The snark in this post is a bit much.
...[B]y "us" I don't mean that everyone thought alike, I mean that there was an identity based on an unspoken agreement about who were "ok" and who weren't.
McCain is "ok." Obama is not. Any questions?
Fair enough, but the point that McCain was not attacked by the same people who went after Obama; just by Democrats pointing out the hypocrisy. (Like me!)
I hate this shit. Let it go by and you're unilaterally disarming. Make the asshole apologize and you're perpetuating the whole stupid "find the gaffe" approach to politics and journamalism.
5: Not really. It isn't going to honestly be treated as a gaffe when McCain says it, regardless of what kind of fuss we make. Pointing this out isn't an attack on McCain, it's an attack on the people who attacked Obama.
"Ghastly gaffe" and "noble sacrifice" have a sarcasm that just doesn't sit well.
I meant to be sarcastic, but about the reaction to Obama's 'gaffe'. Over-the-top in that context, or was my target unclear?
Obviously (or maybe not obviously), I don't think there's a thing wrong with what McCain said.
8: I'm not disagreeing with your post, just disgusted by the need for it, which, as you correctly note, is generated way more by their side of the aisle than ours.
LIZARDBREATH NEEDS TO APOLOGIZE TO TEH TROOPS!!!1!1!!
Maybe we should just hang our Presidential candidates upside down from a tree for forty days and forty nights. Whoever survives and comes away with the Sight becomes the Leader of the Free World.
I understood the point perfectly, but I don't care for Kos's scorekeeping to begin with. I don't care to demand apologies for it, but "wasted" does strike me as tone deaf and, yeah, even ghastly. So going beyond that into full-blown sarcasm just makes me cranky.
And now McCain has made the ritual apology for making a completely valid point.
13: Beats the Electoral College.
14: What, you think we should be above responding to bullshit like the attacks on Obama? I don't think that worked well the last two times we tried it. It may not be your style personally, but someone's got to do it.
Odin was 7 days and 7 nights IIRC, the flood was 40.
Yggdrasil should be a new nickname for Yglesias.
Nine and nine.
I hung on that windy tree for nine nights wounded by my own spear.
I hung to that tree, and no one knows where it is rooted.
None gave me food. None gave me drink. Into the abyss I stared
until I spied the runes. I seized them up, and, howling, fell.
Points for consistency:
http://redstate.com/blogs/steven_foley/2007/mar/01/mccain_needs_to_apologize_for_the_wasted_comment
I'm just saying: your post was enough to turn me off and I'm not exactly undecided-in-Iowa. Do the media tit for tat, fine, but I think it's ugly to refer to casualties in sneering terms even if they're not you're intended target.
This is an Abrahamic country, people.
Where were you in '00, Smasher? Were you at the barricades, shouting down the pundits, left, right, and center, who lied about Gore until Bush was able to steal his way into power?
This country is utterly fucked, and, yes, thousands of American soldiers have had their lives wasted, all because the Right is unafraid to use tough, emotional language to win. The notion that tea party etiquette is going to beat back the Radical Right tide is delusional, as is the notion that Rush "White House dog" Limbaugh fans vote red because Dems offend their delicate sensibilities.
"wasted" does strike me as tone deaf and, yeah, even ghastly.
Painful though it may be for the friends and family of the dead to hear, this happens to be the exact truth, and rather than reproving those who tell it, we should focus on making the administration pay. While we allow them to maintain the farcical pretense that those who died and are dying did so for a noble cause, that will not be possible.
The fact that Bush, Cheney and Co. threw away these lives in a cynical and ill-planned adventure with no discernable point is no reflection on the soldiers who died, and it ought to be possible to make that point.
I seem to have edited out my antecedent for "this". I meant that "these lives were wasted" happens to be exactly true.
I don't understand the response to Smasher. He's talking about tactics, and saying that the ones deployed here may make us feel good about ourselves, but they're not effective. Do Dems have a higher hurdle than Republicans on troop-related matters? Probably. That's the way it is.
This is really about winning the media war--making it harder for media to go after Dems as anti-military. But, per Smasher, it's important not to alienate voters while doing so. Whether it's true or not that military lives have been wasted (they have) is only tangentially relevant.
