First we had Shock Troops, whose author was inconveniently brutalized into insensitivity before he went to war.
Then the bogus veterans suicide hit piece.
Don't forget the child-abusing veterans.
And now, the charge that veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are murderers as the result of their service when a little research would show that our veterans are more peaceful than the civilians back home brutalized by Dancing with the Stars and hopped up on football rage.
Ralph Peters responds here.
John Dilulio, Jr. here.
Blackfive here.
Suffice it to say that our press has failed to demonstrate our troops are brutal in the field despite their deranged efforts regarding Abu Ghraib and Haditha, and are failing in their efforts to show that they are crazed nuts after they return home.
Like Peters said (and I wrote here), it's as if the press won't forgive our troops for winning in Iraq and have vowed revenge:
And supporting the troops has no part in the debate about to unfold. "Screw 'em" is the attitude of our Left. How dare those troops try to win a war the Left has decided is unwinnable and immoral?
Hell hath no fury like a gray lady scorned.
UPDATE: More on the murdering vets story. And in response to one commenter on that story, the NYT story wasn't just a story to highlight a need to help returing veterans. If it was, it would have been framed the way any other story that advocates spending on a particular group in need of help--with sympathy that doesn't focus on the criminality that results from the purported problem. And since what the story highlighted--rampant murder caused by service in Iraq and Afghanistan--isn't true, doesn't that alone show that this was a hit piece? They didn't have to falsely portray an epidemic of veterans murdering people. Don't tell me you can't remember any number of expensive programs being advocated with the argument "if even one life is saved it will be worth it."
UPDATE: Peters has more to say:
Pretending to pity tormented veterans (vets don't want our pity - they want our respect), the Times' feature was an artful example of hate-speech disguised as a public service.
The image we all were supposed to take away from that story was of hopelessly damaged, victimized, infected human beings who've become outcasts from civilized society. The Times cast our vets as freaks from a slasher flick.
The hard left's hatred of our military has deteriorated from a political stance into a pathology: The only good soldier is a dead soldier who can be wielded as a statistic (out of context again). Or a deserter who complains bitterly that he didn't join the Army to fight . . .
The Left supports our troops only if they are deserters and the mentally ill. Finding a few of each category is enough for the Left to generalize about an entire population that has defended us and returned to our communities to be citizens who stand head and shoulders above their neighbors.
Our Left thinks our troops are losers who can't make it in the civilian world. So that's what Leftist reporters write about.
Yeah, these are Stupid Americans. They are my people.
