Opinions
Let’s be clear. I used to post a bunch of stuff on politics and our civilian leadership. I did this because I was a) stupid and b) really stupid. I don’t anymore because TBH there isn’t any such thing as a leader in the area of Capitol Hill. A slight modification to Shakespeare might be in order
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the [politicians].
Now, Naye has some problems with an article I linked to as a reference for ganking a tagline. Throw away as far as I am concerned. She has some issues with the comments attached to the article in that they tend to give a lot of weight to the opinions of military members.
With that said, why is it that they believe I should take their opinions as fact simply because they’re military? I used to read military blogs because they were giving me an honest heartfelt opinion on what was happening. I had friends in the military that I’d email and ask questions. They gave their opinions and experiences although sometimes they were very carefully wording their responses.
Now it seems that all military has the same opinion. To me, they are living in fear. They believe that people are not supporting them. People are turning against them if they do not agree with the job they military was sent to do. Maybe they fear the whole Vietnam experience. I don’t know.
I don’t think you should take my or anyone else’s opinion as fact. Period. I don’t care if they wrote the original paper in a subject, unless they can back it up with data it is opinion not fact. Facts are concrete and objective, opinions are fluffy and subjective. We know what I think about fluffy.
Right now the country as a whole has a huge issue with what is fact and what is opinion. It is exacerbated by the fact that the primary means of news in regards to the war is being deceived by our enemies. Whether this is intentional or not is up to you to form your own opinion on. The situation is also affected by the fact that certain people in leadership positions had the same opinion on a set of facts and then switched to claiming that hard evidence (facts) wasn’t there at all. I’ll give you that the interpretation of facts (i.e. opinions) can change, but you can’t wish data out of existence.
I’m not sure what opinion Naye thinks we in the military all have. I know people who voted for Gore, for Kerry, and will probably vote for Clinton. I know people who disagree with the war. (Contrary to CW(Conventional Wisdom) those two positions are not the same.) I do know that those of us who watch domestic politics have a huge fear of what is going on in the media and on Capitol Hill because Vietnam was a win that turned into a loss thanks to opinion. We know that the people support us, but when we take our local successes (read some of Michael Yon’s reporting) and get slapped in the face and told we’re losing on a daily basis because that is someone’s opinion, it gets really really hard.
Fuck yes I fear the Vietnam experience. It destroyed the heart and soul of the US military, and it took us decades to recover from the apathy and distrust that Vietnam left in the military. It sucks that we have to look at people who use our protection of the First Amendment to attack us and what we are doing. We’ll continue doing our job anyways. Right now, that job is defined by the Commander-in-Chief – using his delegated authority from Congress – as trying to keep the fight in someone else’s backyard and not ours. We can have differing opinions on whether that’s the best choice and still get along, can’t we?
Lee at Right-Thinking posted while I was responding to Naye. He linked to a list by Rod Dreher about how his thinking has changed in the past couple of years. One of his items is this:
4. I no longer have confidence in the ability of our military, or any military, to solve deep cultural and civilizational problems through force alone. I mean, I thought nothing could stand in the way of the strongest military fielded since the days of ancient Rome. No more.
If anyone honestly thought this they were deluding themselves. The military and its attendant use of force is solely predicated on killing people and breaking things. The second sentence is still absolutely true, we can defeat any force that comes against us and this is including the guerillas in Iraq. What we cannot do – but have been put in the position of doing – is build a civilization in an area that by and large has rejected it every opportunity that they get. Where we as the military are falling down is in the PR arena where every fart by Al Queda is proclaimed as a smashing victory and our control of 90% of Iraq is greeted with yawns. We need to work on that and get better. We are doing a pretty good job once you get past the mainstream reports.
This got far too long. For you non-readers: Opinion needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Fact-check your -news-opinion sources, never accept anything at face value.
Having discussed it at length, we decided that, since we already use eachother as excuses, we might as well just be known from the beginnign as siblings. 