I'm sympathetic to Smasher's point here. I don't like fake outrage, ever. However, if what gets said here swings any undecided votes in Iowa, well, shit. I should probably stay at home with my computer off until 2009.
Don't miss my point, JRoth—I am absolutely not trying to give cover to Bush & co. But "American soldiers have had their lives wasted" is distressingly close to saying that American soldiers wasted their lives; and yes, I find that distasteful, and I think politicians must be tasteful when speaking about sacrificing blood treasure. Can Obama still say that Bush fucked us, that the whole Republican Party should pay for it for-fucking-ever, that anything John McCain says should be treated with suspicion, while still preserving some dignity for the families of troops here and troops still there? Of course. Sarcasm about sacrifice just gives me a negative gut reaction.
Oh, c'mon, Smasher, don't be such a pussy.
Let's say I tell you that if you give me $500, I will paint your house. Then I take the money, spray paint some shit on your front door, and leave. Was your money wasted? Yes.
That isn't a slam on you or your house or the profession of house painting generally.
Fair enough - I guess that, since I view "wasted lives" as an extremely accurate description, my hearing of a post like LB's is very different - to me, the original outrage was such BS (whether sincere or not) that the only appropriate response is withering sarcasm.
Maybe there's no way to bridge this gap, but I honestly don't understand why "wasted" is such a touchy term. I mean, I can see the logic, but I can't buy it. These men and women have been killed in an endeavor that not only doesn't help our country or Iraq, but has actually made things worse here, there, and everywhere. How is that not a waste?
It has nothing to do with valuation of the lost. Rather, it reflects a high valuation - here were valiant, patriotic people (most of them, anyway) who could be bettering our world, either through their military service or otherwise. Instead, they've died, and the world has gotten worse. What is that, if not a waste?
I think it depends on the sentence, and we should insist on the active voice and an unambiguous subject.
"Bush wasted the soldiers' lives."
28: Tim, I've explained part of my response above, but let me be more clear about this: I don't buy that use of the word "wasted" is costing Dems. I think that this is a false notion - whence it came, I don't know - that constrains our speech without any apparent benefit.
Look, we've got a 15 year record of what happens when Republicans attack. Please show me where cowering under Republican attack has helped a Democrat.
Digby and Josh Marshall have been very good in articulating the "bitch slap" theory - making an issue about Obama's use of the word "wasted" doesn't hurt Dems by making them look anti-troop. Making Obama back down from using the word "wasted" hurts the Dems by making them look like cowards. And cowards aren't to be trusted with national defense.
I'm not saying that no Dem should ever apologize, but that they should only do it when merited - when they're wrong on the facts, or really cross a rhetorical line.
33 gets it exactly right. OTOH, most people can't use the language very well, especially when there's a whole industry devoted to turning perfectly legitimate points into the Worst Gaffe Ever, so it doesn't take many posts like Smasher's to convince me that the word "wasted" is a real political problem.
34: Yes!
I almost wrote those very words in my 35.
14 26
I agree with 26 "wasted" as in "thrown away" is correct.
36: No no no. That industry you identify will turn ANYTHING into the Worst Gaffe Ever. You cannot hide from it. You cannot placate it. You can only win by facing it down.
Did Shakes escape pillorying by being circumspect? Did Kerry avoid 3 days of media hysteria by proving that he had, literally, misspoken a joke? And did Gore prevent a 20 month campaign labeling him a Liar by merely being an honest, Boy Scout-ish public servant for 24 years.
No, no, and, alas, no.
Is it better to speak well than to speak poorly? Obviously. But should we hedge our language for fear of MSM-abetted rightwing attack? Never.
30
Someone who is killed after volunteering to fight in a stupid and pointless war has in fact thrown his life away and I don't see any reason not to say so. Not doing so just encourages other young men to throw away their lives.
a whole industry devoted to turning perfectly legitimate points into the Worst Gaffe Ever
Whatever. I'm not doing this. I'm honestly squicked out by diction that associates troops' lives with garbage, no matter who did the throwing away; and the passive "troops' lives were wasted" just sounds to me like "Your loved one wasted his or her life."
that associates troops' lives with garbage
This I don't get at all, Kriston. You don't waste garbage. You can only waste things that have intrinsic value.
