Defending Vegetarian honor

Matt Zeitlin writes:

I read Christopher Hitchens’ heartbreaking piece about a 23 year old soldier who was inspired to enlist by reading Hitchens and was killed in action in Iraq. The soldier, Mark Daily, was a UCLA graduate, registered Democrat, an agnostic, had early doubts about the war and even was once a vegetarian.

We're* not pacifists, you know. Indeed, some of us are quite feisty. I could have joined the military with a clean conscience in 2002--except for the part where I'm a 4F asthmatic with lousy eyesight who was medically unfit for the State Department. But that had nothing to do with my tofu-loving ways.

* Technically, I'm not a vegetarian: I eat humanely raised and killed meat. However, given the difficulty of locating such meat, and the expense of buying it, this is generally a distinction without a difference. Moreover, I was a vegetarian at the time of the Iraq War's inception.

Comments

There are vegetarians in the military. They even have a veggie burger MRE, and meatless MRE's are marked as "vegetarian". I think being a vegan would be very difficult if not impossible to pull off, though.

Posted by T | October 4, 2007 8:31 AM

Hitler was a vegetarian!! Did anyone know that?

Posted by stuart | October 4, 2007 8:51 AM

Okay Megan, I’ll bite: What exactly to you call, “humanely raised and killed meat?” I’m a old man raised deep in south Louisiana on a plantation and did my fair share of neck ringing and decapitation of fowl not to mention slaughtering and butchering of pigs, hogs, and cattle, but, I never in my life “killed meat.” Then again I never ever had any guilty feeling about maids, servants, and housekeepers either. So please humor an old man who is a faithful reader of your blog and explain what you mean by “humanely raised and killed.”

Posted by Macquechoux | October 4, 2007 8:52 AM

Jack London on Animal Cruelty (JACK LONDON
GLEN ELLEN, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA,
December 8, 1915):

"Very early in my life, possibly because of the insatiable curiosity that was born in me, I came to dislike the performances of trained animals. It was my curiosity that spoiled for me this form of amusement, for I was led to seek behind the performance in order to learn how the performance was achieved. And what I found behind the brave show and glitter of performance was not nice. It was a body of cruelty so horrible that I am confident no normal person exists who, once aware of it, could ever enjoy looking on at any trained-animal turn.

Now I am not a namby-pamby. By the book reviewers and the namby-pambys I am esteemed a sort of primitive beast that delights in the spilled blood of violence and horror. Without arguing this matter of my general reputation, accepting it at its current face value, let me add that I have indeed lived life in a very rough school and have seen more than the average man's share of inhumanity and cruelty, from the forecastle and the prison, the slum and the desert, the execution-chamber and the lazar-house, to the battlefield and the military hospital. I have seen horrible deaths and mutilations. I have seen imbeciles hanged, because, being imbeciles, they did not possess the hire of lawyers. I have seen the hearts and stamina of strong men broken, and I have seen other men, by ill-treatment, driven to permanent and howling madness. I have witnessed the deaths of old and young, and even infants, from sheer starvation. I have seen men and women beaten by whips and clubs and fists, and I have seen the rhinoceros-hide whips laid around the naked torsos of black boys so heartily that each stroke stripped away the skin in full circle. And yet, let me add finally, never have I been so appalled and shocked by the world's cruelty as have I been appalled and shocked in the midst of happy, laughing, and applauding audiences when trained-animal turns were being performed on the stage.

One with a strong stomach and a hard head may be able to tolerate much of the unconscious and undeliberate cruelty and torture of the world that is perpetrated in hot blood and stupidity. I have such a stomach and head. But what turns my head and makes my gorge rise, is the cold-blooded, conscious, deliberate cruelty and torment that is manifest behind ninety-nine of every hundred trained-animal turns. Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its perfect flower in the trained-animal world.

Possessed myself of a strong stomach and a hard head, inured to hardship, cruelty, and brutality, nevertheless I found, as I came to manhood, that I unconsciously protected myself from the hurt of the trained-animal turn by getting up and leaving the theatre whenever such turns came on the stage. I say "unconsciously." By this I mean it never entered my mind that this was a programme by which the possible death-blow might be given to trained-animal turns. I was merely protecting myself from the pain of witnessing what it would hurt me to witness.

But of recent years my understanding of human nature has become such that I realize that no normal healthy human would tolerate such performances did he or she know the terrible cruelty that lies behind them and makes them possible."
________________

I do not quite agree with Jack regarding his last sentence. After all - many people know how animals are treated in a civilized society here and now. They care less about them then Stalin did about his dominion.

Experiments with monkeys have shown that one needs to have experienced a bit of torture or abuse oneself in order to fully relate to other's suffering. Earlier arguments assumed that empathy is enough (but empathy is not something we encourage in the West but rather try to kill it). Most in the US have never experienced anything tough.. they grow depressed and obese because of that boredom - no perspective balance. We cannot enjoy the little things anymore because we are not aware how wonderful our lives are compared to animals. Of worse - we are ware of it but cannot deal with the pressure that it is NOW up to us to make the most of it.

The good thing is that finally we have destroyed ecology enough for us to feel some pain. Modern humans and human nature box, after all, like barbarian. You hit them in one spot and their hands flee there, you hit them on another spot and their hands follow..

Clint Eastwood, we need more man of your type!

