If a soldier who volunteered to serve in the
military rapes or murders someone while in uniform, has he served honorably?
Has Bradley Manning, who voluntarily joined the military and then betrayed his
country by turning over hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, served
honorably? Did Benedict Arnold, another volunteer, serve with “honor and
distinction”?
According to the logic of our national-security
adviser, Susan Rice, they all did. Merely because they volunteered in the first
place. Lieutenant Calley of My Lai Massacre fame? “Honor and distinction.”
Ms. Rice is aggressively stupid, immaculately
clueless, and a disgrace to our system of government, but one does have to
admire her tenacity. Late last week, Rice tried to extract herself from her
effort to sell Private Bowe Bergdahl as a hero who served, as she had put in on
ABC’s This Week, “with honor and distinction.” (The rank of private is correct,
in that his promotions were phony.) In her attempted walkback, Rice claimed
that anyone who ever signed on the dotted line had served honorably: “What I
was referring to was the fact that this was a young man who volunteered to
serve his country in uniform at a time of war. That, in and of itself, is a
very honorable thing.”
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