Support Our Tropes

Fairly idiotic editorial from the LA Times yesterday. Some of you from my neck of the woods probably read the thing in the paper.

This guy, Joel Stein, clearly fancies himself something of a whimsical humorist. (According to his bio, he taught a class in humor writing at Princeton! I wonder if his course dealt in introductory concepts, like whether "Walla Walla" is funnier than "Cucamonga," or more advanced, abstract theory, like whether a Hot Carl is funnier than a Cincinnatti Bowtie?)

And he has written an op-ed expressing his lack of support for our troops in Iraq. Tee-hee!

I don't support our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Okay, see, the thing is..."Supporting" our troops is a meaningless concept. We're not, as a nation, being asked to "sacrifice" in order to make the task at hand easier for our fighting men and women overseas. There's no rationing going on...I don't recall anyone asking me to buy war bonds any time recently...Aluminum is plentiful.

So, it's meaningless, this supporting of these troops. Just a catch phrase, an "us vs. them" "in or aus" kind of deal. The best way to handle it is to not play into it, to refuse to use terms like "support our troops," and instead clearly express your beliefs, no matter how nuanced. I don't think it's that confusing to say, "I'm against the Iraq War, which America entered based on outright falsehoods and exaggerations, but I obviously don't wish any harm to come to other Americans." That's clear, right?

Also, I am anti-war, and I'll admit to being kind of a non-fighting wuss in my personal life, but I don't consider this political position "wussy." I consider remaining anxiety-ridden and desperate more than four years after a terrorist attack, willing to sacrifice all of your nation's bedrock principles out of fear of some hypothetical bombing, to be a "wussy" position.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.

Wait, I'm lost...Does Joel want us to take him seriously all of the sudden? Is he trying to make a point? Okay, let's see...Supporting our troops doesn't mean anything, but if we do it "blindly," then the war will just last longer anyway? Why can't we just argue against the war here at home while hoping that no more Americans die in the Sunni Triangle? That doesn't work for ya, Joey Joe Joe?

Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach." The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that. I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.

Yawn...So, random, slack patriotism doesn't actually do any good? You don't say...I mean, no, come on, keep going. This is really hilarious. David Cross totally wasn't doing material exactly like this on CD two fucking years ago.

After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

What's with all this "we" shit, Ho-el? I don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight, obviously. Does anyone? Those guys are paid to follow orders, and they didn't decide to go over there and just start killing Iraqis. Blaming the troops because you don't like a war is like blaming the Pixy Stix Corporation for childhood diabetes. It's just one small part of a far greater and more complex picture.

Also, no one can possibly blame me for the Iraq War, because I was against it from the very beginning. And also, I have no political power whatsoever. I can't even get more than a few hundred people to look at my blog.

But blaming the president is a little too easy.

Yeah, it's pretty easy...especially when he wears big, silly hats!

The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

Ba-da-bump...Try the veal...

Anyway, this is crap. The person who pulls the trigger is responsible for killing a guy, sure, in one sense. But what about the people who hired him to be a soldier, trained him to kill, gave him a gun, put him in Iraq and told him to shoot when threatened? Not at all responsible, those guys? Innocent bystanders, then? Did Joel even think about what he was writing, or do they teach you to purposefully ignore logic and common sense in Princeton humor-writing courses?

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

Ugh. He's doing observational humor. Why don't I have a column at the LA Times? I can do observational humor...Check it out...

More Iraqis died the other day when an exploding bus collided with a mosque during the middle of a wedding ceremony. How horrible...As if going to a wedding wasn't annoying enough. Already, you have to go buy a gift and rent a tuxedo. In Baghdad, add on top of that the imminant threat of flaming bus attack. I'd probably just make up some excuse on the RSVP..."Sorry, would love to come, but I'll be visiting family in Riyadh. All my best to your new bride and your 6 other wives..."

See? Call me, LA Times! I'm certain we can work something out!

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.

Joel, with the luxury of a Princeton education and a cushy writing job, naturally considers joining the army to be a fool's errand. He doesn't think, clearly, about the young kids with few opportunities or hopes for the future, counting on a few years of service enabling them to realize their distant ambitions. The kids who are lured by the marketing ploys of shady recruiters and focused PR campaigns. (Who hasn't seen those "Army of One" commercials? You think they budget for that shit because it's doesn't influence kids to enlist, with its video game imagery and empty, faux-inspirational rhetoric?)

Who the hell does he think he is anyway, to pass judgement on these people and their decisions?

I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.

Nice try, but looking up "Joel Stein" in a city with 20 different regional phone books and millions of Jews is probably going to wind up inconclusive. Joel, despite what he may say, is confident his anonymity will allow him to mouth off without fear of reproach. (If you're with the LA Times and wish for me to take over Joel's spot with my unique brand of violence-themed observational comedy, though, you should know that I can be looked up in the Palms/Culver City phone book, or by leaving a comment right below this post on this very blog).

I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return.

But, please, no parades. Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

I don't think the Iraq War was a good idea. I do think that soldiers doing what their leadership instructs them, fighting day in and day out to make the situation in Iraq a bit more workable, is a very good idea.

Imagine it this way...I don't think that M&M Mars should have introduced a Blue-Colored M&M to the packs of candy, because it throws off the color balance. (I really do think this.)

That doesn't mean I think individuals at the M&M Mars Factory should start peeing in the vats of chocolate or tinkering with the machinery. It's important they continue to do their jobs, even if I differ with the methods employed by their corporate masters. In this same way, I'm glad that the United States military and its chain-of-command have remained intact, despite my problems with their current mission as determined by the President and his Merry Band of Scoundrels. We need a military, you know, to live...

It also kind of feels like back-peddling to insist, at the very end of his article, that Joel really really totally super-hope that all the returning vets get access to hospitals and mental health care and pensions. He's just spent about 750 words shitting on them. I mean, Joel, you don't support the troops, right? That's the first sentence of your article? Then shut up about hospitals and pensions. Or is this entire piece about semantics?