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Andy Rooney: Troops Not Heroes

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From the Montana Standard.


Heroes don't come wholesale

By Andy Rooney Tribune Media Services - 04/08/2004



Most of the reporting from Iraq is about death and destruction. We don't learn much about what our soldiers in Iraq are thinking or doing. There's no Ernie Pyle to tell us and, if there were, the military would make it difficult or impossible for him to let us know.
It would be interesting to have a reporter ask a group of our soldiers in Iraq to answer five questions and see the results:

1. Do you think your country did the right thing sending you into Iraq?

2. Are you doing what America set out to do to make Iraq a democracy, or have we failed so badly that we should pack up and get out before more of you are killed?

3. Do the orders you get handed down from one headquarters to another, all far removed from the fighting, seem sensible, or do you think our highest command is out of touch with the reality of your situation?

4. If you could have a medal or a trip home, which would you take?

5. Are you encouraged by all the talk back home about how brave you are and how everyone supports you?

Treating soldiers fighting their war as brave heroes is an old civilian trick designed to keep the soldiers at it. But you can be sure our soldiers in Iraq are not all brave heroes gladly risking their lives for us sitting comfortably back here at home.

Our soldiers in Iraq are people, young men and women, and they behave like people — sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes brave, sometimes fearful. It's disingenuous of the rest of us to encourage them to fight this war by idolizing them. We pin medals on their chests to keep them going. We speak of them as if they volunteered to risk their lives to save ours but there isn't much voluntary about what most of them have done. A relatively small number are professional soldiers. During the last few years, when millions of jobs disappeared, many young people, desperate for some income, enlisted in the Army.

About 40 percent of our soldiers in Iraq enlisted in the National Guard or the Army Reserve to pick up some extra money and never thought they'd be called on to fight. They want to come home.

One indication that not all soldiers in Iraq are happy warriors is the report recently released by the Army showing that 23 of them committed suicide there last year. This is a dismaying figure. If 22 young men and one woman killed themselves because they couldn't take it, think how many more are desperately unhappy but unwilling to die. We must support our soldiers in Iraq because it's our fault they're risking their lives there. However, we should not bestow the mantle of heroism on all of them for simply being where we sent them. Most are victims, not heroes.

America's intentions are honorable. I believe that and we must find a way of making the rest of the world believe it. We want to do the right thing. We care about the rest of the world. President Bush's intentions were honorable when he took us into Iraq. They were not well thought out but honorable.

President Bush's determination to make the evidence fit the action he took, which it does not, has made things look worse. We pay lip service to the virtues of openness and honesty, but for some reason we too often act as though there was a better way of handling a bad situation than by being absolutely open and honest.
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Depending on what your definition of "hero" is, he's right in that not everyone overseas is a hero. If my unit gets activated, and we're sent to Kuwait to guard some supply point, never being in any real immediate danger, are we heros? Are we any more heros than the thousands of troops who've rotated through Kuwait in the last ten years?

However, I find very distasteful Mr. Rooney's attempt to spread the liberal culture of victimhood to the military. That comment about the Guard and Reserves, specifically.

I'm in the National Guard. I didn't join for college money. Did I want to go to Iraq? Did I want to get pulled out of school and deployed for a year or more to one of the crappiest places on the planet? Of course not!

But had my unit been activated, I would've went. I wouldn't have been happy, we all would've complained, but we'd all have gone and done our jobs. I knew the score when I signed the contract; the same contract that each one of us signed.

But it's not a big a problem as Mr. Rooney would have us believe. Yes, many Guard units have been deployed so long that it's really hurting the soldiers' civilian careers.

But reserve component units, which make up some 40% of the current Army, are over there, serving admirably and honorably, and for Mr. Rooney to paint them all as little more than just misguided conscripts is annoying, to say the least.

Are there problems? Yes. Is it the end of the world? No. (The suicide rate for soldiers in Iraq, while higher than the Army in general, is lower than the general population.)

Mr. Rooney seems to think that you're either a hardcore professional soldier or a poor, abused, misguided sap who was forced to be in the service. And that's bullcrap, bluntly.
 
Goddammit...I used the last of my bark bags on that 'Solidarity with Fallujah' thread.

Luckily, there's no more food in my stomach to throw up.

Some people need to have some sense beaten into them with an ax handle.
 
Poor Andy, He just doesn't get it. Maybe he was out of town when the towers came down?
Then again, he is campaigning for Kerry.
 
Ernie Pyle? Ernie's rolling around in his grave on whatever godforsaken atoll they buried him on.

Andy would have had about a hundred pounds on Ernie, but I'll bet Mr. Pyle would stomp his axe in a fair fight.

Ernie Pyle would never go so far out of his way to undermine the morale of "his" troops.
 
More vile vitriol from another leftist wrapping himself in the 1st Amendment.

If these toads were as restricted in the exercise of the 1st as we are in the exercise of the 2nd, they would be reduced to using old Smith Corona typewriters.:barf: :barf: :barf:
 
Ohhh Okaay... I getit.. you think there isnt any connection between Iraq and the world trade towers!
Good for you!
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Not as long as you overlook that fact that Saddam paid rewards to families of homicide bombers, harbored international terrorists, and sponsored terrorist training camps in Iraq.
 
