Friday, December 31, 2010

I'm not going to go after the stupid and bigoted Colman McCarthy;

when somebody else has already done such a good job:

On then to McCarthy’s penultimate paragraph, in which he expresses his admiration for soldiers everywhere:

To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America’s or the Taliban’s: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home.

See there, Mr. U.S. Marine Captain — McCarthy doesn’t hate you. Why, he thinks you’re every bit as respectable as a Taliban.

McCarthy concludes with this:

ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school, if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations can kill and destroy their way to peace. If a school such as Harvard does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex.

And I’ll conclude with this.

That is the warrior ethic, Mr. McCarthy — and Harvard could stand a good deal more of it.

To borrow a phrase, people like Colman McCarthy aren't for 'peace'; they're on the other side.

3 comments:

Mattexian said...

Not that I would wish such a thing upon that fool, but if he admires the Taliban as equally as he does US soldiers, then he won't mind if he's killed by a car bomb or an IED on his way to work.

Titan Mk6B said...

Speaking of Honor, I like the line from the movie Rob Roy. "Honor is a man's gift to himself".

Windy Wilson said...

"whether America’s or the Taliban’s"
Why stop there? I'm sure he admires Cuba's army just as much, or the USSR Red Army, or the Romanian Army, or the East German Army, or the West German Army, or the pre- 1945 German Army --- Wait just a minute there!
We just revealed McCarthy's agenda and hidden bias.