So it seems that noted curmudgeon Andy Rooney, better known for America's most inane TV minute, has outed himself. I don't mean that he's come out of the closet (I'd respect him for that), I mean he's openly stated his opinion that America's troops are not brave fighters, the world's most powerful and skilled volunteer military. No, according to Andy they are a bunch of fearful cowards who have been forced into the military because of America's dastardly economy.

Andy proposes that we ask our soldiers in Iraq five loaded questions, as if these would prove his points. I've got five questions I'd like to ask Andy. How do you breathe with your head so far up your ass? Should the words of a marginal talent separated from reality by several decades be given any weight? Is it a standard in journalism to make up numbers and figures from whole cloth or is this just a trick you picked up on your own? Would you rather have a job where you have to work or the one you have now? Are you encouraged by the freaks and losers that think the venom dripping from your pen is gold?

He says that supporting our troops is just a trick we civilians use to keep them at their job so we can enjoy our comfortable lives back home. A trick. He has marginalized all of the support, pride and respect that we feel for our troops into a Machiavellian trick. Well, Mr.Rooney, that might be why you support the troops but it certainly isn't why I support them. But wait, since Andy is against what they're doing and the only reason to support them is to keep them at their job then by his own reasoning he is saying he doesn't support them, right?

Andy says that nobody who's in the Reserves ever contemplated being activated. They certainly wouldn't have joined if they thought that was any sort of a possibility anyway. This is a natural thought process in curmudgeony thinking. You see to folks like Andy there is simply no way that the unwashed masses could conceivably assess an entire situation and arrive at a logical decision based on an adequate understanding. At least not when the decision they arrive at goes against the enlightened one's decision. Since Andy would not enlist in the Reserves because there is a chance of being activated he knows that anybody who actually did enlist really didn't understand that there would be a chance they would serve on active duty. Those foolish plebeians really should have consulted with a luminary like Mr.Rooney before signing on the dotted line.

Then we get to the heart of Andy's argument. Our soldiers aren't heroes, they are victims. Victims of who? Why, us of course! According to Andy it's our fault that they are over there. All of it. Our fault. It was our brutal repressive government in Iraq that broke every term of a cease fire for over a decade, harbored and supported terrorists, thumbed its nose at the world and kept the regulating body off of its back by extortion and bribery of the UN itself. Yup, that was our fault. And it was our fault that the Taliban supported and gave refuge to a murderous loon who's hatred of everything we stand for is great enough to murder thousands of our people simply to have them dead.

Andy cries out that we need to level with the rest of the world. We need to make them believe how honorable we are. We have to convince them that we mean well. Andy hasn't got the slightest clue rattling about in his senile noggin. Does Andy truthfully believe that France doesn't understand that Saddam's removal is a good thing? Does he honestly think that the UN centric opposition had nothing to do with the millions skimmed off of the Oil for Food program? He can't possibly think that Iraq's neighbors are objecting to the US occupation because they don't want a stable neighbor, can he?

Andy needs to wake up and take his blinders off. He also needs to apologize to me for his heinous lie about why I support my troops. But first he damned well better apologize to those troops themselves for the foul and disparaging things he said about them.

(Hat tip to Delusional Duck)

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Comments on Rooney's idiocy are popping up faster than baby rabbits a month after Easter. I won't saddle you with all of them but Michele has an excellent (as usual) explanation of how Rooney is working actively against our troops with this garbage of his.