No Time for Sergeants

There are soon to be upwards of 150,000 troops on the ground in Iraq. Most of them are patriots. They are serving in the armed forces to serve a cause larger themselves. They are serving to protect America from Islamo-terror-fascist who, given the opportunity, would destroy America overnight. Outside their family and close friends, they will be unremarkable, run of the mill Joes and Janes. Individually they would have little chance of affecting events on their local street corner. Collectively they are changing the world.

Unfortunately, you’ll see more Bush/Cheney bumper stickers in the faculty parking lot at Ivy League schools than mainstream media stories about the average Joes and Janes bearing the load of Iraq’s freedom. When you do see the occasional story, Joe and Jane will be painted as hapless pawns forced into the military by the Bush tax cuts. The American media hoping for an American defeat in Iraq, will give us a steady diet of a few disgruntled whiners and malcontents who wouldn’t be happy at Disneyland. Jeremy Hinzman the deserter from the 82nd Airborne who ran to Canada is the new cause-celeb for the mainstream media because he has alleged war crimes against men and women who are far braver than he. Spc. Thomas Wilson got his 15 minutes of fame by asking a reporter’s question to Secretary Rumsfeld.Our mainstream media heroes will seek out and glorify the Hinzmans and Wilsons and a score or so of others like them while ignoring the 10s of thousands serving proudly and honorably. No doubt Hinzman, who was fine with the Army until actually called upon to earn his pay after 9-11, will convene a Winter Soldier Project in his bid to become the Democrat front-runner in ’08.

Hinzman reminds me of briefing I attended during the first Gulf War. Someone asked the speaker, a very senior officer, about a doctor who refused to ship out with his unit. In answering the question, the speaker waxed eloquently for several minutes and threw around flowery words and concepts like conscience, religion, individual choice, duty, the law, understanding etc. When he was finished, there was a pause and silence long enough to hear a sergeant in the back say what I think everyone was thinking, “Yeah, well all that may be true, but I think he’s just a chicken s@*t coward.” Sometimes the obvious short answer is the best one. But no one wrote a front page article on the sergeant.