Why don't people protest (John) McCain's lack of patriotism? Because, the all-volunteer military means that civilians have to play the game of military hero worship. Most civilians never volunteer, and so they are hesitant to be critical of military policy articulated by military heroes like McCain.I think it is highly inappropriate to question John McCain’s patriotism in light of his service to our country about 40 years ago, in particular the captivity he endured as a prisoner of war. Besides, there are many other ways McCain can be criticized over his stated perceptions concerning the Iraq war and the policies he support that make him totally indistinguishable from George W. Milhous Bush.
What I didn't know when I started to write on the subject of the military was that I would find that some people in the military perceive themselves as having been forgotten, underrated or disparaged by the larger society, even while at the same time there is a sense of superiority.I think Schaeffer is referring to individuals such as Marine Col. Jessup (think, "you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall!!"), the character portrayed by Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” who demanded unquestioning loyalty from his charges and communicated a highly demeaning attitude towards anyone who was not a member of his beloved Corps (or even towards some who were). To say that they thought little of civilians is an understatement.
These people, rightly or wrongly, have been part of the military culture forever. I cannot possibly imagine how bringing back the draft is going to “soften their edges.”
Schaeffer also tells us of the following communication in which a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel told him…
Problems [in the military] are only exacerbated by the propensity of Congress to micromanage and meddle, by media and academia seething with overt, relentless hostility, by political correctness, and by an irresistible tendency to treat the military as no more than a playpen for social engineering experiments."Schaeffer interprets this as part of the disconnect between civilians and the military, and I would tend to agree with that (particularly regarding the “political correctness” and “social engineering” stuff), though is response Schaeffer tells us…
Civilian leadership of the military is weakened as civilian leaders without military experience are hesitant to tell those with experience what to do, as is in pathetic evidence in Congress, while at the same time people in the military wonder if their civilian leaders have their best interests at heart.At this point, I think it’s time for Schaeffer to remove the phrase “civilian leaders” and replace it with “George W. Bush and the Republican Party.” The Democrats have tried over and over to rein in this renegade, war-mongering cabal on the issue of troop strength, withdrawal timelines and whether or not the Maliki “government” in Iraq has any actual intention of meeting the milestones set for it with the time bought for it to do so by our forces with their talent, bravery, and blood, and in many cases, their lives.
America was founded by farmers, tradesmen, statesmen (and bankers) who were military men when circumstances called for it. Washington, Jefferson, Madison and others did not want a country with a military culture, but they expected their countrymen to serve the nation when needed, when asked legitimately, without reservation.That’s actually a good argument for an all-volunteer army, though Schaeffer reaches the directly opposite conclusion…
Progressives need to push for the reintroduction of the draft. It is fair, it is democratic, it will help prevent stupid wars. And that is why people who are determined to start wars don't want the draft back. A draft will confiscate their toys.This is dangerous, willful naiveté of the highest order.
Do you know what George W. Bush and his fellow war criminals would have done differently in Iraq had there been a draft? Nothing, that’s what. KBR, DynCorp, Parsons, Blackwater…they all still would have run amok absent accountability. And Schaeffer laments the fact that our “contractors” (don’t understand his use of quotes) don’t “count” when it comes to casualties, which to me is merely the flip side of the free rein they have enjoyed in Iraq for over five years (if they want to act like cowboys, or something far worse at times, then that’s the price
I’m tired of reading communication like this from people who think that the return of the draft is somehow supposed to be a remedy for the almost biblical destruction on so many levels wrought by George W. Milhous Bush and his war of choice in Iraq. I suppose the rationale goes that the “answer” to the evil abuse of our military by these blundering ideologues is to give them a bigger military to abuse…?? (and here's Exhibit A).
And when Schaeffer wants to look for villains on the issue of civilians in this country out of touch with what’s going on in Iraq, why don’t you cast some blame in the direction of our corporate media which will give us voluminous coverage of the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama’s bowling mishap (I posted on the latter, but it was a joke, people!), but which will tell us virtually nothing about the war (I still can’t get over the fact that I had to find a news report from al jazeera to post last night because nothing comparable was available from the alphabet soup of news outlets in this country).
All of this is actually a setup, believe it or not, to what I want to note about a recent column in The New Yorker by Eric Alterman (in addition to the American Progress link above) about The Huffington Post and the rise of online media versus the decline of paper and print journalism (in terms of circulation; any consideration of quality of the product as a whole as a result is another discussion I know).
Alterman tells us…
Until recently, newspapers were accustomed to operating as high-margin monopolies. To own the dominant, or only, newspaper in a mid-sized American city was, for many decades, a kind of license to print money. In the Internet age, however, no one has figured out how to rescue the newspaper in the United States or abroad. Newspapers have created Web sites that benefit from the growth of online advertising, but the sums are not nearly enough to replace the loss in revenue from circulation and print ads.Speaking of which, I may give the Inky a pass on this occasion; even though every other Thursday is a “high holy day” with the appearance of Little Ricky and his “Elephant Poop In The Room” column, he is in full “onward Christian soldiers” mode today over the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI (which would be fine if we were talking about the Catholic Standard and Times, which of course we’re not).
