The Thinning Green Line

Wow, is the Bush administration doing a heckuva job destroying our military, or what?!?

Here are two headlines that greeted me this morning:

'Reprimands' in Tillman death include praise

Iraq war czar: Consider a draft

That’s right, Johnny! Not only does the government have its eye on you as unwilling cannon fodder for their current and upcoming wars of choice, but if you’re accidentally (or, as some are suggesting, deliberately) killed by your fellow GIs, the army brass who cover it up will get a slap on the wrist with one hand and a pat on the back with the other. Can there not be a Presidential Medal of Freedom in these guys’ future?

This, after all, is the administration without accountability! Remember when Bush said “anyone caught leaking in my administration will be dealt with,” and it turned out he meant that in the event such a person was caught and found guilty by a jury of their peers, Bush would step in and make sure they didn’t have to do the jail time the law prescribed?

The same uncompromising ethical standards adhered to in the West Wing apparently apply to the Pentagon brass as well.

Yessir, this army protects its own! Not its own soldiers in the field – we’ve seen plenty of evidence of that, what with unarmored humvees replaced by under-armored humvees, etc., ad nauseum – but its generals and commanders in DC whose loyalty to the administration has never wavered. Not only was the generals’ wrist-slapping in the Tillman cover-up the mildest of perfunctory rebukes, but according to the AP, “the Army also said it would not include the reprimands in the officers' military records.”

That’s the price for cover-ups of the deaths of hero soldiers in the Bush administration. A couple of hurtful words that don’t even make it onto your permanent record. Who wouldn’t want to take up arms for the country in that kind of political environment?

Turns out, more and more people all the time. That’s why the draft is being seriously discussed by Bush’s “War Czar.” If NFL-stars-turned-citizen-soldiers can’t get a fair shake from this administration, even after death, what the hell chance does Joe Sixpack, Jr., have?

And in the broader picture, what allegiance to Country should we, as citizens, owe to an administration that shows none toward us? They tap our phones, read our emails, inspect our mail and if we take up arms to defend our country and die in the line of duty, they’ll use our death to increase recruitment while they lie to our families, the media and the world about the circumstances of our death then leave unpunished the miscreants who did the covering up.

“Despicable” seems like such a small word in the face of this level of skullfuckery. I keep coming back to “criminal.”