Megan McArdle's Snide Take on the Military

There are different roles in this complex web of society. Some people are destined to be sipping on lattes while tapping out blog posts that influence the political world in some swanky NYC neighborhood. While others are fighting tooth and nail in Sadr City to prevent chaos erupting in the rest of Baghdad (and preventing me from getting dead). Certainly we can respect each other and our various lot in this world. Megan McArdle is one of those smart types, whom I respect. But when she equates the military with some creepy all-boys club that is hellbent on abusing power, I must take offense (h/t Counter Column):

But as the Milgram experiments show, most people given unlimited power over other human beings tend to abuse that power unless there are adequate institutional safeguards against us. We are natural bullies. And in mobs, we quite often make each other worse. Military culture fights this natural tendency with a pretty rigorous code of conduct--but in the end you've got a bunch of boys out on a corner with big guns. There's only so much that a code of conduct can do.

It is disturbing that snooty Ivy-league types find it so necessary to denigrate the military. The logic of her argument must be "over my head", and what did we ever do to you? In a time of recession and increasing costs for veterans health care, I predict there will be competition amongst various special groups to deny veterans benefits so that taxpayer dollars can be spent in a fashion that will benefit other portions of the population who have a larger voting capacitance (e.g. The Free Burgers for Fatsos Fund). This is what you get with a government with zero principles that only cares about winning votes.

Damn, I've been beating up on the left, and I don't want to offend my lefty readership! Time to throw out a blog-bone. Here's one... that "Bring it on!" shit Condi said in Baghdad about Sadr was completely devoid of any diplomatic foresight and reckless. More here.