Someone who is killed after volunteering to fight in a stupid and pointless war has in fact thrown his life away and I don't see any reason not to say so.
You know, I've never served in the military, but I'm pretty sure they don't let you pick between fighting in the good wars and the stupid and pointless wars.
Yikes, under fire from both sides. I'm not suggesting that Obama or anyone else should be apologizing for using the word. I thought his non-apology response got it about right. But I do think that it's worth avoiding hot-button wording in the first place simply because it's easier to get your point across when you're not triggering a bunch of conditioned outrage with the words you use.
And Smasher, I know that's not what you're doing. My point is that if you, a sane person, are skeeved out by the word, it's probably a word that's going to be easy for the gaffe industry to make hay with.
I think Smasher's mistaken to be skeeved. The reason Obama and McCain, two people with widely varying political views and relationships to the military, both used the word 'wasted', McCain even after a recent reminder that people would make a fuss about it, is that it's the right word to describe what's happened to the soldiers who were killed in Iraq. Their lives were wasted; their deaths were pointless.
This isn't needlessly inflammatory hot-button wording that can easily be avoided, it's just accurately describing what's going on.
42: I'm going to strike out swinging, trying to put words to a reaction (to LB's post and McCain and Obama's words) that was, in my mind, "oh, barf." I read it, and that's what I thought.
41: 39 was directed at 36, where DaveL was identifying the Industry, which is, obviously, a PR arm of the Right. It has little to do with what any individual thinks about a given phrase, but it has enormous influence over what does and doesn't get play, and what is "controversial."
43: I agree that "Sgt. X wasted his life" is problematic; but "Bush wasted Sgt. X's life" is factual and, frankly, shouldn't be offensive. Painful, sure, but - and this may be news - the truth hurts.
We will keep repeating this mistake as long as Americans insist that no American soldier can have his life wasted. As long as every American soldier is a hero, every war will be heroic, and the only villains will be decadent coastal elites who prevent the heroes from victory. And I'm not, in any way, kidding that this is precisely the intended effect of these controversies (again, not of Smasher's personal response, but of the WGE Industry that creates the controversies).
How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?
You don't.
It's really odd, but "wasted" can be slang for either "killed" or "intoxicated".
I think the whole issue is fake. To use the word "wasted" is a very, very strong accusation against Bush, though, because it means "Got 3000 Americans killed for nor good reason at all" -- much worse than "Got 3000 Americans killed in a way that turned out not to have been necessary, though no one could have known that?"
I agree that media/conservative outrage over this issue is feigned at best.
I agree with the second paragraph of 47. As to the third paragraph, I don't remember the "wasted lives" wording as generating this sort of reaction as applied to earlier wars. But then that suggests that maybe Smasher has been subconsciously affected by the manufactured outrage, so I'm inclined to take a step back and agree with 45.
47: 43: Right. "X wasted his life" is almost always a negative comment about X. He drank too much, he did too many drugs, he drove too fast, etc. The hostile reaction to that sort of phrasing is to be expected.
Kids waste themselves all the time in and out of the military; *Bush* is wasting these particular lives and that should be made clear.
43
Lots (but not all) of the soldiers in Iraq volunteered for duty there. I was referring to them. The lives of the rest are being wasted by the high command.
52: Well, not quite.
51: I can't swear that the specific word "wasted" has ever been controversial WRT Vietnam, but I think that the thinking behind it has been festering in our culture for 35 years. To a lot of righties, Kerry's "die for a mistake" line is exactly equivalent to "wasted lives," and it's the same logic - those soldiers were heroes, ergo their mission was heroic, and those who oppose it are either cowardly or evil.
This isn't quite on-topic, but 54 reminds me: an awful lot of our noble heroes who are sacrificing over there wrote messages like "This is for the WTC" on the missiles they were lobbing into Iraq. I understand that they were victims of propaganda, but I think it's problematic. These guys relished going into this war, and they were wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm NOT saying that they got what they deserved. But nor are they innocent lambs.
