Individual Bad Soliders: They Exist

Although I remain, as far as I can tell, the only progressive blogger to whom the TNR diary now creating a firestorm instinctively seemed a bit fishy in its details, I certainly agree with this. Any argument premised on the idea that no solider ever does anything really bad is self-evidently ridiculous, and the idea that reporting on such bad things is some slander on “the troops” in general despicable demagoguery. You may remember this from the attacks on Kerry; discussing (indisputably true) incidences of criminality is turned into a claim that Kerry was accusing “the troops” are war criminals. As I’ve already said, nothing of any political consequence turns on the veracity of this particular account. We already know that some individual members of the military do horrible things, and that they are obviously not representative.