Someone's got to say it: the troops are not that great. I'm sick of every pundit and politician fawning over military service. For all the validation they get, you'd think that troops were toddlers showing off their first finger paintings. Not every upside-down purple tree is a Picasso. Just like not every trigger-happy camouflage-wearer is G.I. Joe. Enough already.
It's reached fever pitch regarding John McCain, who is scarcely mentioned without due genuflection to his stint as Prisoner of War. Since POW isn't a Homeric mnemonic to distinguish McCain from other old Honky-American saber-rattlers, we should be able to move on. Homer's catchy contributions to electoral nomenclature might include Strong-Greaved Achaeans, Tortured-Shoulders McCain, Cross-Dressing Womanizer Giuliani, or Reality-Averse Artic Wolf-Killer Palin.
Unless, while sitting in that Hanoi cell, McCain was reading up on Bismarck's Guide to Realpolitik or The Letters of James K. Polk or Health Care Financing for Dummies, being a POW wouldn't have taught him a whit how to be President. Being a POW would, however, have taught him to dissociate from his surroundings, be impossibly stubborn, and hold a grudge -- about the worst traits in a Chief Executive. All the harping by Republican aparatchiks on McCain's Navy stint suggests the key GOP election platform is improving treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Let potheads, derelicts, and malcontents hold highest office, but think twice about torture victims. Even a breezy glance at our "enhanced interrogation" shenanigans reveals that torture messes with a fella's head more than heroin and succubi. People can't recover when they spend the next thirty years seeking bloody revenge on anyone darker than butterscotch pudding, which is McCain's vaunted foreign policy. The White House is not a consolation prize for past trauma. If it were, others deserve it more than McCain. Rigoberta Menchu comes to mind. Instead, honor McCain by making him into a video game--"Grand Theft Nation," complete with strippers, crashed Navy planes, and three fingers of rye.
The national fetish of things military pollutes our discourse beyond McCain. Interminable accolades, replete with hang-dog gravitas from no less a freedom-fighter than Tom Hanks, convey the impression that every darn solider hails from the Marine Corps Good Samaritan Division, Helping Old Ladies Cross the Street Brigade, Snuggle Platoon. They don't.
Don't support all the troops. The troops who enlisted via "moral waivers" despite convictions for homicide and making terrorist threats, maybe not so much. While every convict deserves a second chance, maybe a job requiring proficiency with a grenade launcher in a bazaar is not a winning rehabilitation program. Also, the torturing, Jew-beating, fellow-soldier-raping, unarmed-Iraqi massacring, "Hijack This, Fags"-bomb-painting troops. See, some troops don't deserve support, because of their behavior. It's not their fault they were sent on a dumb mission, but it sure is when they act like knuckleheads whilst completing said mission. They don't deserve a parade, a medal, or the Oval Office.
Respecting military service shouldn't so totally eclipse the millions of unsung firefighters, nurses, teachers, maverick community organizers, and even parents, who do more than most troops to keep the United States of All-You-Can-Eat churning. Their service and sacrifice deserve a few more flags and moments of silence and lapel pins and stirring Michael Bay blockbusters. It might be easier to waterboard with impunity in Gitmo than try teaching math in East Oakland. It might be easier to launch a missile that destroys a home than pull a double shift as a trauma nurse. So don't support the troops -- support everybody.
Nato Green is a stand-up comedian and will be performing with Will Durst and others in Laugh Out the Vote--Pre-Election Political Comedy Throwdown October 15-19 in Santa Rosa, San Francisco, and Redwood City, California.