PROTEST THERAPY
By RALPH PETERS
September 27, 2005 -- LAST weekend, 100,000 Americans protested in Washington, demanding that we bring our troops home now. It was a fascinating installment in our nation's self-therapy craze.
Set aside the get-Bush-at-any-cost political hustlers, the earnest college students not yet seasoned by reality, the Jew-baiting free-Palestine detachments and the very few who have thought seriously about the war and found it lacking.
You're left with the legions of Cindy Sheehan wannabes ? meandering souls who, were they only capable of honesty, would be wearing t-shirts that read, "It's not about the war, it's about me!"
Were we able to psychologically profile the demonstrators, we'd find that most of them have a great deal in common: Disappointing lives, failed relationships and the desperate need for a cause of any kind. If we weren't at war, they'd be marching to save pinworms from drug-company aggression.
Of course, opposing a war involving American troops is the best cause of all. Our country has disappointed the protesters intimately ? failing to hand them, free and clear, the lives to which they feel themselves entitled. So forget that our troops are re-enlisting at record rates and willingly risking their lives in a war they believe in. The self-satisfying cry of the demonstrators is "Bring Our Troops Home Now!"
It would be far easier to be sympathetic if a single spokesperson for the media-amplified anti-war movement laid out a convincing model of what would happen in Iraq or Afghanistan if our troops just came home.
Please. Tell me: What becomes of Iraq if we just pull out? Does Atlantis rise from the Tigris to inaugurate the Age of Aquarius in the Middle East? Would grateful terrorists teach us folk dances? Or might the terrorists and insurgents be emboldened, resulting in a bloody civil war, acts of genocide and far worse abuses of human rights than the shabby nonsense at Abu Ghraib?
I'm ready to listen. Convince me. Was Saddam's rule better? Where were you when he was gassing the Kurds and butchering the Shia? Are the fates of foreign peoples only important when our troops can be blamed?
And how about Afghanistan? Where was dreary, old Joan Baez when the Taliban banned Afghan folk music, jailing and torturing musicians? Where were the advocates who believe that every fourth-grade reading list should begin with "Frodo Has 13 Mommies" when girls were forbidden education of any kind? Were Afghans better off under the Taliban?
Answer me, please.
The reason no protester has described what would follow a withdrawal of our troops is that no one on the left can face the answers.
Who needs responsibility, anyway? The protesters are cocooned in a society that minimizes consequences. If anything goes wrong, it isn't their fault. The answer is never personal responsibility, but joining a support group.
The protesters get their wish, our troops leave and a bloodbath erupts, drawing in Turkey, Syria and Iran? Just reach for a glass of sauvignon blanc and speed-dial a like-minded pal for reassurance. Genocide isn't your fault, girlfriend. You did what you felt was right, don't be so hard on yourself.
No consequences. At least not for us.
If the demonstrators believe so firmly that our government and military are wrong, shouldn't they follow the example of the earlier leftists who formed the Lincoln Brigade and fought against fascism? Couldn't they at least muster a Jane Fonda Battalion of artists, actors and professors to deploy to Iraq and bore our troops into surrendering?
The truth about those who would abandon the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to terrorists and thugs is that their spiritual ancestors aren't the men of the Lincoln Brigade, but the thousands of Americans who joined the German-American Bund in the 1930s, arguing that American interests lay in peace with Reichskanzler Hitler, one swell guy.
A popular theme last weekend was, "War, what is it good for?" Well, the answer is that war's good for plenty of things. It freed and forged our nation. War liberated millions of black Americans from bondage. War stopped Hitler, if too late for many millions of his victims (peace at any price tends to have a very high price, indeed).
And our troops liberated 50 million human beings in Afghanistan and Iraq ? who are far more grateful than the protesters or our media will accept.
In this infernally troubled world, war is sometimes the only effective response to greater evils. And there is evil on this earth. It would also be easier to sympathize with the anti-war protesters if they occasionally criticized the terrorists who bomb the innocent.
But the protesters don't really care about Iraqi suffering, or terror, or the Taliban's legacy. They're a forlorn mix of Bush-haters who reject election results that they don't like and drifting souls yearning for a cause to lend their failed lives meaning.
As for the pathetic Ms. Sheehan, since she insists on speaking in the name of our troops, let me suggest that she does not even speak for her own son, a man who joined our military of his own volition and who died for a cause far greater than any represented on the National Mall last weekend.