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 4, 2007 9:11 AM

Macquechoux

Remember - during the slave days... some slave owners treated their slaves better than others. Some slaves had more freedom of movement than others. Some slaves received better nutrition than others. Some slaves were beaten.. some less (ALL were beaten).

But in a any case.. we assumed that black mothers have less mother love than white mothers and therefor separating mother child for trade was socially accepted.

Today - humanely raised animal slaves can not eg see day light and turn around from time to time. they are not pumped up with antibiotics and hormones all their lives, etc. No matter if they can move or see daylight (out of the 25 billion animals consumed in the US only a rounding error can enjoy these luxuries). ALL of them are removed from their mothers at birth!!

Among our most dangerous people today is Michael Pollen. If the tobacco industries had a man like him - we would still all be smoking?! The slave industries had many men like him (we know what happened. A war with nature that we can only lose?)

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 4, 2007 9:23 AM

Humanely raised means that they aren't penned inside in their own muck, but are pastured/run in such a way as to enjoy such fulfillment as animals can. Humanely killed means that the slaughterhouse is designed, a la Temple Grandin, to minimize fear and pain. I'm a utility aggregator for animals--I think it's better to have a lot of animals that are eventually killed for meat, than no farm animals, which is what the world would look like if we were all vegans. But life on an industrial farm is literally worse than death.

Posted by Megan McArdle | October 4, 2007 9:46 AM

Hugo: Is this one of those times when you have difficulty telling the difference between a human being and a chicken?

Posted by Bergamot | October 4, 2007 9:53 AM

My wife has decided that we shall never again eat chicken raised in the usual way. Happily, in Britain it seems to be pretty easy to buy meat of all sorts, except perhaps veal, that's been raised in decent conditions.

Posted by dearieme | October 4, 2007 9:56 AM

Hugo,

"All of them are removed from their mothers at birth."

That's certainly not true of cattle, by and large, since baby calves will die without colostrum. At the ranch I'm familiar with, it's a huge disaster if the mother cow won't take her baby. (As a kid I had to bottle feed one such calf who unfortunately didn't survive his abandonment.) I suppose veal calves are separated from their mothers pretty early, but Americans don't like veal all that much. I don't know the percentages, but my relatives keep the mothers and babies together until 6-9 months old, when the calves are around 500 pounds. Up to that point they live on mother's milk and grass (HUGE baby calves are still nursing). They are sold in the early fall to avoid the expense of feeding them hay over the winter. They go to the feed lot to fatten up, and are eventually slaughtered. The mothers do bawl horribly initially after their babies are taken away and try to jump the fences and look for them, but they eventually calm down.

Posted by Amy P | October 4, 2007 10:00 AM

"Hate can be concealed in many ways. A lover of animals looks into eyes that want, eyes that are forever grateful for what they receive, eyes that can never judge. Such a person can ultimately be a sadist, a misanthrope, in that his perfect world is a world without other human beings. Everything that animals do is glorified precisely because it represents such an animal lover's ideal for Others: consciousness without judgment."

-Lewis Gordon

Posted by Freddie | October 4, 2007 10:05 AM

The more vegetarians the better. Reduced demand for my delicious, penned in, inhumanely slaughtered, Wagyu sirloin straight from Kobe, Japan. Hmmm...

Posted by joe | October 4, 2007 10:22 AM

As I recall, veal and dairy farming go together. Dairy farmers want all the milk from their calves, so the calves are separated from their mothers early on. So in that sense, it is more humane to raise beef cattle than to run a dairy.

Posted by Amy P | October 4, 2007 10:31 AM

I would think that veal and dairy farming go together for another reason. If you're raising cows primarily for their milk, your adult herds need to be 98% or 99% female, with just enough bulls to breed the next generation. Any other males are entirely superfluous, so you may as well kill them early for veal. Cows raised for beef can presumably be half and half. I think particular breeds are optimized for quality and quantity of meat or milk, but not both, so keeping a herd in which the cows are kept for their milk and the bulls for their meat would not be economically efficient. Either the milk or the meat (or both) would be lower quality or quantity (or both).

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 4, 2007 11:02 AM

Quite right, Dr. Weevil.

Posted by Amy P | October 4, 2007 11:18 AM

But life on an industrial farm is literally worse than death.

How do you know?

Posted by Jim | October 4, 2007 11:38 AM

Meagan: I'm a utility aggregator for animals--I think it's better to have a lot of animals that are eventually killed for meat, than no farm animals, which is what the world would look like if we were all vegans.

Why do you think that cows and chickens and pigs would disappear from the planet? Would wolves disappear because we stop breeding dogs (the same species)? Only because we stop protecting and breeding blacks as slaves does not mean that they will go extinct if we abolished slavery?

The manure (soil erosion in contrast to the manure of antelopes) and farting (CO2) of cows is not ecologically sustainable in large quantities anyway. A free market correction by the ecology would do us all good? Currently, almost 1/4 of animal mass is locked up in camps without natural expression and without ecological services to us (huge dead weight loss). There are millions of species out there and yet we stick to our 10 which we "produce" by the billions every years like a communist plan economist. Our woods are empty because we have eradicated most real carnivores but now we have billions of cats and dogs living in cities and eating factory farmed animals all day long without ever practicing survival of the fittest once.. we have destroyed the ecological free market with our life-time employment plans for only a few species of animals (slaves)?

