In Stanley Kubrick’s wildly funny and depressingly dark comedy Dr. Strangelove, Peter Sellers, playing several roles including both the President and the title character, just can’t help himself as Dr. Strangelove. The more Strangelove talks about the end of the world and nuclear annihilation, the more his Nazi instincts try to take over. He struggles to keep his arm from flinging upwards in a Nazi salute. His feet desperately want to do the goose step despite his being wheel chair bound.

Finally, almost swooning with ecstasy over the possibilities in a post nuclear world, Strangelove loses the battle and his arm shoots up in a Nazi salute, calling the President “Mein Fuhrer.” In the end, he forgot that he was trying to fool people about his true feelings and gave in to his natural inclinations.

In similar fashion, try as they might to suppress their natural proclivities regarding the American armed forces, many on the left get so carried away sometimes they forget that they are trying to fool the American people into believing that they are but simple patriots, concerned about the lives and welfare of the troops and, in a spasm of hate and loathing, reveal exactly what they think of the young men and women who have volunteered to serve.

Of course, some never try and hide their contempt for our military. One of the major players in the anti-war movement, Code Pink, picketed Walter Reed hospital where many of our wounded vets are being treated. They even accosted and razzed some soldiers who were out-patients coming in for further treatment on wounds suffered in battle.

The press was extremely careful not to report these demonstrations. Gather half a dozen anarchists, greens, or moveon.org types on a street corner asking people to “honk for impeachment” and that will get you a page 3 write up in most newspapers. But somehow, there were no reporters available to cover these demonstrations at Walter Reed that showed such monumental disrespect for the volunteers who have suffered wounds in service to their country.

But the Democrats and their allies on the left have largely been successful in subsuming their real feelings about the military with only a couple of exceptions marring the record. Predictably, John Kerry’s “botched joke” about the intelligence of soldiers serving in Iraq was one such example of this subsurface hate for those in the military. It apparently sank his presidential ambitions and probably saved the Republicans a couple of House seats in the election. But at the time, it was generally felt that Kerry’s revealing anecdote was just a demonstration of his long time loathing of active duty personnel. Like Strangelove, Kerry just couldn’t help himself.

Now we have William Arkin of the Washington Post revealing in spectacularly ignorant fashion, his own contempt for the men and women who currently wear the uniform. In what can only be described as a shockingly inappropriate post on his blog, Arkin complains that the men and women in the military who speak out in favor of the mission in Iraq and complain about the lack of support from the American people are a bunch of ungrateful wretches who who should shut up and do their jobs – a job that Arkin believes is akin to one that a mercenary does:

So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?

I can imagine some post-9/11 moment, when the American people say enough already with the wars against terrorism and those in the national security establishment feel these same frustrations. In my little parable, those in leadership positions shake their heads that the people don’t get it, that they don’t understand that the threat from terrorism, while difficult to defeat, demands commitment and sacrifice and is very real because it is so shadowy, that the very survival of the United States is at stake. Those Hoover’s and Nixon’s will use these kids in uniform as their soldiers. If I weren’t the United States, I’d say the story end with a military coup where those in the know, and those with fire in their bellies, save the nation from the people.

But it is the United States and instead this NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary – oops sorry, volunteer – force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.

You can put your hand down now, Arkin.

For those who can’t fathom why Arkin would write such a post in the first place, I would say that these are obviously feelings he has suppressed for a long time for so much bile and hate to spill out so nakedly and in such a public way. The entire post reeks of self serving hypocrisy as Arkin sets up one straw man after another, posits logical fallacies again and again, and then, most shockingly, questions the motives of the troops who volunteered to keep him safe in his bed at night.

For a specific refutation of Mr. Arkin’s execrable ideas and statements, I would visit first Blackfive. Although this is the kind of post that is emotionally satisfying to read and write, if you get beyond the name calling, the author does indeed make several valid points answering questions raised by Arkin’s writing as well as easily knocking down several of the strawmen propped up by the Post blogger.

Hugh Hewitt has some background info on Arkin as does Marc Danzinger. Apparently, WaPo hired a raving, anti-military lefty loon to write about military affairs. Ben Domench anyone?

Michell Malkin has her usual thorough round up and posts some of the comments left at Arkins blog – 504 and counting as of 6:30 AM Central time this morning.

John Hinderaker wonders where WaPo’s editors were prior to the publication of Arkins blog post.

