The Other McCain

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Don’t Mistake Disinterest in Emotionalism for Cowardice, @PatDollard

Posted on | August 15, 2014 | 24 Comments

by Smitty


As a retired veteran with 3 WESTPACs and an Afghan tour to my credit, the accusation of cowardice is more amusing than offensive. On the other hand, rabble rousers who appeal to emotion, instead of calm, prayerful and rational thought, are the ones more likely to get people killed.

If you want to do anything useful, Dollard, understand the Clausewitzian Trinity as it pertains to going to war; it’s as relevant in the political dimension as the Holy Trinity is in the spiritual. There will be no military action of consequence until a leader of the acumen of David Petraeus (but who’s not drawn from such a broad well of disgrace) that can articulate a coherent strategy, win an election on it, and lead 50 states united in the effort.

Allen West comes to mind.

Category: Blogging

Comments

24 Responses to “Don’t Mistake Disinterest in Emotionalism for Cowardice, @PatDollard”

  1. maniakmedic
    August 15th, 2014 @ 9:05 pm

    I think there’s room for people who want to kick ass AND people who prefer to ponder and pray. Not everybody is a warrior; we need people willing to man the homefront.

    Personally, I’m a warrior. I couldn’t stand the thought of being forced to sit at home and try to keep the household running while others are out there fighting. I’m a fighter and always have been. So while I personally don’t understand the mindset, I do understand that there are people (let’s be honest, mostly women; I’m an anomaly) who are far more comfortable dealing with keeping things running at home and sending up prayers for those on the front lines than they would be shooting bad guys. The dangerous thing is assuming we must all be hammers.

  2. NeoWayland
    August 15th, 2014 @ 9:10 pm

    Pardon me. but why?

    Decades of playing the world’s policeman has left many nations unable to defend themselves. In the name of the greater good, the US supported tyranny and dictators all over the globe. When we escalated the “War on Drugs,” we destabilized whole nations and destroyed economies.

    Applying the Golden Rule, we wouldn’t like it if someone did it to us. Why should other countries feel differently?

    We don’t even have the excuse of a Cold War anymore.

  3. Mike G.
    August 15th, 2014 @ 9:18 pm

    A person so ready to go to war and fight has obviously never been on the front lines in a war.

    That being said, if we have to go to war, let us not pussyfoot around…just win the damn thing as fast as possible with as little harm to our side as possible.

    Then, after winning the war, we can go with another Marshall Plan and rebuild the enemy’s country back up ala Germany and Japan.

  4. Anon Y. Mous
    August 15th, 2014 @ 9:20 pm

    This may seem like a stupid question, but who is the author of this post? It seems like a Smitty, but it has no byline, which usually means it is RSM.

  5. Mike G.
    August 15th, 2014 @ 9:20 pm

    It’s a Smitty post.

  6. Don’t Mistake Disinterest in Emotionalism for Cowardice, @PatDollard | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
    August 15th, 2014 @ 9:20 pm

    […] Don’t Mistake Disinterest in Emotionalism for Cowardice, @PatDollard. […]

  7. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 15th, 2014 @ 9:30 pm

    Pat is more about getting attention than having a meaningful dialog. He should marry Ann Coulter.

  8. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 15th, 2014 @ 9:31 pm

    The tweets and context sort of give it away.

  9. Mireille Miller-Young may be Cray Cray | Batshit Crazy News
    August 15th, 2014 @ 9:35 pm

    […] Update: Smitty is dealing with a bit of cray cray… […]

  10. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 15th, 2014 @ 9:44 pm

    Hey, Dollard is a Hollywood producer. He has been to hell and back… either that or it made him cray cray!

  11. Ken Jacobson
    August 15th, 2014 @ 10:35 pm

    Reading German philosophy, even translated into English, is like reading an alien language. I just Kant figure it out. lawl.

    I wonder how the elements in play with the Riots in Ferguson fit within the Clausewitzian Trinity.

    You have, on one side, rioters, whose passions have blazed up, stoked by racists of like Sharpton and Jackson, in communities where the coals of hatred and mistrust are ever burning and looking for a chance to ignite.

    Raw emotion causing rioters to act against their own best interests, destroying their own neighborhoods and causing the police they believe overreacted to continuously clash with them.

    On the other side, police, an arm of the government, whose desires are to subjugate, subordinate, and control the situation as well as the people. The police, who seem to have also fallen sway to blind passions, overreacting and turning on the people and the press.

    The police are clearly better organized, better armed, and as such their will, and the government’s ability to subordinate the populace, will certainly win out… at least we hope lest am all civil war break out… But where does chance fit into all of this? Was chance what put these events into motion in the first place? Will these riots, these mini-wars being waged on our own soil between protesters, peaceful and otherwise, and police officers more closely resembling a small military, flame out or spread to other cities?

    It seems as if things are dying down now, which is good, but will there be more Ferguson’s in the future. Will the overreaction of provoked mobs and the overreaction of local police departments have much more far reaching consequences than we could possibly imagine? Wouldn’t that be something, if our American experiment were brought down not by a culture desiring our destruction thousands of miles away, but instead by a war waged from within, stoked by racial tensions, ignorance, and fed by liberal ideology.

  12. Wombat_socho
    August 15th, 2014 @ 10:48 pm

    My money’s on b).