Black = slave
White = friend
Chicken = food
Dog = friend

It is not about the individual - it is about the group? this kind of thinking can lead us to the most dangerous conclusion that E O Wilson sites as:

Species going extinct? Not to worry. That is nature's way. Think of humankind as only the latest in a long line of exterminating agents in geological time. In any case, because our species has pulled free of old-style, mindless Nature, we have begun a different order of life. Evolution should now be allowed to proceed along this new trajectory.

when we talk about overpopulation - we do not only mean that humans have doubled in only decades but that we have dragged a few unfortunate animal species along with us to unnatural and dangerous proportions for ecological stability?

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 4, 2007 12:31 PM

Bergamot

Hugo: Is this one of those times when you have difficulty telling the difference between a human being and a chicken?

Is this on of those times when you have difficulty telling the unity and kinship between a human being and a bird being? There are differences in degree and similarities in kind to to me - ala Darwin. What about you?

Amy P

While it is true that mammal babies would die without mothers milk during the first few days.. most cow babies in the US are removed from their mothers within hours and then are feed by "bottle/tit" machines (the natural weaning is years?). They get replacement milk soon afterwards (soy etc) so that we can steal the milk for our use. Mothers/calves sometimes mourn for months with helpless cries. They lose not one of their young, but all of them, always! No a single mother to see her young grow up? No other mammal does that and most humans are still lactose intolerant?

Cows are repeatedly raped (fisted for artificial insemination) , as are pigs etc. 99% of chicks are not with their mothers when they hatch?

Or take dogs. In the wild the pack takes care of all the young until they reach an average age of 2 years when they go out and start their own pack (which is merely another name for family). Today - we remove puppies at the age of 8 weeks from their mothers. Pregnancy is a painful and stressful progress and mammalian mothers only start really enjoying their young after a few months...

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 4, 2007 12:37 PM

Why do you think that cows and chickens and pigs would disappear from the planet? Would wolves disappear because we stop breeding dogs (the same species)?

Dogs and wolves are not the same species. Domesticated animals such as cows, chickens and swine have no capacity to survive in the "wild", and no wild to survive in. If banning eating meat was combined with laws prohibiting the slaughter of the now economically useless farm animals, where would these animals go? We couldn't possibly be expected to continue to provide for them while deriving no economic gain, and even if there was some sort of habitat to release them into, if it was anything approaching nature, they wouldn't survive. They have lost their capacity to be self-sufficient through centuries of domestication.

Posted by Freddie | October 4, 2007 12:40 PM

Being on top of the food chain means I can eat anything I want to.

Posted by Rex | October 4, 2007 12:58 PM

Freddie

What does the free market do with companies and services that have lost their capacity to be self-sufficient? What does nature do? Do we subsidize them indefinitely and why? The official animal rights position on this issue is:

“What will we do with all the chickens, cows, and pigs if everyone becomes a vegetarian?”

It is unrealistic to expect that everyone will stop eating animals overnight. As the demand for meat decreases, fewer animals will be raised for food. Farmers will stop breeding so many animals and will turn to other types of agriculture. When there are fewer of these animals, they will be able to live more natural lives.

See how factory-farmed animals live.

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 4, 2007 1:05 PM

Megan, I hope you wrote this before you actually read the Hitchens piece. Posting something this flip in response to that agonizing essay seems wildly inappropriate.

Posted by TheRadicalModerate | October 4, 2007 1:21 PM

Indeed, I wondered why all the comments seemed so fixated on vegetarianism...

Anyway, given the article, maybe one can sorta see how, in Megan's previous weblog, I had mistaken Christopher Hitchens for an American rather than a Briton.

Posted by Paul Brinkley | October 4, 2007 1:45 PM

Megan-

Their are three Whole Food Markets in the DC area-
Georgetown, P Street, and Tenley Town. And that is just one chain.

You strike me as rather well-heeled, so the 20-30% additional cost shouldn't be that much of a problem.

So do you really try to find 'humanely killed meat', or do you just give up when your closest market doesn't carry?

BTW- Animals are not meat until after they are killed, so 'killing meat' makes as much sense as killing a rock.

Posted by t4toby | October 4, 2007 4:03 PM

Rex: "Being on top of the food chain" also means that you theoretically possess the higher brain function to realize that you can be discriminating in what you choose to eat.

Posted by Mimi | October 4, 2007 4:51 PM

I thought that this was fitting due to the refreshing Wagner posts..:

THE HIGHEST MOTIVE FOR VEGETARIANISM

THE REGENERATION OF MANKIND

by RICHARD WAGNER
15th World Vegetarian Congress 1957, Delhi/Bombay/Madras/Calcutta, India

Extracted from three essays from "Religion and Art"

What hitherto has kept me from joining any of the existing societies for the protection of animals, has been that I found all their arguments and appeals based well-nigh exclusively on the Utilitarian principle. It may have been a first necessity of the philanthropists who have heretofore concerned themselves with the protection of dumb animals, to prove to the people the usefulness of a merciful treatment of the beasts, since our modern civilization does not empower us to count on any other motives than that of utility in the actions of State-ruled mankind. How far we thus have wandered from the only ennobling reason for kindness toward dumb animals, and how little could be really attained on the path here struck, is shown quite palpably in recent days...

