Crossposted from The Burn Pit.
[Picture above is me talking to loval villagers about their educational and potable water needs. If my lieutenant sees that picture, I swear this may have been the only time I wore my Red Sox hat outside the wire. Well, that might be a lie, but I swear I had the helmet somewhere.]
Here we go again.
Thomas Walker, a “lecturer in the intensive English and orientation program” at Iowa State University has gone the way of the Law Professor at Suffolk, and taken issue with attempts to send carepackages to deployed troops. I really wish it hadn’t been ISU as I have an affinity for the school because that is where my friend Past National Commander Rehbein spent the better part of his working life. And the reality is that no one school should be culpable for the actions of one individual. It amounts to a sort of “hecklers veto” where the school gets a black eye for the actions or statements of a single miscreant, while the good work of so many others is largely ignored. But so it goes.
Let’s look at what he has to say:
I read in Tuesday’s Iowa State Daily that the College Republicans have begun collecting sundries for U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why? Doesn’t the U.S. Army victual its soldiers? Don’t their families send them yuletide goodies? Aren’t GIs paid enough to buy what they need, and even what they want?
Yes, the army “victuals” its troops. In fact, we get a lovely assortment of MREs whenever we headed out. A true culinary classic is the spaghetti and meat balls. The sublime experience of eating pound cake in the pouring rain is enough to bring the owner of even the least discerning palate to tears. As I read his statement it conjured to mind the famous question of George C. Scott as Scrooge: “Are there no prisons? No work houses?”
You know why care packages sent from home mean so much? Is it because we were starving? Is it because we were too poor to afford our own food? No, because it meant something. Sure, I could get heaping portions of food from a Mermite, but when you know that someone cared enough to send food halfway around the world, the food nourishes not only the body, but the soul as well.
Some folks don’t have families to send them stuff Mr. Walker. Many of us don’t have an extensive family support mechanism when we deploy. Which is why groups like Soldiers’ Angels exist, and have mottos that encapsulate that:
May No Soldier Go Unloved
May No Soldier Walk Alone
May No Soldier Be Forgotten
Until They All Come Home
“As Republicans we believe in charity,” stated Jeremy Freeman, a member of the College Republicans. Donating toiletries, boxed and canned foods, socks and beanies to U.S. soldiers who can already deodorize themselves, who eat better than the poorest Americans and who are gallantly garbed, is an eleemosynary travesty.
“Gallantly garbed?” Really? Are you $#!^^ing me? Let me tell you about my gallant garb. My wardrobe was digitzed and mono-chromatic. Sure, it is trendy among homeless folks you see with cardboard signs, but seldom if ever do I see Giselle Bundchen strutting the catwalk outfitted in a lovel ensemble of digital pattern BDU’s. And our boots are not the Uggs sold to us by her touchdown munificent husband. Also, our accessories are indeed functional, if not downright alluring. Nothing says “I’m ready to party” like a PRC radio, a couple of mortar rounds, and a sleeping bag that hasn’t been washed in months. Love the use of SAT words though, it just stresses to us uneducated grunts how smart you are, more so (clearly) than I am. In fact, based only on your consummate grasp of diction, I would move that we set up some form of Oligarchy centered on folks who can use “eleemosynary” properly in a sentence. In the farrago of human imbecility, typified by the profligate galimatias of useless pontification, you are truly the beacon on the hill. (There, I also used big words, can I join your club now?)
Necessities should be doled out to people who really need them and who might get them if not for the hundreds of billions of dollars being funneled to the Pentagon in the greatest squandering of money on the planet. If anything, Republicans should sympathize with veterans struggling to find employment, a challenge that may daunt the discharged soldier, who might wish he had reenlisted. Soldiers are to Republicans as fetuses are to them: prized. But once out of the womb-like army, Republican solicitude for hapless veterans goes where extracted zygotes go.
There are many of us who do work to help those veterans, and here at The American Legion we have 2.5 million of them all working to do just that. Not sure how this because a partisan issue, except for your obvious antipathy towards the group trying to send these packages. But again, I think this paragraph was meant more to show how smart you are, and less to make an actual point.
