Why do U.S. Leftists hate our military?

Bill Whittle is an extraordinary writer. This time he was thinking about the whole, huge problem of why so many people seem to hate America--before as well as after U.S. troops went into Afghanistan and Iraq to put down madmen and murderous thugs.

Bill is particularly distressed by the fact that so many American Leftists agree with them. In the following excerpt I've adapted a few 'grafs of Bill's excellent work (mostly to compensate for missing antecedents). Hopefully his message remains intact. But without hesitation, I suggest you RTWT.

Why do so many U.S. Leftists--people of seemingly normal intelligence and education--so despise and detest American society?

Why would the Left oppose the U.S. seeking to bring the blessings of freedom and individual rights to people who have spent thirty years cowering in dark places, fearful of letting the slightest word slip lest they condemn their entire family in an unguarded moment?

Why would anyone who has the great fortune to live in freedom be so vehemently opposed to helping free a people who have spent 30 years living in total, abject fear?

It’s because American Leftists have never lived in such fear.

How many American Leftists would be opposing the war in Iraq if they had to watch--to actually witness, live--a dozen Iraqis being shot in the head by Saddam's secret police in front of their families?

Now imagine three- or four-hundred-thousand so executed. Imagine Saddam's thugs fatally shooting one person every single second--one unique, irreplaceable life extinguished every tick of the stopwatch.

Doing that around the clock, one life terminated per second, it would take three and a half days to kill as many people as Saddam's thugs killed.

Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.

Every face unique, every one someone’s son or mother or precious grandchild.

Bang.
Bang.
Bang.

All night, all day, every second for three and a half days. How long to wipe out your entire family? Four seconds? Eight? Thirteen? We have found that many in Iraq, and more will be found, believe me.

How many 12-year-old daughters do you need to see raped in front of you before you change your mind about whether we should have forcibly removed Saddam and his psychopathic sons? Would a dozen sobbing girls be enough? A hundred? Would a thousand make a dent in your smug Bush=Hitler belief system? How many people, begging for mercy in prison basements, will it take to change your mind? Ten thousand? Ten times ten thousand? They were there.

Saddam's ghastly torture happened.

It just didn’t happen to you.

Not in Berkeley. Not in Manhattan, nor Santa Monica, nor Columbia University. Not in your wonderful Sanctuary.

Like many Americans, I've been trying to understand the reason(s) for the hostility the American Left (including 90 percent of those who voted for Kerry) seems to have for the U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Certainly war is terrible, but the Left seems curiously selective in its loathing of military actions. For example, many commenters on the Left briefly protested that the U.S. should send troops into Liberia (remember that tempest? No?) and Haiti--which strongly suggests they're not opposed to the idea of American military operations as such.

Like many non-Leftists, I suspect much of the explanation is pure hatred for George W. Bush and any Republican idea or program.

Another part of the puzzle is probably a visceral dislike of all things military. To a Leftist, the idea of (gasp!) armed men actually using force on people is just...too...awful...to contemplate. The fact that Saddam's thugs were certainly heavily armed and shot hundreds of their own people each week seems to be lost on them.

[Editorial alert] Most Leftists strike me as naive and mostly undisciplined--the kind of people who still think Communism is a wonderful idea that would certainly work if people would just give it an honest try.

The kind of folks who would happily vote to disband the U.S. armed forces because they feel the American military is the source of almost all the world's problems.

The kind of people who see nothing at all wrong with perjury--as long as the perjurer is a Democratic president and the subject involves sex.

But mainly, as people who are happy to delude themselves that the world would be a far happier place if George W. Bush and company weren't in the White House.