In response to the Sorosphere’s practice of supporting the troops by publicizing the tiny thin film of atrocities commited by a tiny number of them, and parading the fraction of them that have come home to oppose the war around like they’re the only veterans that genuinely matter, a group of bloggers has worked for over a year now to publicize the life, and heroism, of one of the troops whose heroism went, in the full, awful, legal sense of the term, “above and beyond the call of duty”.
Smith won the Congressional Medal of Honor the same way all CMoH winners have; by committing an act of immense heroism “above and beyond the call of duty” – in other words, something that no reasonable person would expect a soldier to do.
In Smith’s case – well, watch the presentation. Read the account of Smith’s life.
Today would have been SFC Smith’s 38th birthday.
NYT had Abu Ghraib on the front page for 32 consecutive days.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1145998/posts
Did they even cover any of our servicmen’s awards? Like Congressional Medel of Honor reciepient Cpl Dunham? How about the Mpls paper.
But they support the troops. Right?
I believe that it is properly the Medal of Honor. Congressional is not part of the title.
Yes, not sure where I got the “Congressional” from.
I’ve seen it as both.
Its worth remembering this man too
Donald Eugene Rudolph, Sr.
1921 – May 25, 2006
Place of birth South Haven Township, Minnesota
Place of death Grand Rapids, Minnesota
Allegiance U.S. Army
Years of service 1941-1963
Rank Master Sergeant
Unit 20th Infantry, 6th Infantry Division
Battles/wars World War II
Awards Medal of Honor
Purple Heart
read the rest here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rudolph
Yes,
Let’s not talk about the war, or what support for the troops – which you don’t do at all Mitch, btw, but rather, let’s talk about talking about the war, or talk about talking about support for the troops.
As Salman Rushdie (not exactly well loved in the Muslim world said) The Republicans are all about change the subject, obfuscate, dissemble… and why would they do that?? It’s not because Mitch is stupid. He’s not, I know him, he’s above average intelligence to be sure, so clearly, he knows the calamity that is Iraq – and thereby long term to the health and welfare of our armed services let alone the troops – no, it’s because Mitch is a brazen, unabashed, unremitting, unrelenting political animal.
This post, for example, is poison, through and through. Do folks like DU, or Daily Kos, talk about the iimproper conduct of our troops, certainly, And they do so because they want to point out that we CAN lose these kinds of things by having disdain and contempt (as Mitch and other Ultra-Reactionary bloggers like him have shown so many times, oh, by say saying that Muslims embrace terrorism as a religion )- I’m sure those kinds of xeno-phobic, ethnocentric contemptuous commens have NO bearing on the conduct of our troops, right? I mean, DU or KOS certainly have MORE impact than the fact that 1/3ord of our populace basically say’s “screw those (expletive), if it comes down to our soldiers vs. a few innocent civilians, well all’s fair in War (btw, it’s not) and those dang just don’t matter as much.” Please say all of you, try to say you’ve never heard or said somethign similar, I have for certain, and I’ve read similar things here. If you think that attitude doesn’t then work into the attitudes of our soldiers, you’re fooling yourself, and that attitude has a FAR more destructive influence on soldiers, than ANYTHING DU could ever write. Most soldiers – and I know a few – look on this war as a general mistake, but they think we’re doing some good, and for right now (as I write below) we are – but not because of Al Qaeda, that’s just bogus crap – but because we broke this thing, and we have an obligation to help decent, good people (who happen to be Iraqis) find peace again.
But that said:
YEAH, talking about good conduct, lawful conduct, isn’t just a mental exercise, it’s what makes success possible, it’s what Patraeus was talking about in 2004 – but which Mitch called mollycoddling, suggesting that it was sying we wanted to “offer therapy” to terrorists.
So YES, in fact it IS the right way to support the troops, to make sure they know how destructive expressing contempt, expressing frustration toward teh civilian population WILL be for them, both now and 20 years from now when their concience eats at them.
Apparently political animals, don’t, can’t get that not everyone is motivated by crass, purile political agenda.. but hopefully some others can.
The reason we should not leave Iraq right now, and I don’t think we should (see actually, some independent objective people have opinions that are actually grounded in FACTS rather than seeking crass political victory), is because our departure will risk a Sunni slaughter. Such a slaughter woudl risk a Shiite Sunni regional conflict. Bush doesn’t bring it up, but it’s the risk he’s facing. He ALWAYS intended to drumbeat up a war against Iran, but the public won’t stand for it, so he’s now trying to at least scare the Iranians off of such a slaughter in Iraq because he’s concerned about the wider war of FUNDAMENTALIST SUADI’S getting into a war with Iran. Such a war would be an economic disaster for the US – but ole “support the troops’ Bushie -and Mitchey there by – didn’t consider those consequences when they embarked on this wreckless, stupid path, putting our troops in extreme danger of a wider, uncontrolled intre-religious war – but please, tell me again how that supported the troops?
btw, as far as I know, it’s not really called the CMOH – that’s really just civilian slang, ironic that Mr. Military didn’t know that, but surprising honestly. as patriotism is.. something about a scoundrel.
Not surprising, NOT.. too busy..bleh – nice that Mitch allows for the editing of his comments, but not ours.
I should have been more clear in that last sentence.. and NO I don’t much care about the typos in the post for reasons I’ve said before.
a. I’m busy
b. You don’t actually pay any attention
But I don’t want to have my comment interpreted incorrectly – I certainly don’t think SFC Paul Smith was a scoundrel.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and playing on this soldier’s sacrifice to make a political point, is beneath contempt, but hardly surprising – and is pretty typical of this Blog – THAT’s the point.
*sigh*
Peev, it has to be said:
Go screw yourself.
Peevish/PB/Molly/Mikey/Jbaueer,
As usual, there’s no way to really respond to your rant. Some of it, literally, makes no sense at all.
nice that Mitch allows for the editing of his comments, but not ours.
You’re going to call that a conspiracy, too?
I don’t know that WordPress, my blogging tool, has any facility in it to allow readers to edit their own comments. It’s not, as they say, a high priority.
too busy..bleh
Yeah, I can see that.
When I’m too busy, I – oh, I dunno – refrain from writing comments.
But what do I know about allocation of time and effort, after all?
🙂
Peevish: A suggestion, get your own damn blog, Pimp it to high heaven here if you would like, but when your replies here exceed 700 words without addressing the specific post you are replying to, well the word “bloviate” comes to mind.
Yeah, peevish is one hell of a busy guy….there’s apparently time enough for long asinine posts that make less sense than ever and say absolutely NOTHING. Before I die, I would like to hear one positive thing about this country, our system of governing, our military come out of a leftist. I figure I may have a good 20 years left, but don’t know if that’s long enough. One damn post ever from someone like peevish…just one. Yuck.
Of course you probably don’t meet a lot of “leftists” up there in your survivalist compound, Coll. They never come out of their black helicopters to introduce themselves.
Silly clown.
Liberals don’t ride black helicopters.
They have flying unicorns.
far as I know, it’s not really called the CMOH – that’s really just civilian slang,
And, as luck would have it, I’m a civilian.
ironic that Mr. Military didn’t know that
Mr. Military? Huh?
, but surprising honestly. as patriotism is.. something about a scoundrel.
Surprising honesty?
You’re really not qualified to say that.
In all honesty, why DO you comment here? Don’t you have better things to do with your time?