Armchair Hero
May I just echo Atrios's outrage at Andrew Sullivan's pithy little retort to the soldier who says that he'd much rather be helping people than fighting a war saying "Earth to Whitsett: You're A Soldier."
Earth to Sullivan: He's a fucking human being.
Evidently Sullivan believes that soldiers are supposed to prefer killing over helping people in need. Indeed, they should prefer dying over helping people in need.
Here are some words that express this soldier's humanity a bit more fully, from a man who also knew a little bit about war:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --Dwight Eisenhower 1953 speech
What a wimp.