Most managers in the industry have reacted to the collapse of their business model with a spiral of budget cuts, bureau closings, buyouts, layoffs, and reductions in page size and column inches. Since 1990, a quarter of all American newspaper jobs have disappeared. The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death, that the newspaper companies’ solution to their problem was to make “our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.”
That may help explain why the dwindling number of Americans who buy and read a daily paper are spending less time with it; the average is down to less than fifteen hours a month. Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising.I have not lost sight of that fact either, by the way; sourcing corporate news organizations is a big part of what I try to do, and I suspect that this site would be considerably less interesting (depending on how interesting one thinks this blog is anyway, I know) if those organizations no longer existed.
…
Taking its place, of course, is the Internet, which is about to pass newspapers as a source of political news for American readers. For young people, and for the most politically engaged, it has already done so. As early as May, 2004, newspapers had become the least preferred source for news among younger people. According to “Abandoning the News,” published by the Carnegie Corporation, thirty-nine per cent of respondents under the age of thirty-five told researchers that they expected to use the Internet in the future for news purposes; just eight per cent said that they would rely on a newspaper. It is a point of ironic injustice, perhaps, that when a reader surfs the Web in search of political news he frequently ends up at a site that is merely aggregating journalistic work that originated in a newspaper, but that fact is not likely to save any newspaper jobs or increase papers’ stock valuation.
The web will never offer a replacement to the experience of sitting down in the morning with a cup of coffee and something for breakfast while reading a newspaper. Learning about the world this way, to say nothing of challenging a preconceived point of view with an intelligent counter argument, is one of the fundamental means of obtaining information to make informed political decisions. That is why I do not celebrate what looks to be the eventual demise of “dead-tree media.”
Though Huffington has a news staff (it is tiny, but the hope is to expand in the future), the vast majority of the stories that it features originate elsewhere, whether in print, on television, or on someone’s video camera or cell phone. The editors link to whatever they believe to be the best story on a given topic. Then they repurpose it with a catchy, often liberal-leaning headline and provide a comment section beneath it, where readers can chime in. Surrounding the news articles are the highly opinionated posts of an apparently endless army of both celebrity (Nora Ephron, Larry David) and non-celebrity bloggers—more than eighteen hundred so far. The bloggers are not paid. The over-all effect may appear chaotic and confusing, but, (Kenneth) Lerer (one of HuffPo’s founders) argues, “this new way of thinking about, and presenting, the news, is transforming news as much as CNN did thirty years ago.” Arianna Huffington and her partners believe that their model points to where the news business is heading. “People love to talk about the death of newspapers, as if it’s a foregone conclusion. I think that’s ridiculous,” she says. “Traditional media just need to realize that the online world isn’t the enemy. In fact, it’s the thing that will save them, if they fully embrace it.”I definitely wouldn’t say that about Schaeffer’s post; his arguments show some thought and reflection even though I think he’s fundamentally wrong. But it is fortunate that he can make his case and receive feedback in real time, which is one of the few advantages I would give to online media versus its print counterpart.
…
Arthur Miller once described a good newspaper as “a nation talking to itself.” If only in this respect, the Huffington Post is a great newspaper. It is not unusual for a short blog post to inspire a thousand posts from readers—posts that go off in their own directions and lead to arguments and conversations unrelated to the topic that inspired them. Occasionally, these comments present original perspectives and arguments, but many resemble the graffiti on a bathroom wall.
The notion that the Huffington Post is somehow going to compete with, much less displace, the best traditional newspapers is arguable on other grounds as well. The site’s original-reporting resources are minuscule. The site has no regular sports or book coverage, and its entertainment section is a trashy grab bag of unverified Internet gossip. And, while the Huffington Post has successfully positioned itself as the place where progressive politicians and Hollywood liberal luminaries post their anti-Bush Administration sentiments, many of the original blog posts that it publishes do not merit the effort of even a mouse click.
And the point of this post is also not to slam Arianna Huffington, by the way. Even though I grow ever more annoyed by her site’s preoccupation with quasi-literate celebrity pontifications (should I really care what Larry David thinks of Dick Cheney?), gossipy celebrity tripe and an ever-escalating amount of intrusive popup ads, I know she’s “altering the landscape” in favor of a participatory exchange of ideas tilted somewhat towards a progressive point of view.
And if our corporate media as a whole bothered to give the time of day to those with our political orientation, then there might not be a need for her site (or many blogs I guess, possibly even this one also) to even exist. But we do, and she does, and more often than not (but not always), her voice is ours as well.
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