perfidy

Andy Rooney is another in a long and distinguished list of 4th estatians who are separated from soldiery by a vast and yawning gulf. In this case, the gulf is chronological, not experiential; Rooney's WW2 service was honorable and he had a hand in a fair amount of hairy, cutting edge stuff the time. But he is utterly, utterly clueless about modern soldiery.

I think his proposed questions, the ones he'd ask soldiers, are supposed to be insightful and cuttingly witty. Or something. But they're none of those. And as a matter of fact, they ask themselves those questions all the time. And often the answers are not flattering, or might make good fodder at Rooney's next anti-war protest. Surpisingly enough, many of them would rather be home, nailing their girlfriends (or yours, if you're not careful), having a beer, watching some tube, working their jobs. Soldiers bitch, and complain, and rarely actually look forward to going to work in the morning...shit, does anybody?

But they are there. In harm's way. And they take pride in getting the mission accomplished under extreme duress. Volunteers all, despite Rooney's astonishingly lame effort to make them appear to have been shanghaied and impressed into service. And he should goddamn know the difference, since when he served conscription was the norm.

And by the way Andy, I know from experience that during wartime, troops actually get very little stuff about how brave and wonderful they are. Most of what they see written about them is written by people just like you, who glory in every casualty, who wait like leathery vultures to sweep down and proclaim another tired Vietnam comparison, who succeed when servicepeople die.

There is an insurmountable chasm between those who do, and those who don't. Those who don't, like hippies say, simply cannot conceive of the level of self sacrifice some people have, the level of risk some people are willing to accept, the jobs some people are willing to do because they think they should.

I only wish I were 152 years older, so I could split your pruny shrivelled face in a fair fight.

Good points, from both of you. Full marks, by the way, for the correct use of one of my favorite words, "fucktard".

And aside from the already rather complete descriptions of Rooney's problem, there's the other: He claims, straighfaced, that the volunteers aren't in fact volunteers. His basis for this is that they only "volunteered" because of millions of jobs that were destroyed, but there are more jobs today than there were four years ago, hard as that may be for him and his ilk to believe. More importantly, he appears to think that volunteering for armed service is something that ceases to be volunteer when you're actually called upon to perform armed service.

He's a moron. And it gets worse - he appears to prefer that we all lived in a world where nobody needed armed forces, and bully for him: So do I. I'm just more realistic. We can't be without our military, because the world's always going to have people, organizations, or countries that wish us ill. So what does he do? He proposes a list of questions for soldiers that are, by the nature of military service, not part of the program.

Soldiers aren't allowed to question orders, or to refuse them, except in extraordinary, well-defined circumstances. That's the way it is, and has always been. It's also the only way that armies can avoid being decimated. So does he hope for decimation of the men and women in the armed forces? Probably not, granted, but shooting his mouth off about questions soldiers should be asked is, to say the least, in bad form and not at all well-thought-out.

And the heart of his thesis appears to be that instead of thanking the forces and treating them as heroes for doing things that we're not able or qualified to do for ourselves, we're serving them poorly. He'd prefer that we pity them, I guess?

Soldiers in battle are heroes, whether Andy "Please Trim Those Bushes Over Your Eyes" Rooney thinks so or not, and I would no more pity or otherwise disrepect a soldier than I'd kick my own Dad in the grapes.

Some things just aren't cricket.

Patton, you may find this hard to believe, but people are _born_ in this country. The population expands. Sometimes people die! Are there more jobs than four years ago? Sure. According to the BLS, about 136.6 million people were employed in March 2000. March 2004, that number is 138.3 million.

During the same period, the employment to population ratio fell from 64.5 to 62.1. How many people in the US? Recently the population has been rising about 4 million per year. To stay stable, around 2.5 million jobs need to be created per year.

Maybe 2.5 million is too high during a recession; I'd agree on that point. But tossing out "there are more jobs" without presenting it in context is a little weak, wouldn't you say?

I mean, we could all just walk around and pretend like nothing's happened in the economy and everything is great, right? And then the problems would just disappear?

Tacitus wrote recently on Iraq:

[url=http://www.tacitus.org/story/2004/4/8/11752/76610]http://www.tacitus.or…]

I think B linked to that. In any case, the key line for me:

"...resolute optimism, after a certain point, becomes a form of dishonesty. Not a lie, precisely, but less than truth. Self-delusion? Willful deception? There's no telling."

Stats gleaned, as usual, with no trickery, from the BLS and National Census. Unless they're just a bunch of left-wing excessive hand-wavers too. ;)

Ross,
Your post made me think of the old diplomatic-historical joke about the elephant and the Polish Question. Not because I think you're not serious, or that I don't take you seriously, mind you, but your consistent choice of topic this time made me giggle... yes giggle, like a little sally sassy-pants.

The joke is derived from the propensity of reps from partitioned Poland to attend or crash as many conferences and diplomatic occasions they could. Regardless of existing agendas or attendees, they would invariably bring up "the Polish Question", ie, how much longer will Poland be allowed not to exist?

Goes something like this:

The great powers convene a congress to discuss elephants. The French delegates prepare a cookbook, "Elephant as Entree, Aperitif, and Au Jus". The British delegates present their treatise, "The Economics of Elephant Trade and Capture, Being a Study of That Beast's Anatomical Bits, and the Value of Those Bits Therefrom, And Being of Particular Interest to White Domains, the Right and Proper Cost And Investment Thereof". The Germans publish a 12 volume "History of the Elephant", (4 volumes of text, 8 of bibliography), while the Russians lament "What is to be Done About Elephants?". And the Polish representatives, who were not invited in the first place, elbow their way forward to discuss their paper, "The Elephant and the Polish Question."

In a fairly non-general discussion of soldiery, or some specific and well-deserved Rooney-bashing, leave it to Ross to bring in BLS stats and Census numbers.

You're Ross and the Economics Question.

GL, "Ross and the Economics Question" is fucking brilliant. You are my new god. (I am, just so you know, a serial idolater.)

It's a good thing the economy doesn't affect anyone, then!

:)

There's a pretty good international discussion of Rooney's article over at J-Walk Blog.

Ross:

"But tossing out 'there are more jobs' without presenting it in context..."

I agree wholeheartedly. And so is a claim that there are 2 or 4 or 6 million less jobs, wouldn't you agree?

I'm all for context, and I don't see a lot of it on this issue. Certainly not from "Caterpillar Brows" at CBS.

On the the bounty/dearth of jobs vs. the volunteer spirit of our armed services:

The military is a bonafide "get the fuck out of dodge" for the noncollege bound. It just is. Saying that in no way diminishes the commitment of these volunteers, it only puts the situation in perspective.

I suppose it's all in how you define hero. The article was unavailable, but on the surface I'd have to agree, military people are not heroes. Nor are mountaineers or astronauts or anyone else who puts himself into a dangerous situation of his own accord. Quite often for pay I might add. To me a hero is someone who does a right and unselfish thing without thinking of monetary reward or some kind of fame.

Now, this is not to say that one can't hold military figures in high esteem, as I do with certain mountaineers. But hero? That's a word that has been demeaned with overuse. Anybody remember Lenny Skutnick? He was a hero.