“We get to show the troops we still appreciate what they’re doing for us,” said another College Republican. What are they doing for us? Nothing. But against us they’re doing a lot: creating anti-American terrorists in the countries they occupy. Said the same College Republican, “It can’t be fun to be away from your family for the holidays. As if American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan had been conscripted? They chose to leave home.
Ah yes, the old saw about how US Troops do nothing but create enemies. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of dollars that US Troops pour into aiding the citizens of those countries we are in, nor trying to make it so little girls can go to school without fear of being killed. No, our true legacy is just creating terrorists. As someone who did in fact volunteer, and who would do so again, I can second the emotion that being away from home on the holidays is (as they say in the infantry) The Suck. But, when you look at the things you are able to accomplish, it makes it worth while. Here for instance is how my unit once spent a holiday, look at all the little terrorists we were creating….
Why do Republicans care so much about the military? Because the military-industrial complex is dear to their simplistic laissez-faire fantasies: a bottom-line patriotism that excludes the people at the bottom.
I would say that Democrats care about the military as well, and most the Democrats I know (my extensive family for instance) would dispute that supporting the troops is a partisan activity. Either way, for every one of you that says something asinine like this letter, there are 10 more great Americans who will leap in to fill the void. So, as they say in the army “lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.” Frankly, I think you will lead 10 people that wouldn’t be as likely to send a carepackage to do so, and for that I think you, even if that clearly wasn’t your intent.
Soldiers’ Angels has lists of soldiers, airmen, coasties, marines and sailors who need adopting, because not everyone has someone back home to lift them up when they are feeling down. The best way to show Thomas Walker just how idiotic he is is to reach out to one of our folks downrange, and ensure they know that they shall not go unloved.
Mr. Walker, in case you wander over here after hearing that your “article” gained you your 15 seconds of fame, I can only say, in monosyllabic words, so that you can understand, Fuck You!!!
As for ISU, just another school that should be added to the list of schools that parents should really consider before spending a dime in tuition money for junior and juniorette. If Walker is an example of the quality of the faculty, the “education” from this place would be sorely lacking.
“Frankly, I think you will lead 10 people that wouldn’t be as likely to send a carepackage to do so”
Close, TSO. I send care packages as a matter of course, but now, I’m going to send a few extra just to piss this pedantic prick off.
Want to really piss him off? Put his name and address on a thank you card and put it in the box before you mail it off. He’ll be thrilled with all of the replies from those in the field.
Mother effing POS…Send Him a challenge, Mark. Ask him if he’d like to endure what the troops do…ah…fuggedahboudit. He’s a pussy.
Being a ISU student and a member of the military, I can say that Mr. Walker is far from the average professor here at Iowa State and the only Professor on campus that I’ve encountered with anti-military views
I like the liberal use of his thesaurus to show how smart he is.
Nobody uses the word “eleemosynary” in common conversation or even in an academic setting. I’d bet my Armalite hat he looked that one up.
Also, he’s not a “professor”.
Not by a long shot. He’s a lecturer. Non-tenure track instructor doing bitch work the real guys don’t want to do.
@6. And who the hell uses victuals as a verb? Sure, it is technically okay, according to Webster, but give me a break. And lest anyone think the English professor–as an English professor–is a cut above, I’d like to point out that he hasn’t yet mastered punctuation. Unless there is a series of three or more items rattled off in a sentence, a comma does not precede a conjunction unless the words following it comprise an independent clause. He violates this rule in his letter. Oh, I nearly forgot the purpose of my comment. It is to tell the learned professor to go screw himself.
We’ll all figure out how many people really love or like somebody when we see how many people show up at one’s funeral.
2-17 Air Cav,
My wife’s a newly graduated English major and a current editor. According to her, the vast majority of her classmates and many of the other English related people she has come across, cannot actually write and edit.
They can rattle off stuff about what this book or that poem means in relation to illegal immigrant related fiction or whatever. But they can’t diagram a sentence.
Her employer requires prospective hires to take an editing/research test before the interview. Most everybody who takes it (and that’s mostly English majors) flunks it.
the greatest squandering of money on the planet
Would be the public educational system. And this assclown is prima facie evidence thereof.
