The Mudville Nine

The original squad lost a close one, but the 21st century Mudville Nine looks unbeatable - and they haven't even begun spring training yet. Power hitters all - and today they're making the opposition look like minor league wiffleball wannabees. In today's lineup:

Hugh's on first (and he's leading off too). Honorary MilBlogger Hugh Hewitt weighs in on the TAP article, and finds a disturbing example of doublethink on the part of the author. The blogosphere, the freest 'press' in history, will shut down the free press. Can anyone provide a lucid explanation for this thinking?

What we have from TAP is propagation of a myth - the myth that America is a nation of ignorant buffoons, poorly educated and easily led. The NASCAR crowd, you know.

Or is it the symphony crowd? Tom Paine.com interviews journalist/author Chris Hedges:

TomPaine.com: When a country prepares for war and goes to war, there are changes in that country's politics and culture. You write that a myth emerges -- a seductive myth as leaders spin out a cause. You write that a patriotism, a "thinly veiled form of self-worship appears." What do you mean by this myth, this cause, this patriotism and what you then say is an intoxicating result?

Chris Hedges: Well myth is always part of the way we understand war within a society. It's always there. But I think in a peacetime society we are at least open to other ways of looking at war. Just as patriotism is always part of the society. In wartime, the myth becomes ascendant.

Patriotism, national self-glorification infects everything, including culture. That's why you would go to symphony events and people wave flags and play the "Star Spangled Banner." In essence, it's the destruction of culture, which is always a prerequisite in wartime. Wartime always begins with the destruction of your own culture.

Once you enter a conflict, or at the inception of a conflict, you are given a language by which you speak. The state gives you a language to speak and you can't speak outside that language or it becomes very difficult. There is no communication outside of the cliches and the jingos, "The War on Terror," "Showdown With Iraq," "The Axis of Evil," all of this stuff.

So that whatever disquiet we feel, we no longer have the words in which to express it. The myth predominates. The myth, which is a lie, of course, built around glory, heroism, heroic self-sacrifice, the nobility of the nation. And it is a kind of intoxication. People lose individual conscience for this huge communal enterprise.

Because Americans are ignorant bufoons, poorly educated and easily led, and need guys like Chris to show them the truth. Or do they? A former NY Times reporter, Hedges was interviewed to promote his book War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.

Now batting second: MilBlogger Benjamin Blatt, with a letter to Chris Hedges

Sadly, although your version of events in 2002 has you standing ?on rooftops with young Marine radio operators who called in air strikes? watching the Marines who ?were called in to push the Iraqis (out of Khafji),? your story just does not pan out.

Read the whole thing.

Speaking of the NY Times, here are some excerpts from today's letters to editor:

How to express the rage and shame half of our country feels for the policies of those in power? The disgust over the senseless, ironic killing by poorly trained troops of a brave Italian who saved the life of another brave Italian? And the disgust over the killings of innocent Iraqis that occur daily?

When will the disgrace to our own country come to an end?

Another:

The real question is, How many Iraqi citizens are shot by G.I.'s for speeding toward checkpoints, and how many of these shootings are not reported in the newspapers?

And another:

Imagine similar scenarios involving thousands of Iraqi citizens, and the reluctance of the Iraqis to embrace their American occupier-liberators becomes understandable.

Had enough yet? Batting third, Craig A. McNeil, a soldier writes the NY Times

I spent 2004 as a soldier in the Sunni Triangle.

We soldiers were painfully aware that shooting people who are not hostile undermines our standing with the Iraqi people and that tragedies like the shooting of Giuliana Sgrena's convoy undermine the coalition.

How, then, could we even consider shooting at vehicles apparently operated by civilians? Because suicide car bombers have an unfortunate habit of behaving like innocent civilians - right up to the point where their vehicles explode.

I left Iraq on an Air Force cargo plane carrying an aluminum box with the remains of one of my brothers or sisters in arms.

Every moment of every day for the last two years, Americans in uniform have to choose whether to pull the trigger. On many occasions soldiers have made the wrong decision and earned either a Purple Heart or an aluminum coffin - or both.

Any suggestion that military leaders don't agonize over how to balance our need to defend ourselves from madmen with our desire to protect innocent Iraqi civilians is, at the very least, foolish.

Bases loaded. Nice set up for the clean up man, and Major K knocks this one out of the park. Don't miss it.

And the hits keep coming:

Baldilocks takes on PC ignorance approaching a new low.

Mike points us to a new 'trend' - counter recruiters.

Cdr Salamander has words for those who worship Che.

Bases loaded again! Here's the pitch, from the uncredited Army Times editorial on MilBlogs:

The blogosphere is an unruly place crowded with writers who sound like the loud mouth at the end of the bar who spews beery opinions on everything ? or worse, with writers gushing drivel as boring as someone recounting last night?s dream.

For those of us who make a living editing, blogs are an affront, substituting enthusiasm for talent. But for those charged with running the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the blogs of soldiers must be terrifying.

That was the pitch - and the hit is a quote attributed to Mark Twain found on the side bar of MilBlogger Brogonzo's site: "I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one."

Ouch! - pitcher hit by line drive. Let's get an ice pack on that.

Batting ninth, Jonah Goldberg wraps up the entire discussion:

But as a whole, I think liberalism is rusty and atrophied. Liberalism ? by which I mean the political Left in America and not ?real liberalism? or classical liberalism ? has very little to offer.

<...>

It?s strange. The words conservative and liberal are obviously very old, but their meaning has drifted over the years. As late as the 1950s even most conservatives spoke favorably of the word ?liberal? ? including Senators Robert Taft and Joe McCarthy. Meanwhile, conservatism wasn?t really a political outlook at all ? as we understand these things ? until the fifties. Before that, liberalism?s meaning was in flux and I?m not sure this is the venue to get into all of that. I think the Right became associated with change for the fairly simple reason that the liberal pendulum went about as far as America wanted it to. Somewhere C.S. Lewis writes about how a man who takes a wrong turn in the road is not ?progressing? by continuing in the wrong direction. Hence, a man who walks backward to where he took the wrong turn is in fact heading in a ?progressive? direction. It?s a limited metaphor because life isn?t nearly so static. But conservatives are on the side of change because they are the ones who understand that heading in the wrong direction isn?t progress.

And if that point doesn't apply to everything linked above (okay, except the Army Times bit), I'll eat my boonie cap.

I will claim an exception to this quote regarding tired cliches from the same interview with Jonah:

Another cliché ¡t the top of my list: ?I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.? Uh, thanks. But who really cares.

The exception I claim is for all MilBloggers - but though I may disagree with him I will indeed defend to the death his right to say it. ;)