The Soft Underbelly of the Atrophied Warrior Class

Glenn Greenwald has another excellent post exposing the leaders of the American war culture in this country, and it is not pretty. How these Great Warriors came to power, advocating war, while never actually being in a war (or much less the military) is simply astounding. It is the Fred Kagans and Bill Kristols of the world who drive our foreign policy. And their idea of foreign policy can be summed like this: War and more war. Then, more war.

I find these people reprehensible.

Bush says he listens to the Boots on the Ground. I guess those Boots are penny-loafers and the Ground is a berber-carpeted Townhouse in a tony-suburb somewhere.

To the Kagan's of the world, soldiers are really nothing more than game pieces in their Global Game of Risk. Soldiers die in war, they say, because that is what soldiers are supposed to do: die in war. The soldiers die in the wars that Kagan, Kristol, et al, proposed and planned and pushed knowing they would never actually have to see that war or sacrifice for that war.

Penny-loafers are not meant for blood and bits of brain and body parts; they are for accelerating the gas-pedals of their German-made sedans as they rush to make their Oh-So Important Dinner-Date with other Masters of the Universe.

These Great Thinkers swirl around at cocktail parties regaling each other with how insightful they are and with mutual slaps to the back as they sip on a chardonnay and browse through the Robb report envisioning themselves as the Great Warriors here to finally save America from its weak-kneed liberalism and aversion to the Great Everlasting Wars that will finally bring Everlasting Peace.

These Great Thinkers, coddled by corporate-supported Think Tanks, sit at their mahogany desks with a brass bankers lamps and Important Books on their shelves written by other coddled, fleshy, Keyboard Warriors.

They submit white papers and treatises and reports and bask in the glow of their own greatness as they are congratulated and highly-praised by the other incestuous factions in their own little New World Order cabal of The Never-ending War. This war to prove the exceptionalism of the True American Spirit of spreading Peace and Democracy with a gun. Then it's off for a two-hour power lunch with some brandy and a cigar and a massage before a nap. Then it's back off to the cocktail parties and mutton and whiskey and more slaps on the back and woeful tales of sacrifice becaus the new masseuse just wasn't as good as their regular girl.

They are Warriors, they will tell you; instead of an AK-47, their weapon is the keyboard. They sacrifice, they will tell you, because it is hard for them to hear of all of the death on the TV screen. They would go fight, they will tell you, but their talents are better utilized here, protecting the Homeland, with their Ideas and Intelligence.

Marvel at Our Brilliance, they will tell you, Because We Certainly Do!

That these Geniuses have been completely and totally wrong on every single aspect of this War in Iraq does not discount their Brilliance but only amplifies it. Because you see, they were not and they are not wrong, they argue. This war will be won. If only they are listened to and obeyed and praised but most importantly: not questioned.

We, that cut and run crowd, can't see the Truth that they alone possess and only they can see. For they cannot be wrong. It is so decreed - by them. They are the Creators of this reality we are expected to live under. They alone are judge, jury and witness to this war. Progress is being made; we are in fact winning. Therefore, no other conclusion is even possible other than their conclusion. All of the actual facts and evidence to the contrary is nothing but shrill bellyaching from the left-side of the Unserious Spectrum and deserve no attention whatsover. Those who have been correct are not invited to the cocktail parties.

I think if you were to just threaten one of these Great Warriors with serving anywhere near a military zone that their bowels would open up and purge uncontrollably for hours and their weak knees would turn to jelly until they collapsed into a heap of their own putrid waste.

Yet they would still possess their townhomes and sedans and penny-loafers; penny-loafers with no stain of blood or brain or body parts.