One recurring meme that is driving me just nuts is that of “keeping the troops safe” and “getting them out of harm’s way.” You know what? Many members of my family have served. We were represented in all branches of the service in Gulf I, from Army tankers to Air Force pilots. I regret not joining when I could. I took the ASVAB in 1988, spent time talking to both Army and Air Force recruiters, and ultimately chose not to join. When I considered joining, it was clearly understood that I was signing up to get into harm’s way, not to be kept out of it. That was the purpose. It wasn’t hidden from me, even though I’d have had an MOS that included the language school out in CA and probably desk jobs, that it was possible I’d be called upon to serve in a dangerous situation. Have things changed so much? Does anyone seriously believe that people join the military expecting to be safe? Especially after 9/11?
Shepard Smith moralized on Fox News, while reporting on the Surrender Monkey Report, about getting the troops out of there as soon as possible. He hasn’t hidden his opinion of this war, any more than the rest of the media has. But to act like the most important goal we should have is to keep safe the people who volunteered to be in danger is just stupid. The most important thing, having deployed troops, is to let them succeed at the jobs they volunteered to do. As C.S. Lewis said so eloquently, there are worse things in this world than pain and death:
The doctrine that war is always a greater evil seems to imply a materialist ethic, a belief that death and pain are the greatest evils. But I do not think they are. I think the suppression of a higher religion by a lower, or even a higher secular culture by a lower, a much greater evil. Nor am I greatly moved by the fact that many of the individuals we strike down in war are innocent. […] The question is whether war is the greatest evil in the world, so that any state of affairs which might result from submission is certainly preferable. And I do not see any really cogent arguments for that view.
People who join the military are entitled to expect that their lives will not be wasted, not that their lives will be protected at any cost. And the troops aren’t demanding to be protected. But when you read the milblogs, they are asking to be permitted to do their jobs.
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