Bloviating

Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) comments with sensitivity on the brouhaha over his Chickenhawk Bloggers cartoon of yesterday.

Gosh, have you ever seen so many panties in a wad?

Way to show your not just trolling for controversy, Tom.

Look, the cartoon’s fair game, of course …

Nice of you to say so.

… and none of this is unexpected—you make fun of a bunch of bloviators, you’re going to get some bloviating.

Bloviate: To discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner. Yeah, plenty of that around here.

The only thing I really object to is the canard that it was attacking veterans.

Well, except for those veterans who assumed, until they were “corrected” by you, that they were included in the post.

What it was attacking was pomposity; the self-important rhetoric of those who tell us in flowery language that the mounting death toll is a necessary and even a good thing. No rightie blogger was ever so callous, you say? Well, do you remember the “flypaper strategy”? The idea that the deaths of our troops are a good thing because as long as the terrorists are busy attacking them, they can’t come after us?

Which would certainly be a fine thing to lampoon if (a) that’s what you’d said, and (b) that’s what any warblogger I’ve read had ever said.

First off, the whole point of least the first two panels (if not the whole strip) is that bloggers who oppose “Islamo-Fascism,” or are pro-war on Iraq or Afghanistan, or pro-Dubya in foreign policy, are lily-livered scoundrels and immature crybaby hypocrites (who live at home and eat too many snacks) because they’re not putting their lives on the line, but only spouting empty rhetoric from a safe distance.

Even if we assume that “milbloggers” are excluded from that (even though many of them seem to hold the same opinions as the “chickenhawks”), it’s still a stupid and insulting argument. If one lacks the moral authority to speak on an issue of one is not actively, currently, risking everything over it — then, obviously, criticizing oppression in China or Cuba or North Korea or (a few years ago) Iraq or Afghanistan, without being willing to go over in armed conflict aganist those regimes, lacks any moral justification, either. Ditto for criticizing the health care system if you’re not impoverishing yourself to buy medications for the poor, etc.

If Tom Tomorrow opposed the war on Iraq, did he put his life on the line to protect those civilians he was concerned about? Was he a human shield? Did he chain himself onto railroad tracks leading from arms depots? Did he take up arms against the invaders? Or was it just, “I’m fighting for peace against the Neocon Chickenhawks — with my cartoon!”

To the second point, though, I’ve never read anyone say that American military losses — the deaths of soldiers — is a “good” thing. An unfortunate thing, a sadly necessary thing, an ultimately worthwhile sacrifice — yes, that I can find, the same as I might be able to find people saying the same about war casualties in any conflict, or lament the deaths of fire fighters in a fire, while still appreciating their bravery and the needfulness of what they were doing.

If you don’t believe the war in Iraq or Afghanistan was necessary, or the lesser of other evils, then, fine, those are issues over which folks can disagree. To claim that those arguing in favor of those wars were flip, cowardly, or pudgy live-at-home computer nerds with no concept of what was at stake, is simply an ad hominem attack.

To the extent, by the way, that I’ve seen discussions of the “flypaper strategy,” it’s never been, “Hey, we’d rather have US soldiers dying over there than people dying back home.” Rather, it’s that the troops are better able to take the fight directly to the terrorist organizations if they’re gathering in opposition to the occupation. The idea is not that it’s okay, or “good,” for US soldiers to die; rather, it’s that it’s good for US soldiers to be able to kill terrorists and “Islamo-fascists” directly, rather than waiting for them to kill themselves off via suicide bombings on further civilian targets around the world.

And I’m the one who doesn’t “support the troops”?

I don’t know. Tom. I presume you do. You don’t seem to have much respect for, or support of, those who are expressing their opinions about the war, though. Except, of course, the ones you agree with.