Seditious Wishful Thinking

Here's a quote from a Slate piece by some Greenwich Village arts & croissanter named Grady Hendrix:

Today, zombies are the perfect metaphor for our soldiers in Iraq: They're shell-shocked, anonymous, and aren't asked to make very many decisions. Unless you personally know a soldier, the war in Iraq has been a zombie war, fought by an uncomplaining, faceless mass wrapped in desert camo and called "our boys." We talk about them all the time—supporting them, criticizing them, speaking for them—but we don't really have a clue as to what's on their minds. They often seem like disposable units sent to enforce the will of our country. But what if they come back and they're different? What if they come back and don't want to follow orders anymore?

A translation, if I may: "How can these guys maintain such high morale and keep reenlisting and volunteering for multiple tours of duty over there? Don't they know what they're doing to that part of the world? Don't they watch the news and read the papers? Don't they know that Bush is Hitler? How can they keep supporting him? When are we finally going to get through to them?"

This from a man who, I'm educatedly guessing, hasn't gotten any closer to Mesopotamia than his neighborhood rug emporium. And yet, amazingly, his bent is better than that of Senate Minority Whip Ali Dickbar al-Durbini in that he's not libeling "our boys" as "Nazis, commies, and Pol Pot wannabes," but merely the GI equivalent of Borg drones.

As usual, it is the "anti-war" critics who fit their own misdirected slanders far more than the objects of their seditious scorn.

[HT: TKS]