No Thanks Are Necessary, Luttrell (update)

As is typical for Sundays in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Smerky's column appeared with the same sense of inevitability as the gaper delay that follows the multi-vehicle accident on any of our major roadways.

Today, he profiled Lead Petty Officer and Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, author of the book The Lone Survivor. It depicts Luttrell’s courageous struggle to stay alive after surviving a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan in which his three fellow SEALs were killed.

As Smerky tells it...

When four U.S. Navy SEALs surreptitiously tracking a high-level Taliban official in Afghanistan encountered three wandering goatherds, they faced a dilemma with perilous consequences: Were the herders harmless civilians or Taliban scouts? What should be done?

...

Luttrell recounts that the SEALs voted on whether to let the goatherds live or to kill them. According to Luttrell, the tally was 2-1, with one abstention, in favor of letting them go. Petty Officer Second Class Matthew G. Axelson was in favor of killing the herders, Luttrell writes, while Petty Officer Second Class Danny P. Dietz was noncommittal. Lt. Michael Murphy wanted to release them, and Luttrell agreed with his superior officer, breaking the deadlock.

One hour after deciding to let the three go, the SEAL team was surrounded by 80 to 100 Taliban fighters...

More detail on Luttrell's book appears at amazon.com; after the third member of the force was killed and only Luttrell remained...

Over the next four days, badly injured and presumed dead, Luttrell fought off six al Qaeda assassins who were sent to finish him, then crawled for seven miles through the mountains before he was taken in by a Pashtun tribe, who risked everything to protect him from the encircling Taliban killers.

Truly the stuff of heroism, except for one blemish, and that lies in Luttrell's description of the mistake he made in allowing the goatherders (no doubt scouting for the Taliban) to live...

"It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lamebrained decision I ever made in my life. I must have been out of my mind. I had actually cast a vote which I knew could sign our death warrant. I'd turned into a f--ing liberal, a half-assed, no-logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, and the judgment of a jackrabbit."

Well, well, well, it seems that our hero is more than a bit of a bigoted redneck, isn't he? (the name calling doesn't feel so good, does it, Luttrell?).

I want to make sure I've got this completely straight, then. To you, a "f--king liberal" is "a half-assed, no-logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, and the judgment of a jackrabbit." Is that the correct transcription?

If so, then I should point out, Luttrell, that the reason why you and your partners found yourselves in such dire straits in Afghanistan is because the Taliban has been resurgent for some time (I know I'm pointing out the obvious). And it is resurgent because not enough of a force was sent to do the job with troops siphoned off to Iraq (and that country didn’t get the needed force strength either - heckuva job, Rummy).

And concerning Iraq, in the event that our executive branch "leadership" ever decides to FINALLY do what so many, many, many, many other people in our military and intelligence services, as well as some politicians, have advocated doing for so long (namely, start to get out of that country for real), then some of our troops would be redeployed to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and try to secure the area where you and your team were attacked.

And who do you think has been leading the charge against the Iraq war (and if we had been listened to, then redeployment would have taken place long ago)?

A bunch of "f--king liberals," that's who. A bunch of "half-assed, no logic nitwits" who saw looong ago that the invasion of Iraq would lead to, as the eternal Molly Ivins once called it, "the peace from hell."

And by the way, Luttrell, it's also a bunch of "f--king liberals" who have been screaming louder than anyone else about our failure to capture Osama bin Forgotten (and correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Smerky rightly praise Barack Obama last week for trying to refocus our attention on this guy? Would Obama fit your definition of a "f--king liberal"? Again, "all heart, no brain, and the judgment of a jackrabbit?").

And here's another name for you, Luttrell: Michael Berg. His son Nick was beheaded by the crazies in Iraq (at this point, I almost don't care what tribe they belong to any more), yet he still found it in himself to mourn the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (I most certainly didn't), the one-time Sunni leader of what is now called "al Qaeda in Iraq." Berg was one of the first people to hold Bush accountable for the war, if you recall, earning the scorn of Falafel O'Reilly, among others (that takes courage of a sort as far as I'm concerned).

And how about Cindy Sheehan and her war protests while the Rethugs hooted her down and shoved "Support Our Troops" stickers ripped from their SUVs in her face? Are you going to tell me her activities didn't exact a personal and financial toll on her? Didn't that take courage? And don't forget The Dixie Chicks, who opposed the Iraq war and received death threats in the process. Yep, Berg, Sheehan, The Dixie Chicks...all a bunch of "f--king liberals" with no guts, right? "No logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, f--king liberals."

Want another name? OK, here’s one; Ned Lamont. He ran for a U.S. Senate seat representing Connecticut last year as you’ll recall (of course, he ran as a “f--king liberal” Democrat). He ran against the Iraq war when everybody in the world told him instead to Shut Up And Clap Louder, and because he didn’t listen to them and “stuck to his guns,” he defeated Joe Lieberman for the party nomination. Yes, Lamont didn’t close the deal and Holy Joe ran as an independent and won, to that state’s eternal shame (sorry to insult some of the good people there). However, because of his candidacy, Democrats (as well as some Republicans, to a lesser degree of course) started to find something of a spine on the war.

In short, Luttrell, if our “leadership” had listened to the “f—king liberals,” there would have been enough troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan to, if not completely finish the Taliban and fracture al Qaeda beyond repair, make better progress with that task than Bushco has. And you also probably would not have found yourselves in the danger you faced with your team of Navy SEALs, and you probably would not have been the only survivor.

As Atrios, Tim Robbins and others have pointed out in one way or another, if somehow Dubya’s Excellent Iraq Adventure had gone splendidly, there had been a minimal loss of life and the major factions in that country had decided to play nice and share power (and maybe if we actually had been greeted as liberators as Darth Cheney said), do you have any idea how much more scorn and ridicule would have been heaped upon individuals such as yours truly who have opposed this war for every second that it has ever lasted?

But though this is by no means the priority in this mess, the fact of the matter is that we were right all along. And the idiots who have been eternally wrong continue to be granted the same gravitas and opportunity to inflict their awful judgment on us in the corporate media at every opportunity with nary an apology in sight, as if their mistakes never happened.

(And by the way, I realize that Smerky took the most incendiary quote from Luttrell that he could find and played it to the hilt, being the gutter snipe that he is now and always will be. This is what I expect from him, though, so I’m not really going to vent at him much. It just further vindicates our decision to cancel our Inquirer subscription.)

So the next time you decide to engage in name calling, Luttrell, you should realize that, though the people I mentioned in this post didn’t demonstrate your own particular bravery and heroism, they were nonetheless courageous in their own right and deserve some actual respect as opposed to your name-calling and character assassination.

And, being a “f--king liberal” too, I support them completely. And though I am repulsed by your attitude, it still constitutes free speech of a childish sort, so I grudgingly support that as well.

Update 9/13/21: Offered without further comment... (NSFW/H)