Who needs another motive for the protection of an animal from willfully protracted sufferings than that of pure compassion can never have felt a genuine right to stop another man's beast-torture. Everyone who revolts at the sight of an animal's torment, is prompted solely by compassion, and he who joins with others to protect dumb animals is moved by naught save pity, of its very nature entirely indifferent to all calculations of utility or the reverse. But that we have not the courage to set this motive of pity in the forefront of our appeals and admonitions to the folk, is the curse of our civilization.

When first it dawned on human wisdom that the same thing breathed in animals as in mankind, it appeared too late to avert the curse which ranging ourselves with the beasts of prey, we seemed to have called down upon us through the taste of animal food: disease and misery of every kind, to which we did not see mere vegetable-eating men exposed. The insight thus obtained led further to the consciousness of a deep-seated guilt in our earthly being; it moved those fully seized therewith to turn aside from all that stirs the passions, through total abstinence from animal food. To these wise men (Plutarch, Hesiod, Seneca, and others) the mystery of the world unveiled itself as a restless tearing into pieces, to be restored to restful unity by nothing save compassion. The wise man could but recognize that the reasonable being gains his highest happiness through free-willed suffering, which he therefore seeks with eagerness, and ardently embraces; whereas the beast but looks on pain, so absolute and useless to it, with dread and agonized rebellion. But still more to be deplored that wise man deemed the human being who consciously could torture animals and turn a deaf ear to their pain, for he (the wise one) knew that such a one was infinitely further from redemption than the wild beast itself, which should rank in comparison as sinless as a saint ...

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 4, 2007 5:23 PM

PS: Pythagoras, Plutarch, Socrates, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer used similar arguments in their writings on vegetarianism.

Mark Twain was never as "friendly" - but at least funnier?

Leonardo Da Vinci had to remind himself not to speak his mind too openly on the issue of animals as it was the only time he seemed "angry" with humans?

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 4, 2007 5:24 PM

I don't buy the 4F thing. Did you try to sign up and were rejected? I mean, since you were beating the drums for war, didn't you owe it to your fellow citizens to at least see if you could also serve? And if you couldn't serve in the active military, isn't there another wartime function you could have served?

Or is it OK to breezily advocate for war, watch your fellow citizens get killed, and then make up some superficial rationale after the fact?

Even Hitchens, in his deep alcoholic haze, seems to know now he did something wrong. Do you?

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 4, 2007 7:08 PM

I passed the foreign service exam and was scheduled to enter the state department service in 2003, when I found out that they don't like people with bad chest conditions. For the same reason the military doesn't: they tend to have to be evacuated from anywhere smoky/dusty. I also have several other really disqualifying medical conditions.

Moreover, the idea that only soldiers can make policy about war is tiresome and silly. I'm sorry that I was wrong about the war, but not because I didn't serve in it.

Posted by Megan McArdle | October 4, 2007 7:37 PM

Charles

I believe that the core of the argument here is that there are vegetarian soldiers. Agnostic ones even. Libertarians even. But the tile of the post states: "Defending Vegetarian honor" and Megan elaborates on that.. she too is virtually vegetarian but that does not mean she is necessarily a pacifist. Socrates was a soldier and a vegetarian?

Leonardo Da Vinci invented weapons for his employer and in order to protect his country - yet he was a vegetarian. Jack London has endured and witnessed his share of hardship in his time and yet he cannot watch an animal being forced to perform for entertainment.

That Hitchens realizes, as Friedman has recently done, how polarized we all were is commendable. In the article Hitchen's moral dilemma is if his words were responsible for the young man to volunteer for war or not?

Who or what influenced this soldier to become a vegetarian is is what interests me even more? He seems to have been a genuinely open and smart person with a wonderful family. It was happiness and health for this policeman (in Texas mind you).

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 4, 2007 7:51 PM

At 5:23pm, Hugo Pottisch clearly implied that Richard Wagner was at the 15th World Vegetarian Congress of 1957. Surely not the composer?

At 5:24pm, he listed Pythagoras and Socrates among those who left "writings" on vegetarianism. Socrates famously wrote nothing. If Pythagoras wrote anything, it does not survive.

Time to read more and write less?

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 4, 2007 8:22 PM

Who said only soldiers can make policy? And what is it about people on the right that they fall into the strawman fallacy again and again?

So you never actually tried to sign up, so drop the 4F term. You argued for war with no intention of ever fighting in it, or even with no intention of ever doing anything overtly for the cause.

Just say it, and don't hide behind a lame strawman. If anything is tiresome and silly, that is.

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 4, 2007 8:38 PM

Charles--

"So you never actually tried to sign up..."

If you've been reading for a while, you'd know that our hostess has asthma--very serious asthma. That disqualifies you from military service, full stop.

As far as the lame shrieking about how people who "argued for war with no intention of fighting" etc., I'm in the Army, and I say she can argue for war if she damn well pleases. The chickenhawk slur is stupid. (I still think she was right the first time.)

Posted by CatCube | October 4, 2007 8:49 PM

CatCube weighs in with another strawman. Is it an addiction for rightwing people to fall into this again and again? Seriously. Look, my point is simple. Megan wanted a war? Megan spent hours and hours arguing for war? She should have been ready to fight in it, or do alternative service if she couldn't.

Or, be brave enough to say, "I want this war, and I have no intention of changing my life in any way to deal with its consequences."

