Sunday, February 27, 2005

Flat Statement Of Fact

If you claim that a war is worth fighting, and you are eligible to enlist but don't, then you are either a liar, a coward, or both.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm. What if, in addition to the views you mention, you are (a) fervently convinced that male prostitutes are unfit to serve in the miliary and (b) a male prostitute? Combine that with an ardent conviction that you are better able to serve the war effort by asking softball questions at White House press conferences, and I think you might have a counter-example to your flat statement of fact, Eli.

Eli said...

Indeed, the belief that they are doing more good as cheerleaders is undoubtedly the Number One rationalization used by the chickenhawks.

The male prostitute angle is interesting, but if they're a *gay* male prostitute, then they're not really eligible to enlist. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that if you have a gay prostitute website, you're "out".

Psst, check out V's blog!

Anonymous said...

> Psst, check out V's blog!

Already have! I like it! I feel like I've already seen Anacondas now. And it feels ... unclean.

And, dude, just because you are a male prostitute who advertises himself out for having sex with other men, that doesn't mean you're gay! You could still be straight as an arrow and do that, right? Otherwise several of the dudes in my frat would be gay, and they are totally insistent that they are not.

Perhaps you would think that the reason why a straight man-on-man prostitute like yourself shouldn't serve in the military is because all them gay guys who shouldn't be in there would be unable to control themselves around your straight hotness, the sickos. So you'd still be, like, eligible for the military, it's just that it wouldn't be a good idea for you to be there's no asking and no telling what those other guys will be tempted to do!

Eli said...

Well, then it would be your patriotic duty to enlist and draw them out of their closets, so they could stop sapping the morale and effectiveness of all our hetero troops, wouldn't it?

Anonymous said...

Dude, that would totally be why you had put up those military-themed escort sites! To lure soldiers "out" without running the risk of compromising your virtue! ... um, yeah! That's the ticket! That's why you'd put up those sites! Not because you were gay. It'd be your patriotic duty to smoke 'em out. That, plus the whole White House press corps thingy. But of course you'd be unfit to serve with those people, because you had made them so horny on your web site.

Seriously, Eli, I'm having a hard time carrying on an argument with someone who is so divorced from reality!

Thers said...

To be fair, Jonah Goldberg would be pretty damn useless in Iraq. Of course, he's useless here, too... so it's a wash, I guess.

Eli said...

But wouldn't it be better to out soldiers who are actually in Iraq, where their gayness could potentially cause so much more damage to the seedlings of democracy that we are planting there? Everyone knows there is nothing more poisonous and anathema to democracy than homosexuality!


Thers, I think he could perform a valuable service in Iraq just by using up the insurgents' precious oxygen.

Swan said...

...or, you feel that the job is being taken care well enough that you're contribution isn't needed, or, you feel guilty leaving your loved ones, or, you believe you couldn't really help out enough to make your life worth risking, no mattwer how well the war is going...

sorry, you know I'm not down w/ the war in general, but, I can't help being a stickler on the reasoning stuff

Eli said...

Actually, I have to admit that some of those qualifiers did come to my mind after I posted it, especially the first one.

I basically posted it as an angry response to one of those warblogger trolls who was, as usual, rationalizing why he wasn't in Iraq himself.

Anyway, I would be willing to back this off to "If you enthusiastically cheerlead for a war that is desperately undermanned, and you are able-bodied and eligible, then you are...", blah blah blah, yadda yadda.