I’m guessing this will be the stupidest thing you read all day.
Saw this up at Blackfive yesterday, which helped lead me down a path of hostility that only dissipated after 4 hours of playing Tiger Woods golf on XBox last night. Between the Brian Downard funeral yesterday morning, the horrific Arlington cemetery story, and this, I was pretty much losing my mind.
Sayeth “University Academic Professional” David Green:
The vast majority of 9/11 observances in this country cannot be seen as politically neutral events. Implicit in their nature are the notions that lives lost at the World Trade Center are more valuable than lives lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere; that the motives of the 9/11 attackers had nothing to do with genuine grievances in the Islamic world regarding American imperialism; and that the U.S. has been justified in the subsequent killing of hundreds of thousands in so-called retaliation.
The observance at Saturday’s football game was no different. A moment of silence was followed by a military airplane flyover; in between, Block-I students chanted “USA, USA.” This was neither patriotism nor remembrance in any justifiable sense, but politicization, militarism, propaganda and bellicosity. The University is a public institution that encompasses the political views of all, not just the most (falsely) “patriotic.” Athletic planners should cease such exploitation for political purposes. They might at least consider how most Muslim students, American or otherwise, would respond to this nativist display; or better, Muslims and others that live their lives under the threat of our planes, drones and soldiers.
The overwhelmingly white, privileged, Block-I students should be ashamed of their obnoxious, fake-macho, chicken-hawk chant, while poverty-drafted members of their cohort fight and die in illegal and immoral wars for the control of oil. University administrators need to eliminate from all events such “patriotic” observances, which in this country cannot be separated from implicit justifications for state-sponsored killing.
There were so many ways to go with this. I thought I might go through it and rip it apart line by line, but I’m not certain this joker is worth the effort. Cassandra at Villianous Company did most of what I wanted to do by devastating this ridiculous mantra about a “poverty draft.” She cited to this Heritage Foundation study that found that:
on average, 1999 recruits were more highly educated than the equiv alent general population, more rural and less urban in origin, and of similar income status. We did not find evidence of minority racial exploitation (by race or by race-weighted ZIP code areas). We did find evidence of a Southern military tradition in that some states, notably in the South and West, provide a much higher proportion of enlisted troops by population
Similiarly, all the rest of what this erudite academic opines on can be shredded. But, then it occurred to me that perhaps I’m not the guy to do it. I mean sure, I was one of those poor kids with no educational options who was forced into bondage by wicked recruiters, but still….no wait, that’s right, I volunteered and have a Doctorate in Jurisprudence, and went willingly as an enlisted Infantryman. Well, how about instead we let Chad Garland, President of the Illini Veterans Student Organization do the rebuttal. Chad was kind enough to do just that, after wondering how I got his name and email address. (We bloggers are strong in the dark arts Chad, the *DARK* arts! i.e. Google)
David Green has some explaining to do. Like why he started his letter to the editor with both a sweeping generalization and passive voice, yet feels justified in calling himself an academic professional. Or why, as a “visiting policy analyst,” he feels it’s his place to wag a finger at the students of Block-I. Or what his definition of patriotism (in any justifiable sense) actually is.
In fact, Green repeatedly fails to anchor his argument with facts or evidence of any kind, but in less than 250 words manages to pack his letter so densely with leftist pap, anti-war clichés, broad (and false) generalizations, and academic euphemism that it would take several pages to parse and refute each of his bogus assumptions (even the ones he doesn’t contradict himself).
I’m a student, not an academic professional — I don’t have that kind of time.
But Green’s odious drivel isn’t his chief failure. Where Green failed was in what we Marines call “situational awareness.” Green claims that the University “encompasses the political views of all” and, thus, “Athletic planners should cease such exploitation for political purposes.” Green fails to consider that the role of a public university is, to some degree at least, to support the legitimate actions of the government and that, personal scruples about the war aside, it is fitting to at least recognize the service and sacrifice of our service members — no matter how uncomfortable that makes Muslims or their academic professional mouthpieces. And don’t get me wrong, it’s plain to me that Green is projecting his own arrogant disgust onto the Muslims, as if they need that (with friends like Green, who needs Islamophobes?).
It’s clear that Green is oblivious of the University’s history, which is infused with military influence. After all, the University of Illinois was created by the Morrill Act of 1862, which granted the states federal land for public universities teaching agricultural and mechanical arts, “without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic” (emphasis mine). The University’s first president, John Milton Gregory, intended to create a “West Point for the working world” when he arrived in 1867. Green was no doubt aware that he was in Memorial Stadium (though assuming he ever knows where he is may be giving him too much credit). But did he know that the stadium over which the AC-130 flew and in which the Illini Pride patriots shouted “USA, USA!” is so named because it memorializes the Illinois veterans who gave their lives in World War I and II? Perhaps Green might further be ignorant of the fact that the moniker “Fighting Illini” is a reference to those Illinois veterans of World War I.
I’ll admit, even as the President of the campus student organization Illini Veterans, until I read Monday’s Daily Illini, I didn’t even know that parents and family members who had lost loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan were at the stadium on September 11 for Governor Quinn’s unveiling of an exhibit called “Portrait of a Soldier,” so I’ll forgive Green if he wasn’t aware of that, either. But, while Green was in Memorial Stadium, presumably foaming at the mouth, I was a few blocks away at a tailgate party with 20 veterans, many of whom had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and almost all of whom had lost friends or comrades in those places. For those like my roommate, the event was bittersweet — his friend and mentor was killed in Iraq earlier that week and he had just returned from the funeral in New Orleans.
What Green fails to realize, what most veterans — and I’d like to think those Block-I students — know, is that everyone in the stadium or grilling on the lawns surrounding the stadium that day was privileged because of the sacrifices of the men and women who have, in the past 234 years, paid the ultimate price for love of their country. Those patriots died so that we can chant, “USA, USA!” and so misguided people like David Green can write inflammatory letters to the editor. Green should be ashamed that he painted such patriots as “poverty-drafted,” as if they fought not out of patriotism, but due to lack of economic opportunities. I am tempted to think of Green as an academic in an ivory tower, and so I may be unfairly biased in assuming I know more veterans and service members than he knows. But of all the veterans I know, almost all served out of a deep sense that there was something about America worth fighting to preserve.
As John Stuart Mill wrote in the same fateful year that the Morrill Act was passed, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse… The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” If Green’s idea of patriotism means that war is such an ugly thing that there is nothing worth fighting for, he probably shouldn’t return to Memorial Stadium. After all, it simply enshrines the centuries-old history of state-sponsored killing in our nation. In fact, if I were David Green, I’d stay as far away from Block-I as I could.
That’s an incredibly well written response, and shows that Chad is light years ahead of Comrade Green in terms of enlightenment. I don’t hold it against the University that they have this clown, but I’m glad that there are men and women like Chad that are there to keep them honest.
If you are a veteran at the University of Illinois (or know someone who is) contact Chad and get involved.