I see all these assclowns with the cutesy pie chart bumper stickers and the ones that say, “It will be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”
Well, sweetheart, what you fail to realize is that defense is MANDATED by the Constitution in Article I, Section 8. Not so with education, although nobody would argue that a well-rounded education isn’t valuable in any society. Now if you compare DoD budgets to the amount spent on education by the federal, state, and local governments in this country, you’d find that not only is defense spending NOT in fact greater than what we spend on education, it ain’t even close–we spend nearly $3 on education in the United States for every $1 on defense. Yet what do we have to show for it? Idiocracy, with Mister Walker as Case Study Number One.
Here is a link to the Iowa State Dailies comments page. More than one veteran taking Mr. Walker to task.
http://www.iowastatedaily.com/opinion/article_0bce0016-1e91-11e1-96a8-001871e3ce6c.html?mode=comments
Dehydrated pork patty….good victuals to be sure!!!
I think we should write or call him direct to let him know we disagree:
Walker, Thomas
Title:
Lecturer
Dept:
Intensive English & Orientation Program
Office:
206 Ross
Ames, IA 50011-1201
515-294-3568
Home:
109 N Maple Ave
Ames, IA 50010-3346
Email:
twalker@iastate.edu
Outstanding, Pat.
I wonder how the President of Iowa State University thinks of this…since he is a Navy Veteran (69-70)
http://www.president.iastate.edu/about/bio.php
I decided to send him an e-mail and send a link here as well. Let’s see what he thinks.
As to whether you want to send care packages, that’s a personal decision. I have, and I hope the recepient derived some enjoyment or utility from the care package. But as far American soldiers “creat[ing] anti-American terrorists in the countries they occupy”, I mean even our top brass agrees with that one.
…and posting his home address is pretty chickens**t stuff.
I think there might be an Iowa State lecturer looking for a new place to lecture next semester? Maybe we will see him with a sign that says, “will lecture for food” at an occupy protest soon. Somebody may have just stepped on his dick, because I don’t think that Iowans take too kindly to asshats like this. Sure you can say what you want, but you just might not want to say it in the wrong location…
Joe it isn’t chicken shit stuff, its public record stuff.
So you gonna show up at his door with flaming torches and pitchforks?
I see Joe is leaving written bags of flaming shit on our doorstep again.
@18:
Joe, the home address came directly from the Iowa State University website directory. That is exactly how it is listed there. Maybe you would like to tell the school the same thing for posting his home address?
No Joe that isn’t from our playbook, that is a liberal deal.
Wow, quick response from the President of Iowa State
Dear Chris,
Please know that Mr. Walker’s viewpoints do not in any way represent the views of the university, and as a military veteran myself I personally disagree very strongly with what he wrote in that letter. The Iowa State Daily which published his letter is an independent newspaper that is not under the university’s control, just as we don’t control other news media. While I disagree with what Mr. Walker wrote, I do respect every individual’s right to freedom of speech which is so highly valued in our nation and which is one of our cherished values that our troops are fighting to defend in countries like Iraq and Afganistan. I can also assure you that the vast majority of Iowa Staters everywhere, here on campus and off, disagree vehemently with the sentiments expressed by Mr. Walker.
…Greg
Gregory Geoffroy
Iowa State University
515-294-2042
“I mean even our top brass agrees with that one”. In what context, Joey? Link or slink.
I sent him an email, thanks for the link Pat. Piece of trash. Next up, ISU pres.
UpNorth–I can already tell you nearly word-for-fucking-word what he’ll say:
“It’s not my job to look it up, you do it.” Or words to that effect. Remember, evidence doesn’t mean shit when in a liberal’s mind, all they have to do is point a finger and shriek, “J’Accuse!!!”
@10. Spade: I know her pain well. I blame Gay Talese, ee cummings, and the end of drill, rote, and the parsing of sentences in schools. I am going to tell you something that you should find incredible but probably won’t. I was talking recently with an 8th grade teacher of Language Arts (English isn’t taught any longer) and she was all excited about the results of a class book-report assignment. Get this. The students did not write a word. Instead, each pulled from a bag certain symbols that signified or represented different elements and characters in the book. I nearly upchucked.
