Thursday, August 12, 2004
Pointing Out the Obvious
While Atrios is doing a bang-up job demolishing Spinanity's hackjob on the Kerry Purple Heart pseudo-controversy, it seems that one fact continues to elude all who discuss it. It's this:
A soldier doesn't get to choose the seriousness of his wound. He only gets to choose whether to fight or flee.
It doesn't take a lot of intelligence to figure out that countless factors of varying randomness control whether a soldier in battle gets killed, gets wounded, or walks away unscathed. A millisecond too much hesitation (or too little), a centimeter to the left or right, and instead of glory, he's food for worms.
That's why the entire discussion of Kerry's wound is completely specious, because it makes the assumption that there is some correlation between the wound and the meritoriousness of his conduct. Deciding to award a medal based upon factors entirely attributable to chance would make a mockery of the values that the medal is supposed to recognize.
What the Purple Heart recognizes is a quality of character that Kerry's critics apparently can't fathom, which is not surprising, given the lifelong moral squalor of the hollow man they embrace without shame.
A soldier doesn't get to choose the seriousness of his wound. He only gets to choose whether to fight or flee.
It doesn't take a lot of intelligence to figure out that countless factors of varying randomness control whether a soldier in battle gets killed, gets wounded, or walks away unscathed. A millisecond too much hesitation (or too little), a centimeter to the left or right, and instead of glory, he's food for worms.
That's why the entire discussion of Kerry's wound is completely specious, because it makes the assumption that there is some correlation between the wound and the meritoriousness of his conduct. Deciding to award a medal based upon factors entirely attributable to chance would make a mockery of the values that the medal is supposed to recognize.
What the Purple Heart recognizes is a quality of character that Kerry's critics apparently can't fathom, which is not surprising, given the lifelong moral squalor of the hollow man they embrace without shame.
