Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

In my day, never was longer.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

I really should read my own blog.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / The Counter-Recruiters

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7Comments

  1. 1.

    Marcus Wellby

    The whole debate regarding whether or not recruiters should be allowed in schools is ridiculous. It is yet another example of the culture in this country where some parents want to pass their parental responsibility on to others. If your child is so naive that they could be talked into military service (not a small commitment) when it is something they don’t want to do, then that child of yours is going to have a very difficult time with adulthood. It also means that you have failed miserably as a parent in teaching your child how to look after themselves and make their own decisions. It is not the fault of some “evil government” dragging your kids out of Social Studies and tossing them in the back of a black van.

    Oddly, its the same culture that wants to limit what is on TV because unsupervised children are watching shows they have no business watching. In that case certain parents would rather limit what I watch rather than establish some rules at home.

    It takes a village my ass.

  2. 2.

    MI

    THE UNSPOKEN AGENDA of this “counter-recruiting” movement must be addressed. They seek nothing less than the destruction of the U.S. military, which they see as the primary instrument of “American Imperialism.”

    Wow, I really, really hate this kind of shit. Listen…I don’t want kids going over to Iraq for a myriad of reasons, and sorry to disappoint, none of them are my desire to see the destruction of the US military.

    I initially supported the war (philosophically I still do), and if I had any kind of platform at the time, I wouldn’t have discouraged people from joining up. But the shit hit the fan, nothing turned out as planned, there’s no end in sight.

    It would be different if the leaders and their failed war plans had gotten voted out of office. Then you could make the case that new and better ideas were on the way (actually with Kerry that wouldn’t have been this case really, but you know what I mean) but that’s not what happened. President Bush got reelected. So seeing how he/they handled the first couple years of the war, how in the hell can you in confidence and good conscience try to sign people up for a war that you know is being run by folks who don’t know what they’re doing??

  3. 3.

    MI

    Sorry if that was a bit harsh..like most people with this war, whether for or against, discussion tends to drive up the blood pressure.

    If the president came out tomorrow and said, “We’re adding 200,000 more troops to Iraq, we’re going to close down the boarder, we’re going to shut the country down for a week or two, and we’re going to absolutely-fucking-obliterate the insurgency.” I would be much more inclined to support recruiting efforts and my support for the war itself would rise dramatically. But obviously that’s not the case, it’s the opposite. Until there’s a clear, reasonable, decent plan for what the hell we’re going to do with this mess, I don’t see my views on this issue changing much.

  4. 4.

    Geoduck

    Of course, we don’t have an extra 200,000 troops, we don’t have the power to shut down the border, and we can’t wipe out the insurgency. But it sure sounds snappy!

  5. 5.

    RW

    MI, it would indeed be a good thing if the president actually said. I’m no military expert, though, so it’s just my gut feeling that something like that is needed.

    The bad thing is that he’d have to seek congressional approval for the money and you’d have even more dickwads like Dick Durbin comparing the soldiers to nazis, this time during debates on further military action. I don’t think the Democrats are anti-military, so please, no one think that I’m even hinting at something like that, but there’s no f#cking way 200K troops sent for the purpose of more asskicking in the current climate. Cripes, you’re hearing more people propose about cutting and running than crushing the terroristic insurgency.

    And, that goes for both sides (the Buchananesque wing of the libertarian right and the anti-war left), so that comment was non-partisan, for the most part (let’s be honest, there are more anti-war lefties than anti-war isolationists).

  6. 6.

    Kimmitt

    Cripes, you’re hearing more people propose about cutting and running than crushing the terroristic insurgency.

    1) Well, we were repeatedly promised a short, cheap war and occupation by every single relevant official other than President Bush.

    2) I’m all for crushing the terroristic insurgency. I don’t think our current leadership is up to the task. Better to pick a nice date, declare victory, and leave soon than to watch a lot of our people get killed in service of a strategy which is going to fail. You disagree with this. Fine. But if Bush were to call for 200,000 more soldiers, I think you’d be surprised at how many people would take the call seriously. Any sign that this Administration is capable of admitting error would be greeted with joy.

  7. 7.

    Barry

    MI, you aren’t harsh. Bush & Co, and their supporters deserve this.

    If 100,000 young College Republicans per year said ‘Time to fight; college can wait’, and enlisted, the Army wouldn’t know what to do with all of them. Probably 50,000 extra guys would saturate the system. [comment – age doesn’t really matter; there were lots of civilian contractor jobs which needed/need to be done – driving gasoline tankers, engineering work on re-building projects, etc.]

    Instead, we’re seeing what happened in Vietnam, which is that a lot of the guys who support the war don’t want to actually go and, you know – support the war. Back during Vietnam, long-haired hippie/commie freaks were a much less problematic encounter than short-haired, heavily-armed disciplined commie soldiers.

    And the second old thing that is new again is that many right-wingers don’t want to face that. It must be the Evul Libruls!

    The third old thing, which I prophesy is yet to come, is that these people will be happily accepted into politics by right-wingers, while people who opposed the war will be disrespected, libeled and slandered. Even if they fought in it.

    Or rather, *especially* if they fought in it.

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