AND IF YOU READ ANYTHING TODAY ABOUT THIS ISSUE, YOU ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY HAVE TO READ THIS ARTICLE BY JOHN AT OP-FOR:

And with that piece, every frustration that I’ve felt over America’s new fifth column, every insult that smug anti-war pundits have hurled at the silent stoics in our armed forces, all the false pity, all the overused meaningless cliches (“we support the troops but not the war”) that we in the military have endured, every bit of anger that I’ve suppressed in the name of good manners and honorable debate, reaches a fist-clenching apex…

If there is a war that’s unwinnable, it’s the war on this type of horrid ignorance. The type of uniformed, intellectually lazy thinking that can only exist in the sheltered bubble of cocktail parties and classrooms. Arkin is a gazer. A man forever condemned to peering out the window into the real world, watching the exertions of men better than himself. And yet he fancies himself the educated one. Any logical human being would trade career in journalism for the expertise gained by serving a mere one month in the box, yet this slime fancies his opinion so informed, so expert, so utterly irrefutable that even the very soldiers who are fighting this war are shamefully ignorant for daring to challenge his infallibility.

Go. Read. Now.

If, as Dan Reihl speculates, the press is now in open opposition and is making no effort to hide their bias, then we should expect to see more of this kind of truthiness coming from the left. After all, the election is over. They won. They successfully fooled enough of the American people into actually believing they cared a tinkers’ damn about the troops or about the United States for that matter. They successfully allowed people to believe that they had no intention of cutting and running in Iraq before some semblance of victory could be achieved all the while planning to do exactly the opposite.

But with the moves afoot to not only cut off funding for “the surge” but also attempts to micro manage troop levels, mission goals, and benchmarks that must be achieved by the Iraqi government, a sick sense of defeatism and helplessness is running through our political class, weakening any remaining resolve to bring the Iraq adventure to some kind of honorable conclusion. The politicians – both Republicans and Democrats – simply want the issue to go away. And with it, the hundreds of thousands of American servicemen who have served courageously, honorably, and despite what Arkin says, with few complaints. They have done all that they have been asked to do and then gone beyond that and heroically done much more.

And this is the thanks they get. Not just from the Arkins of the world and other leftists who, after all, just can’t help themselves. But also from people who should know better.

I don’t know where these young men and women will be in two years. But I hope that wherever they are, they are at least given credit for carrying out their mission with honor and that sense of duty that only a true calling to serve others brings to life.

UPDATE: ARKIN RESPONDS TO CRITICS

Michelle Malkin has the gist of Arkin’s response. Basically, he’s a liar:

Contrary to the typically inaccurate and overstated assertion in dozens of blogs, hundreds of comments, and thousands of e-mails I’ve received, I’ve never written that soldiers should “shut up,” quit whining, be spit upon, or that they have no right to an opinion.

I said I was bothered by the notion that “the troops” were somehow becoming hallowed beings above society, that they had an attitude that only they had the means – or the right – to judge the worthiness of the Iraq endeavor.

I was dead wrong in using the word mercenary to describe the American soldier today.

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

Beggin’ your pardon kind sir, but where in God’s name in the original post do you write, hint, or dream of anything you claim you were saying? Where, for instance, do you posit the notion that our soldiers believe they are “the one true nation?” Or that they “hid behind the constitution?”

In fact, after an obligatory nod to their constitutional rights, you then attempted to take that right away:

I’m all for everyone expressing their opinion, even those who wear the uniform of the United States Army. But I also hope that military commanders took the soldiers aside after the story and explained to them why it wasn’t for them to disapprove of the American people.

Sounds pretty clear cut to me. You don’t think it “was for them” to disapprove of the American people. How do you get around the fact that you hope that their commanders shut them up? Or that they should just keep their criticisms about the American people to themselves?

William Arkin is a bald faced liar. His “response” is replete with instances like the one above where he claims he’s just some poor, misunderstood newspaper guy with people making death threats against him and saying he should leave the country.

Welcome to the blogosphere, chum.

His meaning in the initial post was clear. Trying to muddy the waters with this response will not wash away his rhetoric about “obscene amenities” and the ridiculous and insulting scenario where our robot-like troops would follow a General James Matoon Scott in some kind of military coup against the government – all because the troops were mad at the press and politicians.

Doesn’t he realize what a monumental insult that is to the honor and integrity of every member of the United States military both living and dead to intimate that any of them would violate their oaths to the Constitution so cavalierly?

Sorry Mr. Arkin. If you had left well enough alone and not tried to throw sand in our eyes about what you truly meant to say with your original post, the issue may have faded away on its own.

But since you have seen fit to compound your monumental errors in judgement by trying to school your readers in what you really meant – equally reprehensible in any case to what you originally wrote – I am going to write a letter to the editor and publisher calling for your resignation.

And if you had an ounce of decency, you’d beat them to it.

UPDATE II

Allah has some audio from Arkin’s appearance on Fox last night.