Musings & Sardonic Commentary on Politics, Religion, Culture & Native American Issues. Bringing you the finest in radioactive screeds since 2002! "The Local Crank" newspaper column is distributed by Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.
Just a simple Cherokee trial lawyer, Barkman has been forcing his opinions on others in print since, for reasons that passeth understanding, he was an unsuccessful candidate for state representative in 2002. His philosophy: "If people had wanted me to be nice, they should've voted for me."
Is the US Military taking its' marching orders from the Right Wing Blogosphere? Is there no portion of the Federal government that cannot be corrupted and politicized by the Bush Administration and its thuggery? Apparently not.
Labels: Army, Blogosphere, Conservatives
posted by The Local Crank | 10:36 PM
3 Comments:
Stories like this simultaneously amuse and irritate me because the underlying assumption is always that the military thinks and acts in unison like a bunch of drones. As a soldier and civilian in the Army, what I see 99% of the time is a pervasive disdain for almost anyone associated with the Bush administration, not a bunch of right-wing zealots listening to Rush and forwarding inside info to Drudge. Also, the idea that some politically connected general could somehow influence the thoughts, beliefs and/or personal actions of soldiers is almost laughable. Most self-respecting soldiers hold "political generals" in about as much contempt as they hold professional politicians.
That's kind of how I saw it, too. I know there is a relatively big divide in political opinion between the officer corps (which at least until recently seemed to trend Republican) and enlisted personnel, who were more closely divided like the nation as a whole. However, I think the thrust of these articles is not so much that political generals are trying to influence the troops as they are trying to use Right Wing bloggers to influence public opinion in general.
It's not beyond the realm of possibility, but I think using bloggers is probably the wrong way to do it. I do think the military has a hard time telling the unvarnished truth during wartime, for a variety of complicated reasons. The officer corps in particular is still infected with a "zero-defect" mentality that stigmatizes looking a superior in the eye (or the nation through a reporter's camera) and saying, "This whole thing is screwed up so badly I wouldn't even know where to begin explaining how." Soldiers are trained never to accept defeat, no matter what their personal feelings may be, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that the military will always attempt to put a positive face on things, even in the midst of a goatscrew like Iraq.
Post a Comment
<< Home