As I say, problematic.
Lots (but not all) of the soldiers in Iraq volunteered for duty there.
What are you talking about? Guys don't get to pick where they go. The Army, etc., just sends them where they feel they're needed.
It's all in the construction. The passive construction, "troops' lives were wasted" makes you wonder who wasted them. The troops, by signing up?
The active construction's better, because it doesn't allow for that ambiguity.
Still, I think you're going to run into some problems politically with anything that suggests the troops' deaths or injuries were in vain; too many people have a whole lot tangled up in believing their sons or daughters died for a good reason, and believing that might be the only comfort they have. At least he saved Iraqi babies from living under Saddam.
One of the saddest and weirdly hopeful pieces I read after 9/11 interviewed the family members of the victims on Flight 93, and nearly all of them believed their loved ones personally helped to bring down the flight and that it saved the Capitol. Gramma hit them with her cane; Susie probably hit them with those high heels she wore. People need the myth. I wouldn't be the one to say that Gramma probably sat in her seat.
Whether it's right or not, the person who comes out and says "no, actually, Joey died for no reason at all" surely isn't going to come out more popular, and saying "Well, that's just the facts" isn't going to make it go down sweeter.
None of that has much to do with blog snark, but I don't think subtle analysis of how saying the war was a waste doesn't diminish the soldier's sacrifice is likely to help a politician out when (s)he's running for office. The outrage is feigned, but it's not worth tangling over when you can call the administration a bunch of incompetent warmongers without saying 'waste.'
These guys relished going into this war, and they were wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm NOT saying that they got what they deserved. But nor are they innocent lambs.
That's got nothing to do with it -- the moral distinction between a kid who volunteered for this war and Ogged or Yglesias (both war supporters at one time) on that front is insignificant.
57
If you volunteer to join the military in the middle of a war it shouldn't be any surprise if you are asked to participate. And many of the volunteers did in fact expect to be sent to Iraq.
55: Agree absolutely that a lot of this stuff is refighting Vietnam, and despair to think that 30 years from now we'll be refighting Iraq in public debate on some new adventure.
59
It's not a moral distinction, it's a practical distinction. Ogged and Yglesias may have squandered some credibility but they did not squander their lives.
58: But Cala, if we can't say that the war isn't heroic, then how do we stop the next one?
And before you say, "Of course we can say it's not heroic," explain how we insist that the soldiers were heroes while engaged in a stupid, murderous, counterproductive, wasteful endeavor. It seems to me to be no more feasible than arguing that Bush wasted soldiers' lives without some people getting offended.
58
I don't agree, this whole the war is stupid and pointless but the soldiers are still noble and heroic thing just encourages more young men to throw their lives away.
explain how we insist that the soldiers were heroes while engaged in a stupid, murderous, counterproductive, wasteful endeavor.
The same way we can say a firefighter was heroic even tho' dying during a failed rescue. If the designation rests on the perfection of the whole set of event, micro and macro, (as certified by a panel of distinguished historians a few generations from now?) we might as well hang up the word completely. Along with "victim".
explain how we insist that the soldiers were heroes while engaged in a stupid, murderous, counterproductive, wasteful endeavor.
Just leave off the first part. The war was stupid, murderous, counterproductive, has not made us more safe, has wasted billions of dollars and cut short the lives of too many young Americans.
Or, 65 gets it right. There's no need to try to bring the soldier's personal merits into it just to say that the war was a dumb idea.
The Tillman family dealt with the death of Pat Tillman amazingly directly. I'm not sure that they'd use the word "wasted", but they're very straightforward in saying that they think the war is wrong and a mess, and Pat Tillman was killed as the result of a fuckup. Kevin, a surviving brother who served in Iraq, is very harsh in his criticisms of Bush and his war.
.
Those craven douchebags who worked as secretaries for Enron didn't just deserve to lose their 401K's, they deserved to get 1/1000th of Jeffrey Skilling's prison term. Cheating those Californians out of all that money...I don't know how they can live with themselves. Also, everyone who worked for MCI should have quit as soon as it was bought by Global Crossing.
