The excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”:
“Instead of tough, immediate action against every cog in the military machine that promoted, pampered and palliated the mass murderer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, victims got a commission of inquiry.
Or in Pentagon speak, ‘a broad 45-day review.’
The state’s response to the slaughter at Fort Hood of 13 of its own by a Muslim Army psychiatrist, who also wounded more than 30 in the shootings at the Texas military post on Nov. 5, will be met, first, with more bureaucracy – more salaries for more slackers – and, thereafter, with a brick-thick report! …
Thinking of enlisting? You’ll be fighting not for country and countrymen; but will be granting a banal bureaucrat a lien on your life.
As for the inquiry cobbled together to stop future Hasans:
Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, a fictitious, but oh-so-real character in the brilliant British satires ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister,’ would agree with me when I say that government commissions are where accountability goes to die.”
The complete column, now on WND.COM, is “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”
Update I (Nov. 27): A correction to our friends over at the Libertarian Republican’s blog post: I’ve made it abundantly clear that it is not merely the military under Obama that suffers the afflictions highlighted in “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”, and in “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program”—but the military, period.
Hozanas to the generic Hasan were the norm during Bush’s reign over the Army.
Patriotic Americans, as highlighted in “Take this, Mr. President, For Ramos and Compean,” were prosecuted and persecuted with equal zeal under Genghis Bush.
In the waning years of Bush’s G-d-awful term, I offered a flip-side argument: “Support The Draft … for politicians and bureaucrats”:
Having expatiated against the illegal, immoral and unconstitutional Iraq war from its inception, I’d recommend a different course of action in furtherance of freedom. For one, crying for the carping consular staff is a bad idea. They seem to want to enjoy the favors of office without bearing the burdens—to pick and choose those policies they are prepared to promote.
Creating a risk-free workplace for the already privileged government employee will do nothing to curb the State’s endless exploits. Coddling its recruits won’t place a dampener on government’s callous, confiscatory practices. The riskier the stakes faced by the political class, the better. Let as many of them as possible shoulder the consequences of the Iraq policy. Force more of the state’s pen-pushing laptop bombardiers to the empire’s fronts. Then, perhaps, will we witness policy changes that percolate down to The People.
Update II: The response to this column, public and personal, has been better than I had hoped. To think of the filthy hate mail I used to get when I wrote against the Iraq war for all those years!
If in writing this column, I’ve helped to save one life — then that is more of a reward than I could have hoped for. As is written in the Talmud (and plagiarized by Islam), “Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” [Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a)]