Chuckie Watch 74: Chuckie gits *really* dark

As I've said before, I have no idea if Chuckie himself has mood swings.  But his column sure does.  And in just a week's time, he's managed to go from yawn-snore boring to something like the demonic little Chucky doll in the horror movies.

In Honorable (11/12/04), Chuckie was telling us about how he spent Veterans Day being sentimental in Washington at the memorials for the Vietnam War and the Second World War.  Here's what he saw at the Vietnam War Memorial:

To stand shoulder to shoulder with these men as they solemnly listened to the speeches being offered in homage to those who fell in the jungles of Southeast Asia, there was a kinship as far as being Americans was concerned but those of us who didn’t experience Vietnam will forever be outsiders.

If you haven’t been there and done that you can’t imagine the horror these brave eyes have beheld and the memories that only they can share in.

Ah, yes, even macho, war-loving Patriotically Correct guys can get all dewey-eyed over a good male bonding ritual.  Poor Chuckie seems to be a little regretful that he couldn't share that grand experience with the Vietnam vets.  Of course, ole Chuckie could have joined up and gone to the Vietnam War like John Kerry did.  But somehow, like Dark Lord Dick Cheney, he had other priorities.

And Chuckie thought the scene at the Second World War memorial was pretty charming, too:

It too, was a touching scene, aged old gentlemen being photographed by their grandchildren in front of some part of the monument, which was meaningful to them. Elderly couples strolling around the grounds stopping to examine some bit of stone, which represents something special to them.

There were wreaths of flowers and pictures and notes stuck around the monuments left there by some loved one, commemorating and honoring the memory of some husband or son who paid the ultimate price in defense of our country.

Gosh, isn't war romantic?

What, I'm being too harsh on pore ole Chuckie?  Well, maybe he's just a sentimental old coot and he's not really trying to romanticize war and killing.  I mean, to hear Chuckie tell it - at least in one of his good-mood columns - he's just, you know, honoring our soldiers, and supporting our troops and stuff:

When you put your babies to bed tonight say a prayer of thanks and protection for our military, when you drive to work tomorrow morning thank God that this is a free country, we go where we want and do what we want. Thanks to a victorious military.

A few days later, Chuckie was grumping about the people who just don't git it (11/15/04).  Who don't git it?  What don't they git?  Why, of course, it's "those of the radical ilk who claim to be Democrats who just don’t understand why America would choose Bush over Kerry."

Chuckie seems to think there are some ilk running around out there who are confused about whether they are Democrats or not.  Well, Chuckie thinks ole Zell is a real Democrat - Zell's Heil Bush speech at the Republican convention really turned him on -  so I can see how he thinks Democrats who voted for Kerry were confused.  Chuckie probably thought since Zell was endorsing Bush that all real Democrats were voting for him, too.

Things can git a little confusing in ChuckieWorld.

But this one definitely showed Chuckie's column on the downswing side of that Patriotically Correct, darn-I-wish-I-could-have-been-a-Vietnam-veteran high of a few days before:

America does not want same sex marriage and partial birth abortion.

I heard some pundit on television say that he thinks the South should form its own country. I would like to inform him that they tried that one time and it didn’t work out too well.

Say what?  Uh, Chuckie, that whole Confederacy thing was not about abortion and gay marriage.  I mean, I don't want to confuse you anything.

I feel that the Democratic party, at least in appearances has been hijacked by people so far to the left that it’s a wonder they don’t fall off the face of the earth ...

Chuckie, maybe you should check out the Christopher Columbus story, you know, you've heard about the round earth and all?  It's really quite an interesting concept.

I would like to inform Michael Moore that I’m proud to live in Jesus land and that if he’d like to come down here and check it out I’ll be glad to introduce him to some of my redneck, gun-totin’, church going deer hunting friends.

Since Moore's documentaries feature plenty of good ole white boys with guns, it sounds like Chuckie's making a pitch to be in one of his movies!  Like I said, things can git a little confusing in ChuckieWorld.

But just a week after his sentimental meditations with the veterans in Washington, ole Chuckie was, well, praising murder:  Semper Fi 11/19/04.  (This particular rant of Chuckie's shows up in a kind of ghastly purple; I don't know if he was going for blood red.)

The topic of this one is the notorious mosque killing in Fallujah.  As I described in a recent post, it's not at all clear that this particular incident, ugly as it looks on the news clip and as damaging as it is in the way it comes across in the Arab world, actually involves a crime.  In the article by Owen West and Phillip Carter and to which I linked there, they conclude by speculating that in the particular situation, it may well be that "[k]illing the insurgent in a split second because it was instinctual, on the other hand, was a tragedy, not an atrocity."