That would at least require moral courage.

For the record, I served my country, and I love the chickenhawk argument. It is perfect for the cowards on the right--Limbaugh who avoided Vietnam because of a boil on his ass, for example; Cheney, who had better things to do; and on and on and on. That these people are the heroes of the rightwing speaks volumes to me.

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 4, 2007 8:58 PM

So, Charles Giacometti, did you support the liberation of Afghanistan? Surely no decent person can say 'no'. If you say 'yes', I have to ask whether you enlisted six years ago, when everyone thought it would take 100,000+ troops several years to defeat the Taleban, and it might not even be possible at all.

Do you think Darfur and Burma ought to be free? Surely no decent person can say 'no'. If you say 'yes', why haven't you enlisted to liberate one or the other? Don't say you can't, on the excuse that no one else is doing it and there's no liberation army to join. Someone must have been the first to step forward and start organizing the International Brigades for the Spanish Civil War, and there's no reason you can't be the first to do the same for Darfur or Burma. You would win a small place in the history books. (Just because I'm too lazy to look up who started the IBs doesn't mean his name isn't known.)

See how easy it is to turn the 'chickenhawk' argument back on those who use it? It's a deeply shameful argument -- actually more a slur than an argument.

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 4, 2007 9:01 PM

At 8:22pm Dr.Weevil implied that Hugo Pottisch has either invented a whole text by supposedly Richard Wagner the composer or he is not really quoting the composer himself but a different Richard Wagner.. He deduces that because Hugo Pottisch, while copy pasting from the Web site of the 15th World Vegetarian Congress of 1957, made the mistake of including the source of the Web site.

Hugo is surprised that somebody would not bother to check the link before running the risk of crying wolf about crying wolf?

At 8:22pm Dr.Weevil rightly notes that it was Plato and others who have quoted Socrates (eg The Republic on eating animals) and not Socrates who wrote The Republic himself.

The question is - what does our school teacher Weevil intend to do with this discovery? Does it change any of the arguments presented here? How would reading more, as suggested, change those arguments of Wagner, Tolstoy, etc? And if nothing that Pythagoras touches survives - how do we then even know his name?

At 5 to 12 Hugo wonders about Dr.Weevil's contribution and intention here and maybe life in general.

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 4, 2007 9:09 PM

How do we know Pythagoras' name if none of his writings survive? The same way we know Jesus' name: his followers wrote about him and quoted some of his sayings. Unfortunately, the sources differ among themselves, so it's impossible to say just how much is Pythagoras (or Jesus) and how much is later commentators.

Plato did not 'quote' Socrates: he wrote dialogues starring Socrates, and there is no reason to believe that his picture of Socrates is any more accurate than the very different pictures painted by Xenophon and Aristophanes, who also knew Socrates personally. I don't believe there is anything in Plato's Republic to prove that even his fictionalized Socrates was a vegetarian. Care to give a page reference?

My point in commenting is that I dislike reading historical falsehoods advanced as facts. Please stop doing that.

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 4, 2007 9:29 PM

Poor Dr. Weevil, so many words, and still guilty of the same strawman fallacy as the other lightweights here.

To quote our poor asthmatic host, it's all so tiresome and silly.

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 4, 2007 10:33 PM

In other words, Charles Giacometti thinks he can accuse others of failing to put their lives on the line for what they believe in, but either feels no obligation to do the same himself, or doesn't think anything is worth dying for. That makes him either a hypocrite or something worse.

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 4, 2007 10:52 PM

Poor Dr. Weevil, so outraged that I disparaged Rush Limbaugh and her other heroes that she failed to read the part where I served my country.

It must be wonderful to go through life 100% sure of yourself by ignoring 99% of the facts put in front of you. Not to mention by completely misunderstanding my argument, but that is another story.

Tell you what, Dr. Weevil, let's agree to disagree. You can conclude that I am a jerk, and I can dismiss you to spend then next 10 years cleansing the boil on Rush Limbaugh's draft-dodging ass--the same boil he used as his excuse to avoid Vietnam. You have your heroes, and I have mine. They served their country, and they know the cost of war, and they know your heroes are the lowest of the low.

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 4, 2007 11:09 PM

Let's not agree to disagree, until you stop making false statements about me. I do indeed have my heroes, but Limbaugh has never been one of them, and I was in fact defending Megan McArdle against your nasty but unoriginal smear. I have no strong opinion of Limbaugh one way or the other, I don't listen to his show, and a quick Google search confirms that I've never mentioned him in nearly six years of blogging. (I did hear 20-30 minutes of his show around 20 years ago while riding in my boss's car, but that's the extent of my direct acquaintance.)

According to Google, Limbaugh has in fact been mentioned on my site four times, not by me by commentators who wanted to pin his opinions on me somehow. One of them even made the standard 'chickenhawk' argument, comparing me to Limbaugh and making sure to mention his anal cysts. Amusingly enough, that commentator was an out-and-out Nazi from the Vanguard News Network (scroll down).