I don't think it's that simple - if you say the war was stupid, the soldiers (the ones who aren't against the war) still hear "Your sacrifice was stupid."
More importantly, in our current civic religion, you're not allowed to talk about the war w/o inoculating yourself by first praising the troops.
65: But this isn't a failed rescue. It's firefighters dying in a building that wasn't on fire. or something. It's not the failure of the mission that's the problem; it's the fact of the mission.
It's firefighters dying in a fire that they've been ordered to set.
68: Who the fuck here has said the soldiers deserved to die?
I pointed out that it's, to me, "problematic," that some of the soldiers were not lambs sent to slaughter, but rather enthusiastic supporters of a clusterfuck. On some level, they're maybe equivalent to the bastard traders at Enron who laughingly screwed Granny out of her life savings.
But I don't think - and I said this explicitly - that those soldiers got what they deserved. I just said that, to me, it complicates the rhetoric, since it's dishonest to pretend that all the soldiers were reluctant warriors, forced to fight the wrong enemy against their will.
I don't think it's that simple - if you say the war was stupid, the soldiers (the ones who aren't against the war) still hear "Your sacrifice was stupid.
This just may be a question of targets. A soldier who believes the war in Iraq is a smart thing to do is going to vote Republican anyway at this point. I figure we're targetting the person who is concerned about national security, unhappy with how the war is going (that's quite a lot of the country), but isn't reflexively anti-military.
Here's the statement by Pat Tillman's brother. Note that some of the conservatives are very quick to make accusations against the Tillmans (including the one killed) when they find out that they don't support the war.
It just isn't about supporting the troops at all. It's about supporting the war and the President. And most of the people attacking Obama would attack the Tillmans too, except that they really don't want to give them any publicity.
71: Well, you're certainly right that current war-supporters are more or less unreachable. But then, support for the Vietnam war was even lower by the time it ended, yet, 10 years later, the Dolchstosslegende was rising - that tiny minority was taking over the national narrative, largely abetted by soldiers who might not have been war supporters as such, but who didn't want to think their service had been "wasted."
Those guys who all still hate Jane Fonda? Did not necessarily want the war to last all through the Nixon years. But they're more bitter towards "enemies at home" than towards the evil fucks who kept them in the rice paddies. And, unless we win the rhetorical war now, the current group of vets - and their families, and their friends, and the small towns they return to - will be drawn to pointing the finger at "weak support at home."
since it's dishonest to pretend that all the soldiers were reluctant warriors, forced to fight the wrong enemy against their will.
Who's pretending that? I seriously doubt 18 YO Marines fueled on testosterone and esprit de corps are reluctant nor do I expect them to be experts in geopolitics, ethnic tensions in tribal societies, or in anything else except the theory and practice of applied violence. All that doesn't make some of them any less heroic. (And I'm not about to apply "hero" to any and all, one of my uncles tended radar installations in Panama during WW2. He wasn't a hero, never claimed the title, and made damned sure we knew the difference between a hero and someone just wearing a uniform while doing what was essentially a civilian job.)
I don't think it's too much to ask that they know who our enemies are. As I said, I know that soldiers (and civilians) blaming Iraq for 9/11 were failed by their leaders and their media. The only reason it's germane to this discussion is that it complicates the rhetoric. In some sense, it adds to the "Bush squandered their sacrifice" idea, but it also infantilizes them - poor dogfaces, too stupid to know whom to fight.
Presumably the best thing is just to gloss over the whole issue, but it has troubled me for 4 years - the world's most powerful army can easily be turned against any enemy with only light propagandizing. Citizen-soldiers, indeed.
The 'right' answer is something like: The life is never wasted which is given for one's country. But that answer really requires or presupposes an idealism about democracy in America that no one has any right to insist upon, given the last 6 years.
Actually, 77 stirs up some of the embers of patriotic feeling in my heart.
But it doesn't explain why What George Did Was Wrong.
Americans who volunteer to serve their nation put their lives in the hands of their leaders. This nation's leaders failed those men and women. They must never be permitted to do so again in the service of a counterproductive war.