John Kerry admitted to intentional war crimes and the major media did everything but canonize him. A U.S. Marine shoots an enemy whom he has every right to believe is getting ready to attack him and the major media tries to demonize him.

This is a national disgrace, not what the Marine did but what the media is doing.

But it ain't no tragedy for Chuckie.  It's exactly the kind of thing he's enthusiastic about:

How dare you pompous media know-it-alls judge this brave young man from the safety of your high-rise offices. How dare you try to hang him for what was a simple act of war where split-second judgment and instant action are required.

What would you have done? I suppose you would have taken it to the United Nations or take out your Geneva Convention handbook. And by the time you had made a decision you could well be dead along with everybody else in your outfit.

Yeah, none of this laws of war crap for Chuckie.  "It's a flag, not a rag" (to quote Chuckie's song), and for Chuckie the flag means killin'A-rabs.  Even if it means shooting a unarmed, wounded prisoner in a mosque.  And Chuckie is damn proud of this particular guy:

I don’t know your name, son, but let me tell you something and I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

You did what you had to do and no matter what the canned hams in the media say you did the right thing and I want to thank you for wearing that uniform, for volunteering to fight for this nation so the pansies in the media can sit back and take pot shots at you every chance they get.

No matter what they say you are a United States Marine and there are millions of people who would love to shake your hand and tell you how very much they appreciate you. Without you and young people like you there would be no United States of America.

Actually, it's not to Chuckie or to The Media that the Marine shooter in this incident will have to answer, it's to the Marine Corps' investigation of the incident.  I'll quote the opening paragraph of the West/Carter article on the incident that fills ole Chuckie with such Patriotically Correct pride:

A Marine shot an unarmed insurgent in a Fallujah mosque on Saturday. We know this because we saw it. The digital video footage of the shooting—recorded by NBC reporter Kevin Sites, who was embedded with the Marines—is running nearly continuously on cable news channels worldwide. We heard it, too. A Marine says: "He's f___ing faking he's dead. He's faking he's f___ing dead." The Marine comes into view with his rifle shouldered. There is a rifle shot. An Iraqi leaning against a wall slumps, leaving a blood stain behind. According to CNN, another Marine says, "Well, he's dead now."

Now, for Chuckie, killin' unarmed prisoners is what makes America great.  If Chuckie's gushing over this incident sounds like some white guy praising a lynch murder of a local black man, well, it's pretty much exactly the same thing.  Chuckie didn't volunteer to go to Vietnam to fight The Enemy back when he had the chance.  But, man, it does his heart good to watch footage of an American soldier killin' a helpless darkie.  Yeah, Chuckie sounds like his gittin' back to his roots.

Chuckie declares, like any other blowhard coward sitting at home cheering for war and killing so he can watch it on Fox News, "You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of young man."  In the real world, soldiers who kill even in much more clearly-defined combat situations than this are often haunted for the rest of their lives, sometimes debilitatingly so, by killing other human beings.  (In my next post, I'll link to and quote what the reporter who actually took the footage has to say about the incident and the Marine involved.)

West and Carter, two veterans who really do honor the military and also respect the law, unlike our wannabe Guru of Patriotic Correctness Chuckie, had this to say:

So context is crucial when judging actions under fire. The very job of a rifleman is to close with and destroy his enemy—in essence, to kill the bad guy before he can kill you. But what separates the Marines from the rabble is their professional discipline—what a Harvard political scientist called the "management of violence" in describing the U.S. military. And so, this incident stands out for two reasons. First, it shows a breach of discipline, albeit under very stressful circumstances. But it also shows the extent to which the U.S. military will throw the book at one of its own. Already, the entire 1st Marine Division staff is involved with the case, and the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday that "[I]t's being investigated, and justice will be done."

So, am I being too harsh on Chuckie's sentimental ramblings about Veterans Day?  Not hardly.  Chuckie isn't honoring the soldiers, or any such thing.  He's sentimentalizing war and killing.  Even outright murder.

Let's be clear here:  The actual case of the shooter who shot the unarmed prisoner to death in the mosque may well be a case of bad judgment that was "a tragedy, not an atrocity."  That's not what Chuckie's praising.  For Chuckie, the Marine gunning down the prisoner was a good thing, period.  In his little fan rant for the shooter, Chuckie says, "there are millions of people who would love to shake your hand and tell you how very much they appreciate you."

Chuckie just ain't no nice guy.