Epistle From Dippy
Dear American Soldier in Iraq:
Why, Dennis Prager! As I live and breathe! I haven’t heard from you since the divorce. How’s everything going? Is your son still hanging around with that black kid?
There are a few things you should know about how tens of millions of us back home feel about you and the fight you are waging.
Tens of millions of you? Like, how may tens of millions? Say, 84 million? Because that would be, I believe, 28% of the population.
These things need to be said, especially now, given the fact that the head of one of America’s two major political parties has announced that the war in Iraq is lost.
Yeah, I know what you mean. Politicians are always saying dumb shit like that.
This war has not been lost.
Are you sure? I mean, have you checked with the CinC? Because really, I was kinda hoping that…
What has happened is that many Americans, for all sorts of reasons — some out of simple fatigue, some because they do not believe that war solves anything, some out of deep loathing for the present administration — do not believe that what you are doing is worth doing.
Boy, you don’t have to tell me about fatigue! But still, if there’s one thing our commanders in the military have taught us, it’s that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing incredibly badly.
You know that what you are doing is worth continuing.
You see on an almost daily basis the faces of people who count on you to help them make a freer society than they have ever known.
Man, Dennis, you said it! These people are so goddamn free, I can hardly believe it.
You know that your presence in Iraq is all that stands between numberless men, women and children and a horrible death.
I wouldn’t exactly say numberless. It’s sometimes pretty easy to pin down the figures. For instance, sometimes, our presence in Iraq is all that stands between, say, 24 men, women and children and a horrible death.
You know that the fight you wage is worth waging.
You know that you are not, by and large, fighting Iraqis who do not want you there
but fighting people from other countries who come into Iraq in order to blow up and maim as many innocent Iraqis as possible.
I hate to keep gainsaying you, man, because you support me so much and all, but if I could just…
You know that you are fighting the most vicious and primitive ideology in the world today. It is the belief that one’s God wants his followers to maim, torture and murder in order to spread a system of laws that sends societies back to a moral and intellectual state that is pre-civilization.
You know that the war you wage against these people and their totalitarian ideology is also necessary because a society unwilling to fight for its values does not have values worth sustaining. And for that reason, you in Iraq and many of us back home are worried about America.
You know, man, some values really aren’t worth sustaining.
So when, God willing, you return healthy and victorious, you will have another battle to wage — on behalf of moral clarity. In that regard we are losing our way. We see you as the best and brightest of our society.
Hey, Dennis, it’s really sweet of you to say so, particularly since in the past your kind has shown that they’ll turn on veterans in a heartbeat if it serves their political purposes, or even just if it’ll make them feel all macho. But honestly, we have our good days and our bad days just like any other Americans. We find plenty of opportunities to do good without anyone having to make stuff up.
So Isaiah would be proud of you.
Uh, um…thanks! That, uh, that means a lot. I guess.
Indeed, as a religious person, I believe with all my heart and soul that your work to uproot the greatest evil of our time and enable a people to build the first free Arab Muslim country is as holy, if not holier, as almost anything a minister, priest or rabbi does back home.
While it means a lot to be called holier than a rabbi, we really can’t claim any credit for Yemen.
You probably knew all this. But you need to hear it anyway. That, and thank you. Thank you very much.
You’re welcome, I guess. I mean, if you really want to thank us, I could think of a couple of ways you could show it, but I don’t wanna get in the way of your moral clarity or anything.
Note: I am not a veteran, but I figure, if Dennis Prager feels comfortable speaking on my behalf, I shouldn’t have a problem speaking on theirs.
Holy shit! 32 links! Props!!!1!
I know, I’m exhausted.
Umm, you’d think the soldier would know if they’re winning or not. They’re the ones witnessing all the schools getting painted/blown up. And I thought that the troops already knew about all the people declaring defeat, and that’s why we should say anything bad about the war or Bush? Are you tell me they aren’t reading the New York Times now?
Masterful pwnage. It’s like you were beating him with an actual, physical clue-by-four.
Is the American GI such a fainting milquetoast that he could not sustain his morale without these earnest little boosters to tell him how much he is loved?
As a fromer serviceman I want something terrible to happen to this slimeball. As a secular humanist I want to reason with him and, if he can see the error in his ways, welcome him back to the human race. Oh well, I’ll be happy if everyone just ignores him. Something about this makes me want to see what a letter from a real person to the troops would look like, something from Gen. Odom say…
You see on an almost daily basis the faces of people who count on you to help them make a freer society than they have ever known.
And despite what the liberal media will tell you, most of those faces are still attached to heads!
An allusion to the fine work of Donovan Leitch. You just don’t get the really good shit like that from any other blog.
“Looking through crystal spectacles, I can see you had your fun.”
Like, how may tens of millions? Say, 84 million? Because that would be, I believe, 28% of the population.
Way less than that actually, if you’re referring to the Resident’s approval rating. That poll surveys registered voters, not the population.