Sounds like so many here aye ? :clap:
By RALPH PETERS
September 27, 2005 -- LAST weekend, 100,000 Americans protested in Washington, demanding that we bring our troops home now. It was a fascinating installment in our nation's self-therapy craze.
Set aside the get-Bush-at-any-cost political hustlers, the earnest college students not yet seasoned by reality, the Jew-baiting free-Palestine detachments and the very few who have thought seriously about the war and found it lacking.
You're left with the legions of Cindy Sheehan wannabes ? meandering souls who, were they only capable of honesty, would be wearing t-shirts that read, "It's not about the war, it's about me!"
Were we able to psychologically profile the demonstrators, we'd find that most of them have a great deal in common: Disappointing lives, failed relationships and the desperate need for a cause of any kind. If we weren't at war, they'd be marching to save pinworms from drug-company aggression.
Of course, opposing a war involving American troops is the best cause of all. Our country has disappointed the protesters intimately ? failing to hand them, free and clear, the lives to which they feel themselves entitled. So forget that our troops are re-enlisting at record rates and willingly risking their lives in a war they believe in. The self-satisfying cry of the demonstrators is "Bring Our Troops Home Now!"
It would be far easier to be sympathetic if a single spokesperson for the media-amplified anti-war movement laid out a convincing model of what would happen in Iraq or Afghanistan if our troops just came home.
Please. Tell me: What becomes of Iraq if we just pull out? Does Atlantis rise from the Tigris to inaugurate the Age of Aquarius in the Middle East? Would grateful terrorists teach us folk dances? Or might the terrorists and insurgents be emboldened, resulting in a bloody civil war, acts of genocide and far worse abuses of human rights than the shabby nonsense at Abu Ghraib?
I'm ready to listen. Convince me. Was Saddam's rule better? Where were you when he was gassing the Kurds and butchering the Shia? Are the fates of foreign peoples only important when our troops can be blamed?
And how about Afghanistan? Where was dreary, old Joan Baez when the Taliban banned Afghan folk music, jailing and torturing musicians? Where were the advocates who believe that every fourth-grade reading list should begin with "Frodo Has 13 Mommies" when girls were forbidden education of any kind? Were Afghans better off under the Taliban?
Answer me, please.
The reason no protester has described what would follow a withdrawal of our troops is that no one on the left can face the answers.
Who needs responsibility, anyway? The protesters are cocooned in a society that minimizes consequences. If anything goes wrong, it isn't their fault. The answer is never personal responsibility, but joining a support group.
The protesters get their wish, our troops leave and a bloodbath erupts, drawing in Turkey, Syria and Iran? Just reach for a glass of sauvignon blanc and speed-dial a like-minded pal for reassurance. Genocide isn't your fault, girlfriend. You did what you felt was right, don't be so hard on yourself.
No consequences. At least not for us.
If the demonstrators believe so firmly that our government and military are wrong, shouldn't they follow the example of the earlier leftists who formed the Lincoln Brigade and fought against fascism? Couldn't they at least muster a Jane Fonda Battalion of artists, actors and professors to deploy to Iraq and bore our troops into surrendering?
The truth about those who would abandon the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to terrorists and thugs is that their spiritual ancestors aren't the men of the Lincoln Brigade, but the thousands of Americans who joined the German-American Bund in the 1930s, arguing that American interests lay in peace with Reichskanzler Hitler, one swell guy.
A popular theme last weekend was, "War, what is it good for?" Well, the answer is that war's good for plenty of things. It freed and forged our nation. War liberated millions of black Americans from bondage. War stopped Hitler, if too late for many millions of his victims (peace at any price tends to have a very high price, indeed).
And our troops liberated 50 million human beings in Afghanistan and Iraq ? who are far more grateful than the protesters or our media will accept.
In this infernally troubled world, war is sometimes the only effective response to greater evils. And there is evil on this earth. It would also be easier to sympathize with the anti-war protesters if they occasionally criticized the terrorists who bomb the innocent.
But the protesters don't really care about Iraqi suffering, or terror, or the Taliban's legacy. They're a forlorn mix of Bush-haters who reject election results that they don't like and drifting souls yearning for a cause to lend their failed lives meaning.
As for the pathetic Ms. Sheehan, since she insists on speaking in the name of our troops, let me suggest that she does not even speak for her own son, a man who joined our military of his own volition and who died for a cause far greater than any represented on the National Mall last weekend.
Sounds like so many here aye ? :clap: