The petulant demands of the 'anti'…

One of the reasons I am on so many lists and read so many blogs is that peopel amuse me deeply. Of course it’s mostly in a head shaking “is this what evolution took millions of years to produce? Put it back in the ove, it ain’t done yet” kind of way.

As I was discussing the war (see my recent post) someone who normally makes some decent points pulled out one of the oldest and least persuasive arguments available… the old “if you are so supportive of the war, why haven’t you joined the army?” routine. It came in two parts this time.

Paraphrased, the first part was speakign of war supporters and commenting on the supposed contradictiont hat someone would support the war but not be ina  huge rush to join the army. I answered…

“Why would you think that? We don’t have that standard for any other thing, even those that involve lives. We have many people who expect their lives and homes to be protected from fire – yet few are firemen. They simply demand that others die for their sake. Similarly few people are cops, yet are fast to demand that the police stand between them and harm. The list goes on and on and on.”

 The followup part of the question was more personal, I was asked “What about you?”. My reply?

“What about me? I am a veteran of military service. I joined at 18 in 184, the height of the cold war. I fully expected to be deployed to Germany if the conflict went hot and I chose a MOS that would be in the forefront of the fighting (19E, tank crewman). I had a job that was expected to have a 4-1 mortality rate (against) and a battlefield life expectancy of 37 minutes at the time. I spent my time “on the wall” so to speak.

Of course it’s a silly concept anyway, I’ll listen to the people who demand that anyone who is for the war join the military the moment the person doing the demanding become a policeman or a fireman.”

Fools.