I wasn’t going to comment on the uproar over Joel Stein’s “I Don’t Support the Troops” column, because by the time I got around to it yesterday (I’ve been working on piece for the next NRODT that’s kept me distracted — sorry!) everyone had already said what I would have said. I pretty much agree with Sister Toldjah — that is, at least he said it. Most anti-war sentiment you find in major publications is couched in careful language and always adds the caveat that the person voicing the sentiment still “supports the troops” — the reason being that for such people, national security is nothing more than a political issue. They oppose the Bush administration, therefore they must oppose the war. Besides, what was left of Stein to criticize after he was picked apart by Hugh Hewitt on his radio show?

But I decided to comment after all because I did some research and found this parody of an Army recruitment pamphlet Stein wrote for the New Yorker last August. Here’s how the article begins:

Dude, we totally know what you’re thinking. That you’ll have to wake up early. That we’ll make you run all day with heavy stuff on your back. That you have to be drug-free, know how to read, and rank the U.S. as one of your top five favorite countries. Wrong, wrong, and wrong! And whatever else you’re thinking? Wrong!

Oh, I get it. The Army consists of a bunch of illiterate drug-addicts who were tricked into serving. Lest you thinks I’m overstating the case, here’s what Stein wrote in his LA Times column:

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I’m tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

According to Stein, Marines like Cpl. Jeffrey Starr went to Iraq because the military’s marketing campaign, so brilliantly skewered in Stein’s 700-word New Yorker piece, tricked them into thinking that they would be waking up “around noonish [to] hit the Xbox for a few hours of Halo and all-you-can-eat Cool Ranch Doritos.” Not because, as Cpl. Starr wrote, “It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it’s not to me. I’m here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.”

It may seem confusing to Stein, but some are called by higher things than Halo and Cool Ranch Doritos. At the same time, I’m glad he wrote what he did. At least he was honest enough to admit it.

UPDATE: E&P reports that Stein has angered some liberals for expressing his views: “At the same time, Atrios at the liberal blog, Eschaton, dubbed Stein ‘Wanker of the Day.’”

MB reader Jon M. writes that liberals are angry because Stein has exposed the emptiness of their position:

Stein, in the interview with Hewitt, kept trying to get back to his primary point: that being that the position of not supporting the war in Iraq but insisting that you support the troops is a hypocritical and vacuous position to stand on. This is a position that is held by many of the leaders of the Democratic Party. Here’s a liberal op-ed columnist smacking his political leadership for such a contemptible position — let’s take advantage of that and have the debate rather than permitting the Democrats a free pass for such an intellectually obscene stance.