OH GOD EVERYONE WE ALL AGREE WITH EACH OTHER ABOUT THE FACTS, WE ARE JUST ARGUING OVER HOW IT SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT BE PHRASED PUBLICALLY IN ORDER TO PREVENT IDIOTS FROM PRETENDING TO BE OFFENDED.
The life is never wasted which is given for one's country.
This should really be "which is given for a cause one believes in." One's country may or may not be such a cause.
the world's most powerful army can easily be turned against any enemy
Are we getting back into "The military should pick what orders to obey" territory or have I misunderstood something?
81: I'd like to think that, if the order were "annihilate Canada," we might get a few objections.
Supposedly, a half dozen generals are prepared to resign rather than attack Iran. This is, more or less, what we need. Obviously, random troops refusing to go out on patrol is closer to anarchy than to conscientous objection.
Carry on, all - I'm off to Toddler Story Time.
77, 80: Actually, it should be "that is given for" whatever you think is so super duper valuable. Am I the only one here who cares about restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses? As the answer is almost certainly yes, I'll just be going now.
70 et al: I have no problem with use of the word "wasted"; it calls a tragedy a tragedy. But I do think that the theorized individual motives of soldiers should be left entirely out of the equation. Agreed with Bush? Volunteered with impure motives? No matter whether this is true for some number of soldiers, thoughts like those are not conducive to any kind of (alevai) national reconciliation. The administration was the one that started it all, and discrediting the administration and its political allies/cronies (as opposed to its constituencies) ought to discredit the criminal recklessness it has spread around.
The soldiers were misled: that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I'm aware that in 70 you specifically were saying the soldiers did not "deserve" anything for doing what they did enthusiastically; but I say that even some qualified intimations of collective guilt should be avoided -- unless things get much worse.
The President wasted the troops lives, and this is UTTERLY OBVIOUS from the context of McCain's and Obama's statements. As I've said before, you can make the same point with slightly less potential to be misread by saying that their deaths were wasted, but it says something horrible about our country that THIS is what gets politicians in trouble about Iraq.
explain how we insist that the soldiers were heroes while engaged in a stupid, murderous, counterproductive, wasteful endeavor.
The same way we can say a firefighter was heroic even tho' dying during a failed rescue. If the designation rests on the perfection of the whole set of event, micro and macro, (as certified by a panel of distinguished historians a few generations from now?) we might as well hang up the word completely. Along with "victim".
"The 9/11 hijackers were heroes." Discuss.
86: The pilots and any others who knew they weren't getting out alive before they got on the plane? I don't have any problem seeing them as heroic. That wouldn't have stopped me from killing them given the chance, the same way knowledge of the essential wonderfulness of a neighbor's dog would cause me to hesitate if it attacked me.
Heroism is tricksy. Many heroes are villains from someone's point of view.
Why is "villain" the opposite of "hero"? Well, okay, "hero" doesn't just mean someone who did something heroic, it has to be done in an approved cause.
Many heroes are villains from someone's point of view.
Emerson is Obi Wan. Think about it, 6 movies, and nary a woman to be seen with Obi.
Re-calibrating my cultural compass by watching all the Star Wars in order while treading the mill I've been. It moronic crap is.
>>Many heroes are villains from someone's point of view.
>Emerson is Obi Wan. Think about it, 6 movies, and nary a woman to be seen with Obi.
Having Obi Wan be Luke's biological father would have showed everyone who said there could be no real surprises in the prequels.
Even moreso had he been Luke's biological mother.
While Obi Wan sounds like a possible poster child for the relationship-free life, we don't want to trivialize our cause or bring it to ridicule.
It's definitely Obi Wan's choice. A quick survey of the women in the office was conducted; they all said he's hot.
Yeah, but that's a matter of relative degree, isn't it? There aren't any other contenders, and you have to admit Ewan--Ewan, of all people--looks kind of ridiculous in those movies.
My guess is they've imprinted on the first Obi Wan. It's the Sean Connery & Patrick Stewart thing. Or perhaps they're judging the guy by the length and color of his lightsaber.