Joe Klein finds a nut

As I told the young lady who sent me this link from Time’s Public Relations Office, I hate Joe Klein with the white hot passion of a thousand suns, but this time I can’t argue with him. He writes in Time “Ten is Enough” referring to ten years in Afghanistan. He begins the article like most of the media talking about SSG Bales, all of his deployments, his financial woes, anger over the promotion list and family problems, but Klein dismisses all of this;

Once again, the 2.4 million young Americans who have served with honor in Iraq and Afghanistan are portrayed as victims and a potential menace, ready to pop at any moment. There has been little acknowledgment that the overwhelming majority of our veterans–even the overwhelming majority of those suffering from posttraumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries–have come home to lead productive and, often, inspiring lives. The unfairness of laying the burden of this stereotype on them, after they assumed the burden of fighting impossible wars for the rest of us, is infuriating.

Klein goes on to interview actual veterans to get their views – it’s an entirely new concept, I know.

And so I decided to check in with some of the other veterans I’ve come to know over the past few years, men and women who are leading exemplary lives back home, to see how they were reacting to the news from Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, almost all of them were infuriated by the spew of stereotypes. “The media have done nobody any favors,” said Jake Wood, a former Marine sergeant who co-founded Team Rubicon, a network of combat veterans–many sergeants–who provide disaster relief. “You see headlines like SERGEANT PSYCHO, and what can you say?”

After repeating some more excellent quotes from other real veterans, Klein concludes;

But it’s long past time for the bulk of our troops to come home–which means the Obama Administration should announce that our drawdown will not pause, as previously planned, in September but will continue in an orderly fashion. For the life of me, I can’t see the rationale for the loss of even one more American life or limb there.

While I agree that it’s time for the troops to come home, I have different reasons. This administration has no intention of winning this war against terror past some catchy campaign slogans, and which of us wants to be the last to die for the Obama/Biden 2012 campaign?

I sent my thanks to Joe Klein for doing the tough work this time, though.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Military issues, Terror War