Of course I read the part where you said you served your country. Assuming it's true, and assuming you did so in uniform, there's nothing to stop you from serving it again. Of course, I don't really think you have an obligation to go to Darfur or Burma to prove that you care. I just think you have a moral obligation not to smear others with an accusation that can just as easily be turned on you. It's interesting that I've never been called a 'chickenhawk' or seen any other 'right-wing' blogger called one by anyone who was actually serving or had served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 4, 2007 11:41 PM

OK, Dr. since you feel so strongly about it, I will declare that you have won every point in our argument, 100 million to nil. Or you can go with 100 gazillion to nil if it will soothe your offended sensibilities. Heck, declare yourself the winner in every argument you ever had or ever will have!

As to your invitation that I read your blog, well, I glanced at it, and when I saw Victor Davis Hanson at the top of your blog roll I laughed so hard my Fresca came out my nose. Unless your site is some sort or weird parody? If so, fill me in! Sometimes these things go right over my head!

So thanks, but no thanks.

Are we done now?

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 5, 2007 12:15 AM

By the way, Megan, I love the irony of a warblogger subtitling an entry about a soldier's death "flotsam and jetsam." Nice touch! I suggest you use that phrase when you write a letter of condolence to the soldier's family.

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 5, 2007 8:09 AM

Yes, we're done: you've admitted that your use of the 'chickenhawk' slur was completely indefensible, and you've done so by not even trying to defend it. You've also shown what kind of man you are by continuing to make false statements. I haven't invited you to read my blog: I've shown how you could easily refute me without even reading it by Googling 'Limbaugh site:www.drweevil.org' yourself. Victor Davis Hanson is not "at the top" of my blog roll, he's second (alphabetically) after James Bowman, who opposed the invasion of Iraq. Now try to remember not to use the 'chickenhawk' slur again, not to make up stuff about other commenters, and not to dismiss refutations as matters of 'strong feelings' rather than logical argument.

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 5, 2007 8:16 AM

Dr. you really are a humorless twit.

By the way, I did read enough of your blog to know why you hate the chickenhawk argument so much. You mentioned you were in grad school during the Carter admin, which means you if you are male, almost certainly were in college in the early 70s. A college deferment to avoid Vietnam?

As to your claim of logic, sorry, Charlie. Every single thing you post is rife with illogic. Now take your shame about never serving your country elsewhere, little man. I am done with you.

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 5, 2007 8:22 AM

Sorry, slight miswording.

I meant to say:

"You mentioned you were in grad school during the Carter admin, which means you you were almost certainly were in college in the early 70s. If you are male, you used a college deferment to avoid Vietnam?"

Oh, and Victor Davis Hansen was second and not first! A grand triumph! 100 gazillion, million, trillion, billion argument points for the Great Dr. Weevil!

I have been vanquished! I am melting! Melting......

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 5, 2007 8:27 AM

Can we humanely dispose of Megan? That was just a god-awful post. So self-centered. It's ugly.

I could have joined the military with a clean conscience in 2002--except for the part where I'm a 4F asthmatic with lousy eyesight who was medically unfit for the State Department. But that had nothing to do with my tofu-loving ways.

I'm supposed to believe that the warblogging libriterian Megan considered joining the military?

She has no sense of irony. She didn't see Max Blumenthal's video in which all the young Republicans claim heath problems for not signing-up?

Posted by Dhalgren | October 5, 2007 9:20 AM

Careful, Dhalgren, we are probably dangerously close to having our comments deleted for offending the hostess' delicate sensibilities. After all, it is fine to beat the drums for an immoral war. It is fine to even claim, as she once bizarrely did in her former blog, that citizens don't even need to know the entire thought process of our leaders in bringing us to war. And it is fine to breezily blog about a fallen soldier's eating habits in a post subtitled "flotsam and jetsam." But it is probably not fine to point out the deep hypocrisy of all this, the callousness, and, as you point out, the intellectual vacuity of it all. That, Dhalgren, is probably off limits here.

It doesn't matter, in Megan's world, that a fine young man has died. What matters instead are her eating habits, and her thinly veiled attempt to make herself feel--and look--better about a tragedy she helped perpetuate.

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 5, 2007 11:20 AM

At 8:22pm Dr.Weevil implied that Hugo Pottisch has either invented a whole text by supposedly Richard Wagner the composer or he is not really quoting the composer himself but a different Richard Wagner.. He deduces that because Hugo Pottisch, while copy pasting from the Web site of the 15th World Vegetarian Congress of 1957, made the mistake of including the source of the Web site.

Hugo is surprised that somebody would not bother to check the link before running the risk of crying wolf about crying wolf?

At 8:22pm Dr.Weevil rightly notes that it was Plato and others who have quoted Socrates (eg The Republic on eating animals) and not Socrates who wrote The Republic himself.

The question is - what does our school teacher Weevil intend to do with this discovery? Does it change any of the arguments presented here? How would reading more, as suggested, change those arguments of Wagner, Tolstoy, etc? And if nothing that Pythagoras touches survives - how do we then even know his name?

At 5 to 12 Hugo wonders about Dr.Weevil's contribution and intention here and maybe life in general.

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 5, 2007 11:48 AM

Back to the topic at hand. This is a beautiful story between Tolstoy and a retired soldier:

But a little while ago I met on the road a butcher returning to Toula after a visit to his home. He is not yet an experienced butcher, and his duty is to stab with a knife. I asked him whether he did not feel sorry for the animals that he killed. He gave me the usual answer: "Why should I feel sorry? It is necessary." But when I told him that eating flesh is not necessary, but is only a luxury, he agreed; and then he admitted that he was sorry for the animals.

