So where are all those fascist assholes now who came down on me when I wrote that I do not “support the troops” in the knee-jerk, brownshirt fashion that is now required by the culture of compliance & the permanent state of exception in which we live? Telling “the troops” — what a reified abstrtaction! — to suck it up & do their duty for the empire, no doubt.
Update: Predictable. Digby gets it right: The War Party has a new magnetic ribbon: Fuck the Troops. And make it yellow, for cowardice.
ARJUNA
Against all thinking are the mighty host
of the sons of Pandu arrayed
and Drupada’s son
against all clear thinking
such men are blueprints
exact drawings of fields
valleys and elevations
for some future race to fill
he was young and therefore
opposed to death by war
and pleading to have it explained
but Lord Krishna younger still
builder of worlds destroyer of worlds
soon convinced him to fight and die.
Nice one, Peter.