I guess I’m not surprised that the conversation about honor, the specifically as regards Scott Thomas Beauchamp, over at Q&O [1], is still going. Equally unsurprising, is that there are several [1] offshoots [2] to [3] the [4] conversation. And, again, it doesn’t surprise me that we find Scott Erb putting up a defense for Beauchamp, and suggesting that honor has nothing to do with veracity of his story.
Leaving aside Erb and his (I think intentional) misconceptions, for the moment;
We are finding, as we go forward, the wacko leftist routes from which this moron came. His writings our testament to his world view. His world view, four years before he became active in the military, does not strike me as what you would find in the military. After all, the military is a commitment to a way of thinking, at least. And, of course, actions based on that thinking.
I am left with the question of just how it is we find him in uniform, to begin with? I mean, I can certainly understand how it is that he is an underperformer, and a pebble in the shoe of any outfit that he is assigned to. But that’s after the commitments’ been made. How is it that someone with his mindset, ends up volunteering?
It is suggested that the reason could very easily be the GI bill. I tend to agree…It’s plausible, but that still leaves other hurdles that should not have been able to be crossed by Beauchamp…
Steyn, the other morning, looks at his writings and comes to the conclusion that we’re dealing with Self-loathing by the bushel. I think he’s quite right, even absent the politics of the issue. I am reminded of Michael Savage, and his statement that liberalism is a mental disease. I’m not a listener of his, but I can’t imagine he’s not going to be playing off on this moron for the nest few years as backing for his axiom. So, then the question also comes, how was it that someone with his mindset makes it through the screening process?
Now, those points aside, let’s address the defense of Beauchamp and such numbnuts by Erb and others, shall we?
At the outset, let’s admit that there is a very central reason to why TNR chose to print this fantasy. That Beauchamp is still, for the moment, in uniform… (though that will doubtless change in the next weeks and months once the board of inquiry gets ahold of this scuzzy butt.) The central reason, is not that he had been engaged to a staffer at TNR, though that helped. it wasn’t that is writings were particularly good, (they were not) it wasn’t that his writings were verified as fact (Again, they were not) it was that the writings of Scott Thomas Beauchamp….. met two criteria:
1: It contained Bush Derangement Syndrome -generated hysteria
2: Because he does have the green suit on for the moment, the rest of us are not supposed to question him.
Ann Coulter addresses this one quite well, indeed, in “Godless”
Finally, Democrats hit on an ingenious strategy; They chose only messengers whom we’re not allowed to reply to. That’s why all Democratic spokesman these days are sobbing, hysterical women. You can’t respond to them because that would be questioning the authenticity of their suffering. Liberals haven’t changed the message, just the messenger. Although most prominent Liberal spokesman are people with “absolute moral authority”. Democrats with a dead husband , a dead child, a wife who works at the CIA, a war record, a terminal illness, or as a last resort being on a first name basis with Nelson Mandela.
In this case, it wasn’t a female, but it is somebody we are not allowed to question. The slightly altered tactic has proven to work in the past with such luminaries as John Kerry and Max Cleland to name a couple. The reason that we aren’t supposed to question them, of course, is they were once in uniform.
Obvious holes in their story, obvious idiocy in their politics, obvious political avarice, nor obvious mental illness… none of these rise to the level that will trump that they were in uniform.
It’s funny, though, how the people who were in uniform , and their widows, and their children, seemingly don’t account for much, when they’re not in liberal lockstep… or is it goose-step? I forget. There are, for example, an awful lot of windows in those categories who support the president. Coulter goes on later to point up the idea that the “Jersey Girls” never really caught the support of the wives of the firemen who died in those towers, that day. It seems by the lights of the democrats, there are a very selective few when we cannot question. I note, for example, that we are not allowed to question Jack Murtha, because he was in uniform. Yet, being in uniform, apparently didn’t account for much when the targets were actually on the front lines and serving, and the topic was his baseless and now disproven accusations in the incident at Haditha.
Interesting, isn’t it…. How the ones we can’t question are the ones supporting Democrat party politics, and how the remainder are people that we just shouldn’t take as seriously.
But they.. that remainder, aren’t trying to turn their personal tragedy into a tool by which to dictate national politics toward the Democrats, are they?
As to Erb himself, who unsuprisingly says flatly:
Honor is not a term I run across often in my world
I note another comment are, over there answering this very well;
The fact that you dont understand this doesnt surprise me. This is why liberals in general and a LOT of academia have trouble understanding the military culture. It is also why they cant understand that people like John Murtha and John Kerry disgust us. Not that they have a different opinion than us but that they have used their military service as a badge to justify or in some way try to condone things which are viewed by the military culture in general as dishonorable acts.
Precisely so.
I suggest that trust is a product of honor. The left is demanding that we trust the word of such people as Beauchamp, yet they don’t understand the relationship between honor and trust. So it is, that they do not understand why such people as Beauchamp, Murtha and Kerry disgust us so. These people who are making the most noise about how we should leave Iraq, have repeatedly shown themselves to be completely bereft of honor. No surprise, then, at least to those who understand that relationship, that they are also bereft of trust.
But of course, none of this matters to the narrative in question. Without the credibility that honor brings, why bother bringing these charges at all? The answer is simple in its description, and breathtaking in its lack of honor. As Dave Schuler points out in a different topic over at OTB, in a post called “waging information war” .. [5]
A key problem in waging war at the information level is that the truth or falsity of the stories may make no difference. They will be taken as true or false as suits the predilection of the audience.
That is precisely the situation that we find ourselves in here. Our war on terrorism, has always been at least 50% and information war. It is a war that the left in this country has wholeheartedly joined …. on the side of the terrorists. Joe Wilson, for example. Or, Jack Murtha. That the troops involved in the Hadditha incodent were innocent, and have been so found, doesn’t matter. The harm is already done, by the accusers. which is precisely the intent of the accusation. (Are you listening, Murtha?) And Beauchamp, and the TNR.
But at what point, has it ever been honorable to join with the side of the enemy of your country? I wish one of our suppose of news people would have sufficient testicular mass to ask that question of Jack Murtha. the resulting meltdown would rival Mount Saint Helens.
Not that they care much about honor, being a word they don’t use much, in their world.