"But what can I do? I must earn my bread," he said. "At first I was afraid to kill. My father, he never even killed a chicken in all his life." The majority of Russians cannot kill; they feel pity, and express the feeling by the word "fear." This man had also been "afraid," but he was so no longer.

Not long ago I also had a talk with a retired soldier, a butcher, and he, too, was surprised at my assertion that it was a pity to kill, and said the usual things about its being ordained; but afterwards he agreed with me: "Especially when they are quiet, tame cattle. They come, poor things! trusting you. It is very pitiful."

This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity—that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself—and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 5, 2007 11:57 AM

I believe that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were the right thing to do. I have never served in the military nor will I. Well, I wouldn't refuse if approached and asked to help out in some capacity, but I doubt that would happen.

I do have the utmost respect for our military and the service they are providing and the sacrifices they are making.

I am happy to debate the rightness of the war with anyone. But whether or not I have served or am serving in the military doesn't have any bearing on whether or not the war was the right thing to do. On the other hand, if, by enlisting, I could convince the nation to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I would do so.

Shrilly demanding that someone prove they support the war by joining the military is just a cheap way to avoid discussing the actual issues or merits of the war. It's a pure ad hominem attack.

EI

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | October 5, 2007 1:52 PM

Poor Earnest, trying so hard to screw together an argument but falling into the same strawman fallacy as all of the other rightwingers. Try actually answering my argument and not an argument you invented in your head.

I love it, though, that you incorrectly try to use a logical accusation against me (ad hominem) while simultaneously falling into a fallacy. Projection is such a powerful force!

Earnest, I have dismissed you before for similar lame, bad faith attempts at rebutting me. Once again, I tell you to raise your game or be ignored.

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 5, 2007 2:27 PM

Charles, you're not actually making arguments, you're attacking people. I didn't try to rebut your "argument", did I? Read what I wrote more carefully. I made some statements of my own and then pointed out that demanding that war supporters try to enlist (instead of debating the merits of the war) was an ad hominem.

You assumed that I was talking about you...

EI

P.S. Feel free to ignore me. It won't hurt my feelings one bit.

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | October 5, 2007 4:38 PM

Charles Giacometti doesn't just attack people, he lies about them. Not man enough to admit that he was wrong about my supposed hero-worship of Limbaugh, now he goes further by accusing me of draft-dodging. I was born in 1953, and therefore subject to the February 2, 1972 draft lottery in my freshman year of college. By then, the college deferment was good only until the end of the current semester. We were told that only the first 110 (I think it was) numbers would be called for physicals, and that most likely only the first 70 would be actually drafted. My draft number was 152, no one was called up from the 1972 lottery, and the draft itself was canceled in 1973.

Nevertheless, some of my classmaters were draft-dodgers. One, with a 10 in the lottery, got a crooked doctor back home in New York City to give him a fake diagnosis for some mental or physical condition (I forget which) that got him his 4-F. Another with a 2 in the lottery went on a severe diet and got himself too skinny to be drafted (108 pounds and 5'11", as I recall). I'm pretty sure that both are now Bush-hating Iraq-war-opposing Democrats, so don't bother to call them 'chickenhawks'. The man who weighed the second one at his draft physical told him to keep up his diet and come back for a second weigh-in in six months and if he was still too skinny he was home free. However, the draft was suspended during those six months, so he never had to go back.

As for me, I was ready and willing (though certainly not eager) to go if called, but never was called, never did anything to avoid being called, and never would have done any such thing. That means that Charles Giacometti's assertion that I hate the chickenhawk smear because I feel "shame" about supposedly not serving my country is a simple bald-faced lie. I hate it because it's a lie, and I hate to see it applied to anyone, not just myself: that's why I objected when he so stupidly applied it to Megan. Charles Giacometti's repeated vicious lies show that he is a pathetic little man himself. Perhaps a doctor could prescribe something for his sad condition.

Then again, what can be said for a man who thinks an archive category like "Flotsam and Jetsam" is the "subtitle" of a particular post? All it means is that this post doesn't fit into any of the standard archive categories. It is obviously not meant to be a description of the dead soldier.

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 5, 2007 6:49 PM

Weevil, Earnest, Charles

Can any of you prove to me that in case you had the power of Bush or Saddam - that you would not exploit it as you claim they have?

Are there any innocent beings that depend on your empathy or rationality with them in order not to experience hell on earth? How do you act and rationalize their dependence on you?

I'd really like to know as you all seem very emotional about going or not going into war and soldiers dying - and not knowing this - all your other (war) arguments are theoretical and hence utterly meaningless for your own context?

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 5, 2007 8:44 PM

So Weevil, you had a chance to serve your country, you chickened out, and you feel ashamed about it. You could have solved us both a lot of time by simply explaining that at the beginning of all this.

Shame is a powerful emotion, little man. I remember reading a great article about this in the Atlantic Monthly, years ago.

Have a nice life reading Victor Davis Hanson, Megan McArdle, and the other bright lights of the neocon movement.

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 5, 2007 9:48 PM

Poor Charles Giacometti just can't stop lying. I didn't chicken out of anything, I didn't evade the draft, and I don't feel ashamed, in fact I feel rather contemptuous of my two draft-dodger classmates. Of course I feel even more contemptuous of Charles Giacometti, who seems to think that not volunteering for military service when not called and not needed somehow constitutes draft-dodging. He seems to be unaware that the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam was rapidly shrinking by the time I was eligible for military service, so even if I had volunteered I would have been unlikely to see combat.

