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December 02, 2004

Fighting for Their Country? Yeah, Right . . .

On today's front page of LewRockwell.com, and generating much discussion on Lew's blog, is a link to this article by Ted Rall, called "They Fight and Die, But Not for Their Country." For a left-winger, Rall understands government nonintervention abroad much better than the right-wingers of today. (Now if only he'd apply that same logic to domestic policy.)

Writes Rall of the hackneyed phrase that our troops are "fighting for their country":

When we hear that soldiers fight for our country, we immediately think of their role guarding our borders, protecting us from invaders. Yet the U.S. has only been invaded twice, when Great Britain attempted to bring us back into the colonial fold during the War of 1812 and in 1846, when Mexico launched a brief incursion across the disputed Rio Grande. During the ensuing 158 years, no member of the U.S. military has fought or died while repelling an invader. 9/11 demonstrated that the Pentagon doesn't consider a foreign incursion a major threat; that's why they assigned 12 "ground-based" Air National Guard jets to guard the the entire country.

Worse yet, Rall has the temerity to question U.S. involvement in the "Good War," which all good Americans know is something never to be questioned. The Left usually doesn't question it because it was FDR's doing, and the Right usually lionizes FDR for his "leadership" during the war (with nary a mention of his goading the Japanese into firing first).

I had a hard time deciding what to excerpt from the article because it's all so good. Read it for yourself.

Posted by Mike Tennant at December 2, 2004 02:21 PM

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