Soldiers are not pawns
I am having a disagreement with Carter at Volunteer Voters and Brittney of Nashville is Talking. They are confused as to why I take offense with their literal suggestion that “Soldiers are pawns”.
The idea that those who defend our Nation and Constitution are pawns is repugnant because it diminishes and marginalizes the nobility of those soldiers who give the greatest sacrifice.
This all started when Carter praised a Moveon.org type of attack piece on Fred Thompson. What Fred Thompson said was from an old poem. He did a good job saying it and it needs to be said.
There is a noble bearing of the soldier. They are the keepers of our freedom. They are not pawns. You either get it or you don’t.
May 29th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Strictly speaking, soldiers are pawns or more appropriately, the pawn in chess has always represented an infantryman, pikeman or some other foot soldier.
Although it isn’t very flattering, infantrymen are more expendible than artillery, tanks, planes or officers. As in chess, there are also a lot more of them and they are definitely the guys on the front lines that take the casualties.
But obviously chess doesnt really focus much on the bravery or the sacrifices of the soldiers. Chess was a game originally played by generals and kings, not by the guys who carry the gear and earn the medals. Chess diminishes the contributions of the infantrymen because it didn’t care about them in the first place. Comparisons to chess aren’t really inaccurate, they just portray war from a kings-eye view. Which is kind of rotten of them.
May 29th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
In a country that wants to have a volunteer military instead of conscription, it would probably be wise to recognize the contributions of the soldiers. I think it was historically unlikely that the human counterparts to the pawns volunteered to fight.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
As humans and professionals, soldiers/sailors are not pawns. In the context our host is thinking of (and possibly accurately arguing against), labeling them as pawns is incorrect. For the most part, they are doing a job as assigned them by their superiors.
That being said, another definition of a pawn is “one who is used by another to gain an end”. In that sense, the entire military complex could be thought of as pawns, men and women being used to enforce US political policy (whether right or wrong) through violence.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
My comment left at VV:
May 30th, 2007 at 3:01 am
Oh, it’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, and chuck ‘im out, the brute!
But it’s saviour of ‘is Country when the guns begin to shoot!
Some people need to read their Kipling.
May 30th, 2007 at 8:21 am
May 30th, 2007 at 8:28 am
From your beloved YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GRR_n_yQGA
Anyhow, you are right. Soldiers aren’t inanimate objects. Inanimate objects can’t die for Dick Cheney’s incompetence. As for the noble bearing and all that: John Wayne was never in the military. Some people tend to think that.
May 30th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Soldiers understand what they are. They understand the mission comes first. That’s why they throw themselves on live grenades to save their buddies.
Pawn may be accurate, but it’s condescending, especially when it comes from someone who has no idea what wearing the uniform means.
I wouldn’t use that term. I know better.
May 30th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
A reading:
“What is the specifically American sense of life?
A sense of life is so complex an integration that the best way to identify it is by means of concrete examples and by contrast with the manifestations of a different sense of life.
The emotional keynote of most Europeans is the feeling that man belongs to the State, as a property to be used and disposed of, in compliance with his natural, metaphysically determined fate. A typical European may disapprove of a given State and may rebel, seeking to establish what he regards as a better one, like a slave who might seek a better master to serve – but the idea that he is the sovereign and the government is his servant, has no emotional reality in his consciousness. He regards service to the State as an ultimate moral sanction, as an honor, and if you told him that his life is an end in itself, he would feel insulted or rejected or lost. Generations brought up on statist philosophy and acting accordingly, have implanted this in his mind from the earliest, formative years of
his childhood.
A typical American can never grasp that kind of feeling. An American is an independent entity. The popular expression of protest against ‘being pushed around’ is emotionally unintelligible to Europeans, who believe that to be pushed around is their natural condition. Emotionally, an American has no concept of service (or of servitude) to anyone. Even if he enlists in the army and hears it called ‘service to country,’ his feeling is that of a generous aristocrat who chose to do a dangerous task. A European soldier feels that he is doing his duty.
(Ayn Rand — “Don’t Let It Go”, 1971)
May 30th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Metulj, as far as I know, inanimate objects can’t die for anything. Because they’re inanimate.
On the other hand, free man and women can freely choose to do a pretty much thankless job at great personal risk and sacrifice, including death. And they can do this knowing that they’ll be thought of, if at all, as naive simpletons or psychopathic automatons, because they believe it is the right thing to do. If that’s a pawn, then the universe needs more pawns.
As far as John Wayne not being a soldier, neither was Clinton, what’s your point?
May 30th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
[…] #9: The idea that those who defend our Nation and Constitution are pawns is repugnant because it diminishes and marginalizes the nobility of those soldiers who give the greatest sacrifice. […]
May 30th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Pawns don’t choose to serve. Our military personnel have chosen to serve. Though we don’t deserve them or their service.
Everybody wanted to send them to battle on 9/12. So, tell me, how is it we lose our nerve here safely at home, while those we sent lose lives, limbs, loves, all to do what we asked? How is it, we wither in spirit and courage and they do not? How is it, that they think we are still worth it, when we do not?
Don’t talk down those that serve where I can reach you. One of us will go for medical care and one for jail, don’t know which one, but at least one, I guarantee.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:27 pm
A few things to point out. The Fred Thompson video “Fred Thompson, Soldier” was from 2003. The Moveon.org type hit piece from “Americans for Change” was done this Tuesday the day after Memorial Day. It alleged that Fred Thompson had cynically used the troops for political advantage. That is incorrect. The attempt for cynical political advantage was from “Americans for Change”.
Both Carter and Brittney praised the video “Americans for Change” titled “Fred Thompson, Never a Soldier”. They are entitled to their opinion. The purpose of this video hit piece was to take the “chickenhawk offense” to a new level. As Rustmeister points out on Glen Dean’s blog only 4 percent of the country has served in the Armed Forces. How serious can the suggestion be that only that 4 percent is fit to run for public office?
This chickenhawk tactic is straight from the pages of George Soros. Both Carter and Brittney embarrassed themselves and called into question their objectivity when they praise this obvious piece of propaganda that very well may be from Moveon.org. It sure looks like their work.
As to Carter’s post. Some have said he choose his words poorly. I don’t know. He has dug in and refused to budge.
I think I know what he was trying to say but what makes it difficult to understand is his praise of the video “Fred Thompson, Never a Soldier”. I don’t see how anyone can praise that video. It is complete utter crap.
Don’t like Fred Thompson? Fine. Talk about it. But when you pull in the members of the Armed Forces for the same abuse then you should expect people will call you on it.
Carter’s post got lost. The message was not delivered because of the tangents of the post. It was not good writing. The words “pawns” and button men” don’t make sense. War is not a game of chess and it is not an episode of the “Sopranos”.
Carter may be a conservative/libertarian but he appears to be an Al Gore acolyte. Brittney is much clearer about who she is. Nothing wrong with that. Free country and all. But this whole affair makes me wonder about Channel 2, and their two bloggers and whether I can count on them being objective. If Volunteer Voters is just going to be all “Al Gore is the man” and “Fred Thompson is the con man” all the time, shouldn’t the name be changed from “Volunteer Voters” to “Al Voters”?