(He would be talking about the “top brass” in the lunacy movement.)
Whatever happened to folks opting out of doing that which they do not want to do? If this idiot (who calls himself an educator) doesn’t want to send carepackages he simply doesn’t have to participate in the program. No one is demanding that he do so.
If someone had told him he was mandated to participate, I would help him protest even though I categorically disagree with his position on the issue!
EGADS! Is really necessary these days to vilafy anyone who has an opinion which differs from yours? Thanks for the tolerance, libbies.
Gen. McChrystal called it “insurgent math”. “…for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies.” Is that top brass enough for you Up?
I know, Sparky. Typical lefty, throw shit, run, repeat.
And that, Joe, has what to do with the topic at hand???
No country in the history of the world has expended more energy than the US in reducing collateral damage/the taking of “innocent” live/whatever you want to call it in your lefty lobes.
“Bottom line?” says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put soldiers’ lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing.” That’s from this article, Joey, it’s called sourcing your argument. Here it is, http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-real-news-from-the-mcchrystal-interview-the-troops-arent-happy/
From the same article, the only quote that you showed, not linked, puts the words, “insurgent math” in quotes, not the “for every innocent” etc. Would that be an oversight, or are you stretching the truth, yet again?
Forgot to add in #34, or Joey, are you quoting DU again?
This lecturer doesn’t have tenure which means that his contract might not be renewed. From the quick and positive response from the ISU president, I wouldn’t bet the farm on renewal. On the other hand, sometimes stupid stuff from an asshole serves to unite the good people.
#8 2-17 AirCav: “Victuals?”
I have, but IIRC, it was all in Civil War era documents. Archaic, and if that dingle-berry knew what he was about, he’d know that.
“Please know that Mr. Walker’s viewpoints do not in any way represent the views of the university, and as a military veteran myself I personally disagree very strongly with what he wrote in that letter.”
This part from the President of Iowa State is nonsense, unless he takes action.
His employee represented himself as an employee of ISU in his letter. Either (1)it IS the views of the university or (2)the University needs to actually discipline him for speaking out of turn as a University rep.
@37 – I’m pretty certain we haven’t used the term ‘victuals’ since we had ‘Sutlers’.
Good point, Spade. The school is attached at the hip to Walker now. This is not a 1st Amendment issue involving a private individal sharing a screwy opinion. I’d love to know whether he was on the school’s dime when he wrote the letter and whether he did so using their computer or internet connection.
Hey, I didn’t edit Webster’s Dictionary, either the abridged or unabridged edition! Victuals is legitimate word but, especially as a verb, it probably has not been used over the last 100 years except by Walker. So, we just know he’s a great lecturer because the hallmark of all great communicators is to leave the listener asking, “What the hell did he just say?” and “What the hell does that mean?” A regular Abe Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, and Ronald Reagan he is.
#39 CI
Ayup.
Something tells me people sending carepackages overseas aren’t paying attention to this douche rocket.
I wonder what this “professor” would think about Norway’s top general. He chose to be an army officer in part because American troops liberated his country.
Lefties need to move to their own PLANET.
People spouting off public anti-military to stir controversies and publicity/attention has become the oldest cliche in the book, for those wanting their 15 minutes of fame.
From souljah boy to college professors, and everyone in between, what ‘better’ method of getting notoriety than badmouthing our soldiers or their intent? Even nobodies with youtube accounts can make videos badmouthing the military and get their 15 minutes.
It is so boring, predictable, and annoying. Not “edgy” at all.
I use ‘victuals’ in conversation when I’m in an eleëmosynary mood.
Fox & Friends posted his email, mailing addresses, & phone number!!! lol lol lol.
By the way, I am a military brat & no they don’t make enough you arrogant little communist twit
Well, TSO also nailed it too when he said even if money or family wasn’t an issue for some folks, there ain’t exactly a Target or Walmart on every corner in Afghanistan.