Remembering on Memorial Day

As someone who was rejected by all four major branches of the military in one form or another, I don’t have much authority to preach on about the sacrifices made by our armed services.

I have family and friends who have and continue to serve in the military, and I am very grateful for the sacrifices that they’ve made and for the fact that all I’ve known personally have come back alive and in one piece. I still know people who get deployed and they and their families go through a lot that most of us aren’t willing to go through.

Most citizens don’t serve in the military and are far removed from the everyday toils and struggle of the people who wear the uniform, and that’s a mistake. It’s a mistake to remove the burden of national security from the common person.

This country was forged by common citizens, and the first people who gave their lives to create this country were outlaws using illegalweapons. Nothing could be less American than becoming a slobbering hag enthralled with anyone in a uniform. Memorial Day honors brave men and women who died in service to our country, in or out of uniform.

“Supporting the troops” has becoming such a meaningless phrase that it includes anyone who sticks and American flag on their lawn and stands for the national anthem. I’ve been to baseball games with friends who are commies and refuse to stand for the national anthem and I have family and friends who want to punch those people in the face.

But this is America, and the people who stand for the national anthem do so because they want to, not because they have to. If we force people to stand for our national anthem, we won’t survive as a country and don’t deserve to. I refuse to live in a land where we force our own citizens to salute our flag. Millions of Americans died for our freedom, including the freedom to be a snotty ingrate.  

The few people who would desecrate Memorial Day or step on or burn an American flag do so to be offensive, and they are. Do you know what I find more offensive? That military families have had to raisemoney on their own to pay for their loved ones’ body armor and other supplies. That we insist on wars halfway across the globe while our own borders are porous and that we have generals who think increasing the racial diversity of our military is more important than not having our troops murdered by their own doctors. I don’t like burning the American flag, but people who do offend me a lot less than whoever thought it would be a good idea to pay private contractors twice what our service members make.

None of the actions of our government, nor of the military itself, shrouds or negates the sacrifices made by men and women who fought and died for our country.

It’s unfortunate that such a solemn holiday is the unofficial start of the summer season. I wish I could say I’ll be spending Monday at a veteran’s cemetery putting flags on graves or quietly reflecting on the sacrifices made by our war dead. But I’ll be at a friend’s house eating hot dogs and playing music among a haze of cigar smoke. And I don’teven like summer.

I cannot share in the glory of any military victory, but I experience the benefit of our fallen fighters every day.

And evidence of this sacrifice is all around us. We take the security of our country for granted and laugh at the idea of being invaded by the military of another country. That comfort comes at a very high price. Please remember that. 

Getting More Women Killed For “Progress”

The Department of Defense announced that it will end its ban on women in combat.

I don’t oppose putting women in combat because I believe women are incapable, I oppose sending women into combat because I believe in civilization.

As someone who’s been rejected from all four major branches of the armed services (maybe I should have tried the Coast Guard), I’m the last person who has the right to catalogue the horrors of war or detail military service with any first-hand war experience. I spent most of the Iraq war typing angry libertarian screeds against foreign intervention or denouncing George W. Bush from the comforts of various New York bar stools, so if you ask me what combat credentials I have, I have none.

No one questions that women have served with distinction in uniform and many women are capable fighters. If I’m blessed with daughters, I will certainly teach them how to shoot. The responsibility to defend the country ultimately falls on every citizen, male or female.

But being put into front-line combat is not the same thing, and the government’s move to put women into combat could indicate two very troubling things: either our military is stretched so thin that it’s throwing women into the relentless deployments into the Middle East or our President is so ensconced in his own vision of himself as a progressive hero that he’s abandoned any serious leadership as Commander in Chief.

Of course the supporters of this policy are trotting out all kinds of medal-laden Pentagon brass to reassure us that this is a thoughtful policy and how dare we question the contributions to women in our society, etc. etc. All the false cultural battle lines will be drawn and manned by the same predictable caricatures.

I’ll take my lumps as a sexist civilian villain and retreat to the confines of science, biology and knowledge of the world at large. Sure, men are more likely to be trigger-happy meatheads, but a man cannot get pregnant. Of course many women are capable of the grueling endurance needed for difficult missions, but women are more likely to be raped. We can’t stop our own servicemen from raping women in the armed forces. How is it a tribute to women to put them into the hands of our enemies?

This policy separates the people who live in reality versus those who prefer their own progressive version of it.

I hope we can all agree that men and women should be treated equally under the law. The disabled and the elderly should be treated equally under the law, but we don’t send the disabled and the elderly into combat, even though I’m sure there are senior citizens and paraplegics who are crack shots with a rifle. That’s not “ageist” or “able-ist,” that’s just damn common sense.

When women, the old and the infirm are on the front lines of combat, it means the country sending them into battle is close to defeat, when its population of military-age men has been depleted by the ravages of war.

What kind of country would send women into combat when it didn’t have to? A self-defeating one, a nation so obsessed with identity politics that we’re blinded to the cold hard facts of life and death.

This policy is a sad, sad mistake. It confuses the value of treating all people equally under the law with a mandate to wipe away any meaningful standards that acknowledge differences between the genders. That’s not progress, that’s self-satisfied ignorance at the expense of women’s lives. 

(Image taken from Reuters.)