  13. Bob Belvedere
    August 15th, 2014 @ 11:22 pm

    I’ve Followed Dollard on Twitter for quite some time and put up with some of his more wacky theories because he often obtains enlightening videos, but, after what he wrote about you Smitty, the loon is now Unfollowed. What an arsehole jerk.

  14. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 15th, 2014 @ 11:27 pm

    It is OTT as promotion. It is tiresome.

  15. K-Bob
    August 16th, 2014 @ 4:59 am

    From what I’ve observed, Dollard is a type of person you run into in the creative arena a lot more than in business or the trades. (Political discussions, too, but mostly among the types of folks who’ve moved beyond “armchair” status.) It’s a sort of, “He’s so into it, he’s actually out of it,” kind of mentality.

    …A very hair-trigger reflex, where they instantly decide who is GREAT and who is TOTAL SHIT, with little room in between.

    On the other hand, when you meet people like this who might end up working with you in person (like, if they are hired to be your concert manager or producer), they can be loyal to a fault.

    Producers, engineers, screen writers, musicians, sports figures, and other similar types of talent are prone to this kind of personality. But it works against them more than *for* them. They usually end up stuck in second tier status. Not always.

    A little humility goes a long way. It doesn’t mean you have to suffer fools. It just means you don’t have to make an instant decision about who is or isn’t a fool.

    Something else to bear in mind is that calling someone you don’t know a coward, based on one comment especially, is a symptom of debating with too many people at once, and not noticing when the crowd has turned over.

  16. K-Bob
    August 16th, 2014 @ 5:04 am

    Moral equivalence. We obviously didn’t endorse dictators, we simply helped them keep even worse people at bay.

    And that’s a bargain.

    In fact, it’s the only thing dictators are good for. It’s also EXACTLY how you avoid going in to deal with the problem yourself. So if people want us to stop getting involved overseas, they have to expect and accept the payola to dictators.

  17. joethefatman
    August 16th, 2014 @ 7:37 am

    I unfollowed some time back. He was getting tiresome

  18. NeoWayland
    August 16th, 2014 @ 8:36 am

    We obviously didn’t endorse dictators, we simply helped them keep even worse people at bay.

    So Americans were morally better equipped to decide what tyranny was preferable for nations where we didn’t even live?

    But of course we weren’t responsible for the bad deeds that our dictators did under American protection…

    I wonder how you would feel if another nation, say France, picked the US President and half the Senate? Would US citizens be responsible for the mess that would follow, or would France? Who do you think would be blamed? Would you bow to the moral superiority of France?

  19. Wombat_socho
    August 16th, 2014 @ 12:06 pm

    It got to the point where half the stuff showing up on his feed was from Infowars, and let’s not even get started on his Twitter feed. Smitty is just scraping the surface of the utter craziness.

  20. RichFader
    August 16th, 2014 @ 5:36 pm

    I’ve often pondered the idea of making the military orders (Malta, Holy Sepulchre, Teutonic, etc.) into working fighting forces again and thought, “Why not?” But storming in yelling “LEEROY JENKINS!!!” is still not a strategy. And you want one of those before you send boots in, whoever’s wearing them.

  21. theoldsargesays
    August 16th, 2014 @ 11:18 pm

    I’d never heard of this douche before now so went and checked out his twitter feed. Douchebag.

    Is Mr. Dollard going to pick up an M-16 instead of a camera and lead us on this just and righteous crusade? Doubtful.

    He seems more the type to try to hash tag his way through things.

  22. K-Bob
    August 16th, 2014 @ 11:32 pm

    Why go to such trouble to twist up a hypothetical so bizarre, only to be able to “wonder” about it?

    We really haven’t done as much of that intervention as people seem to think. Where we have it was an occasional “wet” operation here, some money there, and some arms, elsewhere.

    Whatever such actions have ever “bought” for us, is always the sort of thing the refuses to stay bought.

    People who love to make that accusation never look around to see whether we have any influence in the world due to such assumed behavior. The fact is, our influence was never all that strong once Europe recovered from WWII.. Our status as number one just made us the logical target for small-minded despots. And rabble rousing by a despot is a brutally efficient and easy thing to do. It would happen whether we tried to exercise influence or not.

  23. DeadMessenger
    August 17th, 2014 @ 1:57 am

    As Solomon (and the Byrds) said, to everything there is a season (Ecc 3:1). Jesus saved soldiers, bringing them to Him, and Paul brought many soldiers to Christ. Neither of them rebuked the soldiers for being soldiers. My takeaway here is that sometimes we have to destroy vast evil when necessary, but only under God’s will. And you can’t know God’s will without prayer.

    Which, as you say, is where the intercessory prayers come in. I’m a woman in a wheelchair, or I’d be on the front line with you, MM. But God knew my limitations, so he did give me the spiritual gift of intercessory prayer, and between the two of us, I think we’re matched bookends. And that’s what’s needed. Because God knows we ought to support and protect our brothers and sisters in Christ when we can, through prayer and maybe physical action. His will be done, His kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.

  24. NeoWayland
    August 17th, 2014 @ 2:18 pm

    So when things don’t go the way way we want, that’s your response?

    The occasional “wet” operation, arms and money…

    These are not the actions of a freedom loving people. They are the actions of a bully. It reveals a need to meddle, because we think that the US knows best. We’ve been doing it since the Russian revolution and arguably it’s made the world a worse place.

    The most important point here is that the US would never stand for it if someone tried to do it to us. That was why I used the example of France.