First off, you misquote Andy Rooney in your title. He says *most* U.S. soldiers are not heros. He does not say that (all) U.S. soldiers are not heros. Many soldiers are indeed heros and Andy Rooney goes out of his way to make that distinction.

Secondly, Andy Rooney is trying to explain that U.S. soldiers are regular folks doing a hard job just like the rest of us. He's also trying to explain that most of them are being given lip service instead of being treated well and that at this point they aren't voluntarily over there because stop loss has been in effect for more than a year now.

He's also, obviously, on their side trying to get them home sooner than later.

I think that Andy Rooney's POV is a **much** better one of soldiers than the POV espoused by this right-wing leader who is extremely close to the Republicans currently in power:

“Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy,†Kissinger told Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein (The Final Days, Simon & Schuster, 1976).
 
I think that Andy Rooney's POV is a **much** better one of soldiers than the POV espoused by this right-wing leader who is extremely close to the Republicans currently in power:
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Of course you do. Like Rooney you support giving aid and comfort to the enemy, emboldening them. I'll bet you both cheer when a U.S. Marine or Infantryman dies, too.

In times past, you BOTH would be executed for sedition.
 
Is there a way to oppose a war without being accused of emboldening the enemy
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Is there a conceivable situation where "citizens' " anti war remarks wouldn't embolden an enemy?

Once troops are committed, one should ****.
 
Frankly, I'm not at all concerned with what Henry Kissenger said 28 years ago. The article doesn't mention the US Democratic Party or the US Republican party, and neither did I. I don't belong to either party, I don't vote along party lines, and I have no intention of joining a political party anytime soon (odd for a political science student, perhaps, but I can beat my own drum, thanks).

I don't see where it's relevant to the issues I have with Mr. Rooney's comments, either. But, I suppose it's too much to hope for that any article that deals with the Iraq War in any sense avoid turning into some sort of ideological shouting match. *shrug*

As for soldiers doing a hard job "like the rest of us"...when's the last time that, during your morning commute, you had to worry about getting blown up by a road-side bomb? When's the last time any of us, sitting comfortably here at our computers, arguing politics over the internet, were shot at by a person that hates you with the utmost intensity? How many of us have to deal with thousands of their fellow Americans calling them murderers and accusing them of all manner of atrocities?

No, the soldiers in Iraq are going through a lot more than the rest of us.

It's worth pointing out, though, that enlistment rates are still very high. Reenlistment rates for soldiers returning from Iraq have been suprisingly high as well. The whole Army isn't stop-lossed, you know.

But whatever. I'm not going to argue with you. I'm sure there are plenty other people here that'll do that for you.

You know though, I can see why President Clinton was so hesitant to put troops on the ground in Kosovo. I mean, sure, few on the political left were complaining and calling him Hitler when he was bombing Yugoslavia (a country that didn't attack us and posed no threat to the US whatsoever, and in a campaign that was without UN support), but troop casualties are bad politics, very bad politics indeed. Unfortunately, this is what the enemy is gambling on. They think if we get our nose bloodied badly enough, we'll pull out. We pulled out of Somolia in 1993. Osama Bin Laden hoped to get us to pull out of Saudi Arabia through his terrorist attacks, including the USS Cole and the World Trade Center. The enemy in Iraq, and their Iranian backers, are convinced that if they kill enough Americans, we'll up and leave.

Whether or not we do remains to be seen, I suppose.
 
Is there a way to oppose a war without being accused of emboldening the enemy and committing sedition?
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Definately. Problem is the "We support the troops" is often followed by a "but", which is then followed by an anti-Bush diatribe about starting the war. Seems its hard to separate the support from politics.

On the other hand, some on the right are going to see any criticism of the war as hating the troops.

People are hyped on both sides during an election year, I guess.
 
Thumper,

Once troops are committed, one should ****.
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I can't agree with that statement.

Using that logic, the German citizens couldn't have opposed the Nazis after th invasion of Poland. The Japanese couldn't have opposed the Emperor after Pearl Harbor.


Doesn't that same logic justify what the insurgents in Fallujah are doing right now?
 
Using that logic, the German citizens couldn't have opposed the Nazis after th invasion of Poland. The Japanese couldn't have opposed the Emperor after Pearl Harbor.
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Interesting choice of analogies, Lone...you starting to have some second thoughts?
 
You know what I mean...

I haven't been to Gitmo since we started locking up suspected terrorists, but I have been to Dachau and Buchenwald. I don't think there's much comparison.

Comparing the U.S. conduct with the conduct of the Japanese during WWII is a little off base, too.

When we start off on the road to genocide, I'll have no problems with open criticism of the war.
 
Doesn't that same logic justify what the insurgents in Fallujah are doing right now?
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The old moral equvilency canard. Only true if you consider bloodthirsty murdering thugs who strap explosives to children as equal to U.S. forces.

Do you?
 
I havent heard of any explosives strapped to children in Fallujah.

I will repose my question, though, as no one has answered it:


How can a citizen oppose a war without committing sedition?


Thumper, at no time did I compare US government conduct now to Japanese government conduct in WW2. My comment dealt specifically with individual citizens, from either country, that might have opposed the war their country was in at that time.
 
Thumper, at no time did I compare US government conduct now to Japanese government conduct in WW2. My comment dealt specifically with individual citizens, from either country, that might have opposed the war their country was in at that time.
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Ah...sorry. I took you in the context of this discussion.
 
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