Actually, Rob, I was assuming that they had to include infants, junior high schoolers and felons in order to juice Bush’s approval rating up to 28%.
Rob W beat me to it. You also can’t count kiddos,which takes close to 70 million off the count first thing. Then minus the people who don’t vote and/or aren’t registered and the number drops further.
If I had to make an educated guess,I’d bet about 15% of the total population is the wingnutty/reality challanged/simple ass dumber than dirt part. They just seem bigger than they are because they’re louder,more obnoxious,and get their faces and voices on the teevee and radio more often than anyone else.
A a current servicemember I’ll let Leonard speak for me.
Sorry to keep beating the same old drum, but Prager is YET ANOTHER Chickenhawk! They’re always so brave because they never know what the hell they’re talking about. If Prager had spent a few years in the army during Vietnam (for which he was exactly the right age) he might know better than to pump out “hundreds of millions” of cubic yards of pathetic horseshit about Bush’s war in Iraq.
I believe with all my heart and soul that your work to uproot the greatest evil of our time and enable a people to build the first free Arab Muslim country is as holy, if not holier, as almost anything a minister, priest or rabbi does back home.
this is just a terrifyingly stupid sentiment.
enable a people to build the first free Arab Muslim country is as holy, if not holier, as almost anything a minister, priest or rabbi does back home.
First of all, this is a false statement. So let’s just leave that steaming pile of verbal shit right there.
Again, again and again, why is the US military supposed to be doing this? The military should be used to defend a country from invasion.
If there weren’t religious nuts (Christians in the US), business interests (oil) and political sociopaths (neocons) with visions of ruling a bumbling empire (the US), none of this shit would be happening.
Completely off topic:
Dan Patrick keeps pissing me off. Instead of asking Bud Selig or Barry Bonds, or Curt Schilling, or David Ortiz, or Roger Clemens what they think about X topic – when he has the opportunity to do so, he continually asks OTHER PEOPLE like Keith Olbermann, what those folks think about X, or what their motivations are ….
Stop it, Dan. You’re acting like the WaPo / WSJ opinion page.
Indeed, as a religious person, I believe with all my heart and soul that your work to uproot the greatest evil of our time and enable a people to build the first free Arab Muslim country is as holy, if not holier, as almost anything a minister, priest or rabbi does back home.
Speaking of all things holy, I issue a fatwa on your big fat white lazy ass.
At first glance his name seems ripe for anagramming, but the best I can come up with is “Penis Rage R ‘n’ D.”
I would like to read what an actual serviceman or woman in Iraq would reply to this sickening “letter”.
the best I can come up with is “Penis Rage R ‘n’ D.�
One letter from Danger Penis.
Err, dang penis!
Righteous B, dude, you broke the code. It’d work a little better if he was in congress, but I give you the definitive Dennis Prager anagram:
Danger Penis (R)
i am a veteran so keep on rockin
Danger Penis (R)
That’d be it. This deserves, uh, dissemination.
Danger Penis and his faithful sidekick Sackfold.
Has everyone missed the triumphant twofer return of Josh Trevino?
Wake me up when September ends: Few today question the American defenses of the grasping autocracy of Syngman Rhee, or the venal sheikhs of Kuwait, or the bloody-minded guerrillas of Kosovo. Nor should they: there were good reasons to do these things independent of the direct beneficiaries. It is enough that the indirect beneficiaries are the American people.
Yes, few today question such things.
La Racaille: This is a curious thing, but notable: in the liberal West, at least, it is the left that has a near-monopoly on mob violence and public disorder today….
….It is pitiable and worrying all at once. They are bad losers who deserve whatever misery they bring upon themselves, be it abiding depression or a police truncheon.
Shhhh…don’t mention Cronulla
Speaking of moronic, batshit-crazy epistles, Mark Noonan’s book hits shelves today. I’m sure it is teh aw3som3.
I just read on Firedoglake that Madsen says Deadeye Dick is on the Madam’s list…
Shhhh…don’t mention Cronulla
While we’re at it let’s not mention the Brooks Brothers riot either.
But oh fuck, Tacky and his light saber are back? I guess if HTML and Trex kicked him off the internets once before they can do it again.
Here’s a little more Twin Peaks conservatism:
The suicide of Lissa Roche has reverberated throughout the entire conservative movement.
But Lissa Roche’s suicide has ruptured the college, guaranteeing that Hillsdale will long be known as the school whose prominent president, George Roche III, allegedly conducted a 19-year affair with his daughter-in-law, who was the mother of his grandson and an employee of the college.
At first I thought this said her suicide had raptured the college, which would make sense. In any case, my log and I could have told you all about the affairs of in-laws and mothers of grandsons and such. I grew up near there and everybody knows everything. Everything.
… [Hillsdale College] president George Roche III, allegedly conducted a 19-year affair with his daughter-in-law, who was the mother of his grandson and an employee of the college.
Please tell me his name is pronounced ‘roach.’
