What Liberals Say » Military

America spoils Mercenary Military

William Arkin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:06:18 +0000

“Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform…We pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?…[T]he recent NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary — oops, sorry, volunteer — force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.”

Timing is everything

David Obey — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:55:34 +0000

“Our troops must be out of a combat role by October — I mean by August of 19 — of 2007.”

Volunteer Army Produces Poor Results

Andy Rooney — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:26:50 +0000

“If it’s an all-volunteer Army, you get people who join up because of some problem in their own lives. They don’t have anything else to do, they don’t have a job, or they can’t find what they want to do, so they join the Army. And it doesn’t produce the best Army.”

So the war isn’t hopeless after all

Diane Sawyer — Tue, 08 May 2007 11:21:24 +0000

Diane Sawyer: “How long have you been here?…How many times a month do you say, ‘I don’t know that I can do another month of this? A day?”
Unidentified U.S. Army Captain: “No, I don’t. It doesn’t ever occur to me that way.”

Only losers are in the military.

Charlie Rangel — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 17:45:59 +0000

“If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq . . . [T]hose who have the least opportunities . . . find themselves in the military.”

Air Force Cadet Robert Kurpiel is a disgrace.

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:17:04 +0000

“You are a disgrace to this country . . . . You are worse than the snipers. You are imperialists who are turning the whole damn world against us. September 11 can be blamed in part for what you and your cohorts have done to Palestinians, the VC, the Serbs, a retreating army at Basra.”

SDI won’t work.

Al Gore — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 20:04:36 +0000

“I’m sure that President Reagan sincerely believes he is acting with the best of purposes in looking to SDI as a way to permanently end the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation. But he is wrong — wrong because SDI is not feasible, wrong because it would entail exorbitant costs and, most important, wrong because it would make the possibility of a first strike more likely. . . .”

I voted for and against the funding.

John Kerry — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:26:33 +0000

“I actually did vote for the 87 billion dollars [funding for troop operations in Iraq], before I voted against it.”

The UN should command U.S. troops.

John Kerry — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:22:56 +0000

â€œI’m an internationalist. I’d like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.â€

U.S. soldiers tortured Vietnam people.

John Kerry — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:17:24 +0000

“[U.S. soldiers] raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, [blew] up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam [during the Vietnam war].”