None of us want to be worshipped by the likes of Taverner, but it would be nice if we didn't have to put up with his open contempt. His self-righteous recriminations of us as "killers" has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with his preening sense of moral superiority to those who spend our lives protecting his. A bit of parsing is in order:
Support the Troops" has become a litmus test for many, and any time an atrocity caused by them happens, many are stumbling over each other to point out this was "one bad apple" and certainly "there is no problem with the rest of the barrel so please stop looking over there."
Yeah, you'd think that we were Occupy Wall Street, where the bad apples define the bunch.
And it is a form of blind faith.
I realize not every person in the military commits atrocities.
Does he, now? Really? You wouldn't know it from the way that he talks about us.
But you take men and women, at their prime physical peak years, train them to kill in the most efficient way possible - what would you expect? That they wouldn't climb over that metaphorical bridge from "killing under orders and "killing?"
Ah, so being trained to kill makes us indiscriminate killers? That's like saying that because every man has the equipment, we're all potential rapists. This is one of those logical fallacies that the left loves, because it masks their real agenda. Taverner is pissed because the military is no longer an object of ridicule and scorn, except among his peers. We can walk through an airport in uniform and not have to worry about being spit on or called "baby killer", and that's what Taverner misses. He wants to be able to bully and insult us with impugnity, and he resents that he can't do it in public.
Sadly, it seems every decade we become more militarized, more of a threat to the world and ourselves. Let's not kid ourselves - this is what killed the USSR. It wasn't Reagan, and it wasn't Nixon, but they killed themselves by over-militarizing and overreaching.
Every decade, we become less militarized, which means that the threats to the world and ourselves become greater. We have fewer people on active duty now than at any time since the end of WWII. Our defense budget is a smaller percentage of GDP than at any time since before WWII, and a smaller percentage of the federal budget than at any time in our history. But, don't let the facts get in the way of a rant. And, the USSR killed itself by adopting and enforcing an economic system that failed everywhere that it had been tried. One can argue that only its military kept it going, as it had to keep looting new satellite states in order to maintain any semblance of economic prosperity, since it could not feed itself. It was also the threat of military force that put the Soviets in the position to demand bailouts when their crops repeatedly failed.
To the military worshippers out there, let me suggest a reading. It was written by a veteran of several wars who rose to the rank of Major General. His name was Smedly Butler, and the book he wrote was "War is a Racket."
Butler was a communist whose gradual descent in paranoid delusion culminated in his announcement that he'd been recruited by a right-wing cabal to take over the government from Roosevelt (which is sort of like a right-wing cabal conspiring to replace Barack Obama with Dennis Kucinich). Butler was a great Marine in his day, but his mental deterioration ultimately destroyed his career.
Originally Posted by SarasotaRepub
