A Fool Speaks of Combat

 One Eliot Cohen has written an opinion piece in the Washington Post this January 9th.  It is a criticism of the appointment of former Senator Chuck Hagel to become the Secretary of Defense. You can look the article up if you wish but I have no desire to further publish this man's writing.  I will focus on only two lines because having read them I was immediately held in astonishment and anger.  My astonishment grew when I researched and found out Cohen's background, a search I will again leave to you.

"Does combat service uniquely produce empathy with the troops, an awareness of the horrors of wounds and violent death? Visits to a military hospital will bring one to that. " This is the statement, to be respectful of his career, of an academician. This is also, to be accurate, the statement of a fool who has never served as an infantryman in life and death combat. Deficient as he is in judgment and understanding, he is adept at rhetorical babble. Ask a soldier or veteran about the pride in wearing a Combat Infantryman Badge such as the one Hagel earned. Ask a veteran who has been shot at or blown into the air with metal fragments piercing his body and tearing off the head of the man next to him just what comparison there is in a "Bob Hope" walk down a hospital ward. I am surprised that Cohen, someone who has purported to have studied generic "war" would make such an inane comparison. I am perplexed as to how someone holding such a view could be accepted as some sort of expert in military matters. I am angered and insulted, as an Infantry combat veteran as is Hagel, by his statement. Someone sitting on a Congressional panel before which he will undoubtedly testify should demand an apology on behalf of combat veterans before accepting his credentials on anything much less war.

Sent To Rep. Eric Cantor Today

As a senior citizen, combat veteran, attorney and resident of your District, I am disgusted and angry that you persist in leading an unjustifiable obstruction to reasoned governance. 

I see the Senate bill that you are considering today as a step in the direction of improving the confidence of the markets, the businesses, the citizens and the world in the ability of our Democracy to govern itself.  Neither "side" is celebrating the substance of the Senate Bill but the people in the District that you represent deserve to feel that YOU can compromise for the general welfare.  The ideological golems and sycophants they seduce are far outnumbered by the working and middle class in our District.  The 41% who voted against you this last time will, I assure you, grow in ranks unless you show that you understand your responsibility to ALL.  And I will work vigorously to see you defeated if you do not.

As a long-time "Independent" I have been pushed to the Left increasingly over the last three years by histrionic lies, distortions and ideological obstructionism that you either fostered or silently countenanced.  I hope for, no, I demand your enlightenment to your approach to governing and your re-assessment of the relative value to this District and to our Democracy of your own personal political ambition.