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Ben Stein’s (Blood) Money

Correction: Via email I’ve been informed that Ben Stein is in fact opposed to the war in Iraq. My sincere apologies to him. I’m reminded again why I had resolved to forgo the blog method of calling out individual personalities by name (why I sometimes break that resolution is mere laziness–it’s just so easy to […]

Correction: Via email I’ve been informed that Ben Stein is in fact opposed to the war in Iraq. My sincere apologies to him. I’m reminded again why I had resolved to forgo the blog method of calling out individual personalities by name (why I sometimes break that resolution is mere laziness–it’s just so easy to riff off of another’s work; sometimes I think blogging–for us civilians–is just a means for us all to publish letters to the editor that would otherwise never see the light of page).

Like freedom, an exclusive zip code isn’t free. If you’re still wondering why the US is in Iraq, Ben Stein explains, making explicit America’s post-religious evangel:

Here I am in my swimming pool in Beverly Hills, lazily swimming laps back and forth at midnight. I can see the stars above my palm trees and cedars. The dogs are loping around the back yard sniffing for squirrels. My wife is upstairs drinking the Cuervo Gold or whatever it is.
I am thinking about a conversation I had a couple of hours ago with my pal Phil DeMuth. He said that basically, what we had to realize was that our freedom, our prosperity, our opportunity, our rule of law, came from 19 year olds carrying around M-16’s. He was quoting from a fine book called Grunts.
(…)
There is simply not enough time and blood in this world to thank these people and their families adequately. It is not the President who keeps us free, not the Congress, not the press, not the courts. It is the men and women who offer up their lives for us.

It’s good to see decrepitude hasn’t yet robbed the man completely of discretion, or else he might have called out the Constitution by name. But it’s enough for his intended audience to speak dismissively of “the courts”, concerned as they are with the law which must of course be circumvented to protect, among other things, “our rule of law.” If I had to contend daily with a mind that produces such logic, I’d be dulling my senses with Cuervo too (oh what fun one could have with this crudely offered image, if one shared this husband’s lack of restraint).

Some self-described capitalists have apparently come to accept, and embrace, the hoary Marxist tenet that American prosperity is dependent upon a global American imperium. Leaving aside the dubious nature of this assertion (and ample evidence of how military spending in general and the war in particular are rapidly impoverishing us) it’s notable how this induces no misgivings, just a reverence for the abstract martial glory they associate with their concrete material comfort.

No doubt Mr. Stein would counter that it is merely our security, upon which our wealth is dependent, that he ascribes to aggressive war. This too is a shaky assumption, and it too prompts the question: how much security do these people think is purchased by the immeasurable material and moral cost of the war, and why is it paid for in innocent Iraqi blood? And they dare use terms like honor and sacrifice. Note too how Stein laments there “isn’t enough blood” in the world to reward this blood-loss. In his glib reverence he stumbles upon the logical madness of celebrating military heroism as its own justification; we will not be the first or last nation to have spilled good blood after bad by forging on in a pointless war, lest we “dishonor” those our foolishness has wasted already.

Having spent a little time with the grunts Mr. Stein deifies I can testify that I haven’t met a single saint among them. They are human, and to call them such does them far more honor than does Stein’s sacrilegious condescension. They are only too human, and this means when they are angry and terrified enough they will commit moral transgressions they would have found unthinkable otherwise. This too is a cost of war. This is what war is. “Nineteen year olds carrying around M-16s” is as dangerous and troublesome as it sounds. Necessary evil is now confused with inherent good.

Individual sacrifice in the name of an atrocity is nothing more than individual atrocity perpetrated on those who sacrifice. Genuflecting before these people does them no favor and less honor. It’s a shell game some play, giving the heroism of those who go to war as war’s justification. Perhaps there’s a bit more honesty, if no more intelligence, in Stein’s associating his comfort with the needless slaughter. We’ve become a decadent Sparta.

The grunts give their lives–sometimes they give something dearer, their humanity–and are repaid with the basest coin there is, condescension.

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