Abu Wabu

The MSM is trashing the surge in Iraq, and Democrats and weak Republicans alike are looking for a way to cut and run from President Bush. Meanwhile, the troops are voicing their support for the Commander-In-Chief and their commitment to their mission in Iraq.

The WaPo's William Arkin wants the troops to shut up.

Barkin' Arkin has written a putrid screed that perfectly embodies the idiocy the antiwar left refers to as "thinking":

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

* As the debate about the Iraq war demonstrates, war-making is a shared endeavor and the arrogant and intolerant few who think they are above the people seem to be those who are wearing the uniform.

This puke apparently knows how offensive his bullshit is to everyone who isn't as insane as he is with hatred for his country; he has pulled his remarks from the front page of his blog, which I'm not even going to link to.

The best responses to this pathetic garbage come from the military, who know firsthand what this asshole will never know. USAF officer John at OPFOR:

And with that piece, every frustration that I've felt over America's new fifith column, every insult that smug anti-war pundits have hurled at the silent stoics in our armed forces, all the false pity, all the overused meaningless cliches ("we support the troops but not the war") that we in the military have endured, every bit of anger that I've suppressed in the name of good manners and honorable debate, reaches a fist-clenching apex...

...If there is a war that's unwinnable, it's the war on this type of horrid ignorance. The type of uninformed, intellectually lazy thinking that can only exist in the sheltered bubble of cocktail parties and classrooms. Arkin is a gazer. A man forever condemned to peering out the window into the real world, watching the exertions of men better than himself. And yet he fancies himself the educated one. Any logical human being would trade [a] career in journalism for the expertise gained by serving a mere one month in the box, yet this slime fancies his opinion so informed, so expert, so utterly irrefutable that even the very soldiers who are fighting this war are shamefully ignorant for daring to challenge his infallibility.

A remarkably accurate description of the typical leftist idiot.

More reax:
Uncle Jimbo at Black Five: Fuck you, Billy.

Fuzzy Bear:

Mr. Arkin is among those who don't like the volunteer army because it's immune to leftist attempts to co-opt it for the anti-war effort. Yes, if there were a draft the military could then be filled with soldiers who by philosophy, constitution or character/personality were unsuited to it and the anti-war types could use the military itself for their propaganda.

John Hinderaker at Powerline:

The Peril of Newspaper Blogs is that a reporter might say what he actually thinks before an editor catches up with him and makes him stop.

Dan Riehl: "It's official. The press has gone to war."

It's a testament to Riehl's restraint that he only now voices that conclusion.