Newsflash for soldiers criticizing the debate on the surge (escalation): you're not policy makers, and you have only one vote each. Further, democracy in action is not as clear and direct as a military order. It is often awkward, though always necessary, yet more akin to an art than a science. It's life in action, people deciding or exerting pressure for themselves. It's what you're trying to install in Iraq -- through a thus-far pathetic maze of top-down incompetence.
It certainly was true during the old dispensation that soldiers were blowing air when ciriticizing policy makers.
But the big change in the policy makers' use of military has undergone huge change--I speak here of the use of Blackwater and other private paramilitary concerns.
Were I now serving in Iraq, and witnessed that Blackwater people can elect to either stay or not stay, either fight or not fight, and generally to see National Guard troops--who are under the direct command of US military and do not have the gleeming options that private paramilitary goons have--pushed like fodder to serve indicentally the needs of the Blackwater people. Too, the payscale is about jibing with the class war of the Neocons--really big money for the paramilitaries, while GI's and their families at home on meagerly issued food stamps are struggling, and have probably heard of the bullshit way their brethern are treated once they get out and get back. It would take a whole lot of patriotism and a nincompoop compliancy to remain silent and not criticize the Neocon "policy makers."
I wonder, too, just how much fragging is going on. Were I a GI, and saw that hired goons not subject to military orders or military control were getting off while me and others were subjected to increased danger because of their ability to fight or walk, I might get an attitude. Were I to see my GI pal get blown up directly caused by smug, elitist retreat by these soldiers of fortune, I might just be impelled to take the matter into my own hands.
It is clear to see why the Neocons have initiated no draft. Draftees are a different breed from merit-badge worshipping National Guard, who actually believe the shit spewn out by Neocon cheerleaders.
If you cannot see the over-all detrimental effect to the military and its tradition as well as its honorable well-being by using civilian paramilitary operatives, you haven't thought the matter through. It ought to be obvious from the debacle of Rumsfeld--a civilian who insinuated himself within the Pentagon, proceeding to establish a divisive atmosphere by use of intimidating swagger, all to the end of completely fucking up the war in Iraq by massive incompetence and, tangential wrongful deletion of our military tradition.