I'd wish him a nasty little life, but he's obviously already having one. The fact that he considers reading Megan McArdle contemptible even as he continues to read Megan McArdle suggests serious self-esteem problems.

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 5, 2007 10:03 PM

Poor Dr. Weevil. A coward, humorless, and a terrible reader to boot. Never did I say you "dodged the draft." I asked if you used a college deferment. When you said no, I then said, in plain English, that "you had a chance to serve your country." In 1970, you could have enlisted when there were more than 500,000 American troops in combat arenas in southeast Asia. Your country needed you. Tens of thousands of troops were still rotating in. You stayed on the sidelines. You have to live with that decision, little man, not me. Clearly, it weighs heavily on your mind. Otherwise you wouldn't burst into flames again and again at everything I write, getting one fact after another wrong, all the while accusing me of "lying."

It's not a lie you failed to serve your country, little man. It's a fact. Why can't you just live with it, and why are you so angry with someone else about it?

Posted by Charles Giacometti | October 5, 2007 10:31 PM

Do you have any idea just how stupid you are looking right now, Charles Giacometti? I "stayed on the sidelines" in 1970 because I was still a junior in high school, 16 years old when the year started. No matter how desperate the Army was for troops, I don't think they were taking 16-year-old high-school dropouts. Your statement that I "could have enlisted" in 1970 is yet another lie.

Do the arithmetic: I was born in 1953. By the time I turned 18, the number of troops in Vietnam was half what it had been at its peak and dropping fast. Even if I had dropped out of school on my 18th birthday -- kind of a waste, with only a few months to go --, by the time I finished boot camp and any special training the Army thought necessary, it would have been 1972 or close to it. By that point, the number of troops in Vietnam was nowhere near 500,000 troops in Vietnam. By my 19th birthday, it was down to 69,000.

Again, what "weighs heavily on [my] mind" is not any sense of guilt but the willingness of assholes like you (sorry, Megan!) to tell bald-faced lies over and over and over, as if saying it again will make it true. You really are a disgusting person, and your constant insistence that I'm a "little man" tells us more about about the state of your own 'little man' than you probably intended to reveal. Stop projecting your own pathetic problems on others and go away. You're the one who seems to be angry with those who have done you no harm.

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 5, 2007 10:58 PM

You turned 17 in 1970, putz, and you could have enlisted. That was then, and still is now, the legal age at which you could enlist. That is not a lie, and, you, my pathetic little friend, are a coward, through and through. You write three paragraphs of pure nonsense wrapped around your anger and guilt, and you accuse me of projecting?

Now I am done with you, little man. Write all you want, fabricate all you want, project all you want. At the end of the day, you failed to serve your country, and you can't live with that. All this fulminating, all these screams and pathetic cries that I am a "liar," when I am merely stating facts that you can't live with.

Poor, pathetic, little man.

Posted by Chalres Giacometti | October 6, 2007 12:03 PM

Charles Giacometti thinks he's caught me in a lie, but all he's done is catch me in an error that is really only half an error and is in any case immaterial. I had forgotten that 17-year-olds could enlist. He has either forgotten or (more likely) is too dishonest to mention that they can only enlist with their parents' signed permission. According to the (unsourced) Wikipedia article on 'Enlistment Age by Country', they also cannot be sent into combat zones until they turn 18. That makes his statement that I voluntarily "stayed on the sidelines" in 1970 when "Tens of thousand of troops were still rotating in" just as false as I said it was. I could not in fact have enlisted, and if I had I most likely could not have been sent to Vietnam. I'm quite certain that my parents would not have signed papers for me to drop out of high school in my junior year. Not because they had any objection at all to military service – in 1970 my father was in his 24th year of a Navy career – but because they thought graduating from high school was very important.

C.G. seems to think he's proved that I was obligated to join up at 17 because my country needed me. Does he think that applied to everyone who turned 17 in 1970? If not, just what is his point? If so, why single me out for abuse? John Edwards turned 17 in 1970, and never served in the military: is he an unpatriotic coward, or just someone with a high lottery number?

I think it was perfectly fair to leave the decision as to whether my country needed me or not to my country's government, specifically to the officials tasked with deciding who was needed. If they had thought they needed me, they would have made their decision quite clear by sending me a draft notice, which I would have answered. I pay my taxes, but feel no obligation to pay them early or to pay extra, and I serve on juries whenever called, but feel no obligation to volunteer for extra service. The principle is the same, and I'm almost ashamed to have to explain something that every other reader already understands.

To sum up, I'm sorry Charles Giacometti's peotomy is getting him down, but he really needs to stop trying to take his anger and self-loathing out on others.

Posted by Dr. Weevil | October 7, 2007 1:07 AM

Just for the record

# The youngest U.S. military man killed in Vietnam is believed to be Dan Bullock, who reportedly lied about his age to enlist in the Marine Corps. He was 15.

# At least five men killed in Vietnam were 16 years old.

# At least 12 men killed in Vietnam were 17 years old.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/04/23/news/top_stories/21_18_044_22_04.txt

An old vet.

Posted by Dr Len | April 15, 2008 8:40 AM