI Joe force in their minds.
raimondo:
"According to the neocon party line, if you don't support the war, the "surge," and Our Glorious Leader, then you don't support the troops – and yet, when one of these heroes writes a true account of what it's like out in the field, the devotees of their cult on the home front are suddenly contemptuous of "the troops" – or, at least, this particular soldier, who is now being demonized as little short of a traitor – if not a Stephen Glass-in-fatigues – by all right-thinking neocon clones.
It's pathetic, really, to see how quickly these strutting little militarists turn on the military, when one of them fails to live up to the mythic image so carefully nurtured by the War Party. Robert D. Kaplan, the Kagan clan, and Rummy's hagiographer Midge Decter – to mention a few sources of the new militaristic mysticism – all depict American soldiers as an austere priesthood of exemplars, the Knights Templar of Bush's "global democratic revolution." Would these icons mock a disfigured comrade, and a female at that? Of course not.
Any time reality intrudes on the war-fantasies of our world-conquering neocons, they rise up like the Furies, intent on revenge against the blasphemers. Yet their anger at Beauchamps was of a special quality, the hysteria rising in their voices as he revealed his true identity and his editors stood by his story. What accounts for the embittered disbelief of Beauchamp's critics is that he commits the ultimate sacrilege: he shows that U.S. troops in Iraq are just plain ordinary Americans, circa 2007: vulgar, occasionally cruel, and incredibly childish. That fool who paraded around for an entire day wearing a human skull as a hat has seen too many Mad Max movies, has played too many video games, and has grown up in the warm fetid bath of American pop culture with its sex-saturated imagery of violence and death. The Americans have brought their culture with them to Iraq. Is it really all that unbelievable that male soldiers in a mess hall would crack crude jokes insulting to women and the disabled? C'mon, you neocons – are you really that divorced from reality?"
Great quote Lester. Thanks.
you should feature his stuff here. I think he's the best columnist and has the most hyperlinks. so quality and quantity.
I have to admit I don't know who this guy is. Who does he write for?
he runs antiwar.com, usually my first stop when I go online. He blogs at a little site called takimag.com as well. he was against the war from the begining. He is one of my heroes. They run Pat Buchanan, ron Paul, and other anti war columns from a libertarian/ old right perspective. Pat's column "whose war?" written on the even of the iraq war, is I think the best column ever.
Oh, I know the site. I do link to them occassionally and I usually read the links you leave to them. Just didn't notice the name I guess. Thanks. I'll check it out better.
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