Real life provides better lines than fiction ever will.
Senator McCain: Long ramble about service, sacrifice, the suckitude of defeat.
Senator Obama: "Jim, let me just make a point. I've got a bracelet too. From, Sergeant, uh, uh, from the mother of, uh, Sergeant, Ryan David Jopek."
He certainly does appear to be looking at his wrist for Sergeant Jopek's name, doesn't he?
Why is this a big deal?
The point of those bracelets is to remember the individual. If you gotta look at the thing to recall the name, it sorta brings home the point that it's there for political reasons, hunh?
People in the military - and their families - are not blind to the reality that we're an instrument of national policy [1]. But we prefer not to have that fact shoved into our faces by people who want to be the boss.
When President Obama pulls the trigger to invade Pakistan [2] we'd like to think he's giving at least a passing thought to Joe Snuffy.
Not remembering the name of the guy you've said you would honor as an individual makes it hard to do that.
[1] War is a continuation of politics by other means - Clausewitz.
[2] Or any of the other eleventy-dozen countries where Al-Queda is operating. If the world thought an ill-defined Bush Doctrine was a big deal just wait until we see the Obama Doctrine in action: Invade whomever we want whenever we want because a few dozen gomers are recruiting for an amorphous network of terrorists.[3]
[3] Add to this Representative Steve Kagen's promise to interfere with free markets outside the jurisdiction of the United States, Senator Obama's plan to draft high school kids into national service and we might be forgiven for asking people: You won't vote Republican because Bush was a war monger, an idiot, and a guy who is reviled by right-thinking people everywhere .. but compuslory service, a promise to roll panzers across recognized national borders 'just because' and plans to keep people from making money in their own country .. this is somehow better?
Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.
Senator McCain: Long ramble about service, sacrifice, the suckitude of defeat.
Senator Obama: "Jim, let me just make a point. I've got a bracelet too. From, Sergeant, uh, uh, from the mother of, uh, Sergeant, Ryan David Jopek."
He certainly does appear to be looking at his wrist for Sergeant Jopek's name, doesn't he?
Why is this a big deal?
The point of those bracelets is to remember the individual. If you gotta look at the thing to recall the name, it sorta brings home the point that it's there for political reasons, hunh?
People in the military - and their families - are not blind to the reality that we're an instrument of national policy [1]. But we prefer not to have that fact shoved into our faces by people who want to be the boss.
When President Obama pulls the trigger to invade Pakistan [2] we'd like to think he's giving at least a passing thought to Joe Snuffy.
Not remembering the name of the guy you've said you would honor as an individual makes it hard to do that.
[1] War is a continuation of politics by other means - Clausewitz.
[2] Or any of the other eleventy-dozen countries where Al-Queda is operating. If the world thought an ill-defined Bush Doctrine was a big deal just wait until we see the Obama Doctrine in action: Invade whomever we want whenever we want because a few dozen gomers are recruiting for an amorphous network of terrorists.[3]
[3] Add to this Representative Steve Kagen's promise to interfere with free markets outside the jurisdiction of the United States, Senator Obama's plan to draft high school kids into national service and we might be forgiven for asking people: You won't vote Republican because Bush was a war monger, an idiot, and a guy who is reviled by right-thinking people everywhere .. but compuslory service, a promise to roll panzers across recognized national borders 'just because' and plans to keep people from making money in their own country .. this is somehow better?
Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.
