Cassandra at Villainous Company have been the wife of a career military man (Marine Corps) for over thirty years.
And somethings been bothering her:
I woke this morning knowing I could no longer put this off. For well over a year a feeling has been building inside of me, but until now I could see no useful purpose in naming the thing I see everywhere I look these days.
That “something”, as it turns out, is contempt. Contempt for our military, contempt for the brave and honorable men and women who have served in it, and contempt for those who truly and whole-heartedly support it.
And she’s not wrong — it’s something so palpable in my life; I see it every day. I see it on bumper stickers, I read it in Left wing blogs and liberal news paper columns. I hear it discussed in grocery store lines. And I see it on people’s faces when they read my Army and Veteran adorned clothing and riding gear.
And it’s getting worse.
And it’s not just Dick Cavett. It didn’t just begin with him, and as I noted the other day, this contempt for military service and everything it stands for has been coming out of the woodwork for some time now. I Googled the phrase “Veterans memorials vandalized” the other day and got quite a few entries. I stopped after just the first few. It was discouraging.
Shortly after the beginning of my husband’s year-long tour in Baghdad, I told him to be careful. I wasn’t worried much about the insurgency. What worried me, really, was the rising anti-military feeling I sensed back here at home. I told him over the phone that a tide had turned in American public opinion and it an ugly feeling. A great many people, no matter what they may say publicly, did not support the troops. If you doubt that, you need look no farther than progressive sites like Crooks and Liars or ThinkProgress. The anti-military hate spewed there is enough to turn the stomach. They have criminalized mere political disagreement; now, it is no longer acceptable to live in a pluralistic society where honest disagreement on major policy questions is possible. To disagree with them is to be a liar, a cheat, a murderer.
Go read the entire piece.
Cassandra concludes with this:
When politicians and public figures like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Dick Cavett sneer at and treat military officers with contempt, she sees her husband in their place. And she remembers. She remembers everything she has given up for nearly thirty years to support his military career, and she as watches his service being spit on by the very people he has served so loyally and so well, she can’t help but wonder what any of these men could possibly have done to invite such treatment, or when doing ones’ duty became grounds for contempt and derision?
The answer is much simpler than you might imagine, Cassandra — it’s because these people have no honor. None.
(h/t to Blackfive, who understands the reason for the contempt, too: “those in our society who treat the military with contempt [are] those who have no conception of having a personal duty of their own. “)
When, as General Patraeus has done twice now, a military officer sworn to uphold the constitution stands before Congress and substitutes doublespeak and circular logic for accountability, and goes on to advocate the political platform of the Republican Party, then he is worthy of neither the honor nor the respect of those who he is sworn to defend and would be expected to resign his commission in saner times. Sadly, it is the grunts and their families that will have to pay the price for the Cheney cabal’s rampant politicization of the military long after all the brush is cleared in Crawford, instead of the buttcrack-nosing scumbags who’ve enabled it to occur under their command.
Left by Pat on April 16th, 2008 at 2:58 pm