Be careful what you wish for. "May you have what you wish for." (Ancient Chinese curse)

My new debate partner is firing up the flame broiler and has two new debates roasting over at Debate Space:

If you're not with us you're agin' us

Does the left want war in iraq to be lost?

Both these threads are continuation of ongoing arguments between me and Kevin from Command T.O.C. and Dave Johnson from Seeing the Forest. These are taking place all over at this point, at Command T.O.C., here at Dadmanly, at Blackfive, Seeing the Forest, and now Debate Space.

Some highlights of the various discussions (don't ask me where these came from, I have lost track).

Kevin suggested that I am censored and reviewed for content based on some of the recent policy letters and focus on blogging and OPSEC, I responded:

With all due respect, you are dead wrong.

I am neither censored nor reviewed for content. I intentionally stay away from any content, operational specifics, or other specific military information that would be of intelligence value to our enemies. I keep my Commander informed of posts I think he'd be interested in, and twice I asked his opinion on whether I crossed any lines.

He leaves my writing up to me, because he knows I am 100% behind what we are doing here. I am in frequent contact with many of the MILBLOGS, and I am probably the most careful as to OPSEC. None of the MILBLOGS I know have ever had any problems in this area.

I do think some Blogs reveal way too much information, especially Battle Damage Assessment info that allows the enemy to know how they are doing (not that AP or CBS doesn't make every effort to help out). In this, I am glad to see some choose to close down, since these concentrate almost exclusively on near real time reporting of actual on the ground tactics, operations and results. Not good, if one of the things you care about is helping our soldiers do the best job they can do with as little risk as possible.

You are an advocate against the war. That's one thing, in my mind a perfectly noble and acceptable thing, however misguided I believe you are. In my opinion, based on numerous interaction with you blogwise, you take a single statement or fact and distort it. That makes you unwise, not unpatriotic, worthy of criticism, not censorship.

But you are a private citizen, an independent agent who declares up front where you are coming from. You do not create sympathetic portraits of the enemy, you don't (wittingly) abet their propaganda efforts, you don't intentionally pass off phony news or staged events as actual real time reporting. You cannot say the same about major media, who have been guilty of all of the above.

You say you hear the voices of the military, yet refuse to listen. To those us whose positions your distort, or reality you contradict, and whose service you belittle, you discredit yourself and the principles you so passionately defend.

On another post, one of the Commenters thought that Blackfive won the 2004 Best MILBLOG Award from the US Military, rather than readers of Military Blogs.

Another thought it funny (ironic) that MILBLOGS so frequently advertise for organizations that advocate against the ACLU. This was my response to that:

Given that ACLU and other activist human rights groups denigrate the US military and give a free pass to our enemies, no not funny at all.

Given that many of the left-centric advocacy groups are full of people who sympathized with or actively supported communist and socialists organizations with whom we were at were for over 40 years, no, not at all funny.

What's really funny is how twisted y'all get in your bloomers, with hysterical pronouncements of the looming Totalitarian State we live in.

And then a general comment to the Bloggers and commenters at left side blogs, who are outraged that Military Bloggers are conservative, and often Republicans:

Military bloggers are conservative. If there was room for any pro-defense conservatives in the Democratic Party, some of us might very well be democrats, we've been there before.

You can believe us the easy way, listen to what we're saying, develop a little balance in your views, or keep losing elections. Your choice, we really don't care.

Those of us in the military serve our country as a calling, we respect and honor our institutions, and we believe in the American way of life. We think the military has been poorly served by head-in-the-sand politicos and diplomats who can hug human scum like Kim Jung Il all in the name of "Talk talk talk beats war war war." Unless of course you're the hapless and hopeless schmucks who get trampled by the dictators and monsters, who are all too happy to take advantage of your Salon Naivete.

Point to one example where any of you have lost any freedoms, that weren't taken from you by activist judges who know oh so better than you what's good for you.

Anyone in jail? Any newspapers shut down? Anyone fired from their jobs? Any ghettoes being established? Anyone telling you where to live? Anyone preventing you from voting? And do you want Homeland Security to go away? Air marshalls? Border patrol?

I tell you what, we'll do all those things, if all those on the left who think we are not in a war, sign a contract to live and work only in high rise buildings in major American cities.

The rest of us, who are doing all the fighting and dying, we'll stop and quietly move out to Red State prairie and leave you all to your lattes and discussion groups.

We'll only have to wait a couple of dozen generations for the nuclear fallout to dissipate...And we won't miss the traffic, either.

I'm beat.

I promise, I'll come back to the fight tomorrow. My time runs short, and I still have many more things to say while I'm still in the sandbox.

Links: Basil's Blog, Jo's Cafe, Indepundit, Outside the Beltway, Mudville Gazette