"Give that man a promotion"
...says Dave at Garfield Ridge. I agree.
"Actually it's quite fun to fight 'em, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawling," [Lt. Gen. James] Mattis said.No doubt, he's going to catch hell for this. "You can't say it's fun to shoot people! That means the terrorists have won! We're just as bad as they are!""You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis said during a panel discussion. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."
I don't know about you, but I like having this guy fighting on our side.
I'm not what you'd call "hardened". I don't think I ever want to be that so tough that I could be so unaffected by death. But without people like Lt. Gen. Mattis, people like me would lose all that's important to us.
John Adams explains it better than I could:
I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy ... in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.I'm in that third generation and I know it. But unlike a lot of my more "artistic" contemporaries, I haven't forgotten that it's men who "study war", who absolutely make my simple, cush life possible, where I can indulge in the love of art and music and generally have a happy comfortable existence without having to face the horrible things they have to face as part of their daily life. These men are the only reason the rest of us can have all the things that make life so much worth living.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is already trying to soften the blow:
Without explicitly criticizing Mattis, Pace told the briefing, "First of all, all of us who are leaders have a responsibility in our words and our actions to provide the right example all the time for those who look to us for leadership."And it's kind of sad that the aforementioned whiners don't even have the appreciation to just silently condemn people like Lt. Gen. Mattis, when it's men like him who have ensured that we can live in a society where women aren't slapped for showing skin, or gays stoned to death, or 16-year-old girls hung because they disagree with the clerics' official interpretation of the national religion.
The general isn't saying that he loves killing. He has pride in putting his butt on the line, in the most dangerous places, in order to fight for the kind of civilization that we're all so privileged to enjoy. If some people can't see the true morality of what it means to be on the front lines literally fighting for the values that have made our prosperity possible, then they probably don't have the historical understanding and moral development to ever appreciate how good we have it anyway.
Me, I'm just humbled that men like him exist.
Posted by Matt at February 4, 2005 10:19 AM