And has anyone told Michael Medved yet ?
Their case, such as it was, was that the 2000 election had been “stolen,â€? and that George W. Bush was shortly to turn America into a cross between The Handmaid’s Tale and the Third Reich.
Seems quite a bit more accurate than anything predicted by Reichtards like Josh Trevino. Can we please have another photoshop of JT and light saber, preferably with a giant submarine sammich in the vicinity?
Gaah! Bubba, I just read that whole NR article. The bastard channels the whole damn Freud playbook: must’ve been the hysterical rantings of a gal in heat that caused all this mess in the first place . . . I don’t know what Roche senior looks like (for which I am thankful) but at the moment I’m picturing Noah Cross.
Somebody’s getting his nose slit over this, … I hope.
i think the statement
is true, but for 1/2 of the reason that prager does.
see, rabbis, priests, and minister don’t do jack shit. they talk on sundays or saturdays or whenever about some made up bullshit while the rest of us actually try to do stuff. they whinge incessantly about being persecuted, they believe stuff that is patently false (and given that many of them are quite intelligent, with phds and stuff, that makes this twice as stupid on their part) and they spout off about things which they are fully aware they have no knowledge of. they each specifically claim that their notknowledge is superior to that of every other time-wasted-religious-dude. so then that causes problems. like the ones in the middle east.
that’s pretty much the job description. so yes, soldiers in the middle east are doing more than religious figureheads in the US to aid the cause of mid-east freedeom, even as those same soldiers make things much worse. kind of a conundrum.
there is not a single commenter here is isn’t smarter than danger penis (r). why does he get a column?
god i have a headache. what do you take to remove the pain of a full day of dealing with and waiting for time/warner cable?
I couldn’t answer that one, Robert Green. I spent almost 25 years in Manhattan.
I learned to hate Time Warner (Manhattan Cable).
Now I live in Ohio. I get (very basic) Time Warner for free…so I don’t deal with them. (I also hardly ever turn the TV on, which is a bit ironic since I got a nice flat screen tv for christmas).
Oh yeah, none of that has anything to do with your question. For muscle pain, go with acetaminophen. Pure headache? Aspirin.
P.S. I’m not a doctor, I just play one on the innert00bz.
Mister Pierce–
Better late than never. My hat, which I don’t ever wear, is entirely off to you. This is why the World Wide Web was invented, apart from the porn. Kudos, sir.
To be fair, Robert, clergy members often also have other duties than preaching on the Sabbath. They do conseling for their congregation. Perhaps this conseling would be better if it didn’t involve an imaginary person in the sky, but it’s still conseling.
To be fair, Robert, clergy members often also have other duties than preaching on the Sabbath
For instance, they bury people. To be more accurate, a couple of guys with a back-hoe do the actual grunt work, but the clergy get to officiate or celebrate or whatever you call it, and claim the credit. That burying-people business might be what Prager was groping for, when he wanted something to compare with the contribution of troops in Iraq.
In all fairness, I feel compelled to mention the Catholic nuns and priests who are active leftists here and in Central and South America. The people at Catholic Workers Houses are some of the few socialists we have in this country. And there are lots of Catholic clergy and lay people who work very hard for immigrants’ rights. Oh, and I should also mention the Quakers, who do a lot of good work and are very anti-war.
Other than that, I’ve got no beef with what Robert Green said.
We used to have a parsonage for some bible thumper church right across the street from our house. They would have a new pastor every year or so, because they would always have these schisms. My grandma, despite being a woman who really believed that good fences made good neighbors, somehow always managed to hear details of the nasty little infighting, and it was often something really ugly like the Roche thing. Also, one minister had a daughter who was the stereotype of the horny preacher’s daughter. Every night, she’d be out in the boyfriend’s car, steaming up the windows. Such hypocrites.
Ah, yes, Crusader Prager would just as soon his holy war for Israeli security be fought by American troops, ’cause the apparently unable to defend themselves against anyone but Palestinian civilians Israeli Defence Forces may not be up to the job. Keep it up for me, holy warriors!
Sweet blood of Jesus, what a piece of work that toad is!
Prager comes off as a patronizing piece of shit. “Let me tell you troops how it is here in Amerika.” Fuck you, Prager, and the chickenhawk you rode in on.
Leonard – As a veteran I can echo other comments; you feel free to keep posting stuff like that on our behalf. Honestly, I don’t have the patience or meds to control my blood pressure long enough to do it myself.
Steve_e – It’s true that the most important responsibilities of the military is to defend our country, but it’s also true that the military can be used for offensive purposes. I’ve got no problem with either. What the military isn’t, is cops, which is what this administration and it’s apologists would like them to be.
“…and the chickenhawk you rode in on.”
Classic!
(That means I’m stealing it for my own nefarious purposes!)
uproot the greatest evil of our time
the Greatest Evil of our Time. um, which one was that – GW and his crew?
man prager is such an ass.