Doubts Grow as G.I.’s in Iraq Find Allies in Enemy Ranks - New York Times
“I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
His views are echoed by most of his fellow soldiers in Delta Company, renowned for its aggressiveness.
A small minority of Delta Company soldiers — the younger, more recent enlistees in particular — seem to still wholeheartedly support the war. Others are ambivalent, torn between fear of losing more friends in battle, longing for their families and a desire to complete their mission.
With few reliable surveys of soldiers’ attitudes, it is impossible to simply extrapolate from the small number of soldiers in Delta Company. But in interviews with more than a dozen soldiers over a one-week period with this 83-man unit, most said they were disillusioned by repeated deployments, by what they saw as the abysmal performance of Iraqi security forces and by a conflict that they considered a civil war, one they had no ability to stop.
Okay, let’s use the NYT numbers: Delta Company has 83 members. NYT interviewed a dozen of them. “Most” in journalistic terms often means as little as 51 percent of the sample - especially when a journalist is trying to push a certain agenda - which NYT writers always are. So the sample of disgruntled grunts could be as low as seven, or less than ten percent of the unit. Further, I doubt if all those “disillusioned” expressed more than one of the reasons glibly presented as being offered by all.
So from seven to, oh, ten, responses, the NYT will trumpet that the 140,000 or so troops currently in Iraq are “disillusioned.”
You know, you’d think the Times could stop lying about the American military at least long enough to let the Memorial Day weekend pass in peace.
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It’s a story about one unit. I don’t see why you’re leaping to the conclusion that the NYT will generalize from this to the entire force. That’s what polls are for.
After finding one “disillusioned” soldier to interview they probably asked him for names of others that felt the same.
Ah, socialists. They never change. Just ask Kipling:
That’s…awesome, SDN. Apparently I should have paid more attention to Kipling.
Kipling is practically the official poet of engineers and soldiers. He’s practically the only poet I like. Some of Shakespeare’s sonnets are very good and some others have a few good works, but Kipling is the only poet I’ll sit down and read.
I strongly recommend
The Sons of Martha - Work your ass off, don’t expect credit, don’t expect thanks, just expect criticism.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings. This is especially good when you’re overwhelmed by mush-headed thinking. I came across this one in one of Jerry Pournelle’s anthologies, probably one of the There Will Be War books. His introduction helped make sense of the poem (Copybook headings? What are those?) — legacy of the education of times gone by. If you wish, I’ll see if I can dig that book out of one of the many boxes o’ books, and either provide the name, summarize the intro, or type the intro.
Cold Iron - Not sure what it’s saying; every time I read it I toggle between two interpretations. But the refrain rings.
Bill, Akismet just put a comment into limbo (3 comments). Normally I’d let someone dig it out when they got to it, but it has links for some Memorial Day reading you might enjoy.
D’oh! I meant “(3 links)”, not 3 comments.
Bill, a lady named Leslie Fish (you may have heard of her since you write science fiction) has three albums of Kipling that she has set to music.
Cold Iron.
Undertaker’s Horse.
I have extra (legal) copies I could send you.
Here is where you can buy one of them, Our Fathers Of Old.
This is my favorite Kipling site.
Kipling has a poem for just about any occasion. Some funny, some beautiful, and some, like the one I linked, just savage in dealing with idiots. Many of his poems are designed to be sung.
Steve F, Cold Iron becomes very clear on the last verse: it’s an allegory of Christ’s redemption. The Baron is us, the King is Christ.
Interesting. I put up a Kipling quote here a few months ago and got a disdainful response from someone. I thought it must have had something to do with Kipling, man of the Empire (bad).
My favorite poet is Robbie Burns. I did notr inherit this attitude but discovered him on my own.
Afton Water has been set to music. It doesn’t need music, the words are the most musical words ever written.
It doesn’t correspond to conventional wisdom, but Mary is Burns beloved deceased sweetheart, Eliza Burnett. She awakes momentarily to gather flowers in Afton Water. I could not possibly speak this poem out loud.
I named my first son after Robbie Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire.
And reverse editorial policy of a decade?
Someone said it best:
“We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours.
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words–
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester–
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered–
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
I have another son named after the author of that.
Sorry, someone was buried in Joplin all weekend, cackling to himself and getting strange looks. I went looking just now, and it looks like Bill took care of it: At least, there are no comments in the spam queue under your handle.
Why do I sense a sentence missing from this story? Something along the lines of, “The other 70 told us to pound sand.”
Oh, I dunno. Probably because the farking hed of the story speaks not of “GIs in one unit,” but of “GIs In Iraq.”
Probably goes right over your head, though, because you understand so little of how propaganda is practiced in journalism, and how readers imbibe their info.