Treason or Objectivity?

A Congressman caught a rerun of Real Time where Bill Maher said Army recruiting efforts recently failed because "we're done picking all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit." The Congressman is crying treason.

While what Maher said could be construed as insulting, I would never call it treason. It seems directed more at the Pentagon than at the actual troops. His earlier rebuttal to the notion that the 9/11 terrorists were cowards was also not an act of treason. He's rocking the boat and bucking the trend, but he's not undermining the security of this country. He's being objective if a bit snarky. This latest statement will likely find sentiment among many who feel the Iraq War is ultimately a failure and that all the Army wants for this war is cannon fodder.

Jingoists also publicly bemoaned Susan Sontag when she said the 9/11 terrorists weren't merely evil haters of freedom and liberty who cowardly flew planes into buildings. She dared say that the issue wasn't so black-and-white, that American actions in the past dictated the actions of the terrorists, that the terrorists had a legitimate reason in their own minds to do what they did regardless of the bloodshed involved. In other words, 9/11 didn't happen in a geopolitical vacuum. An ultimately objective view might say that America has done the same or worse.

Statements like these might rile jingoists, but they should be said and consumed because they might get people to calm down and see things from a different perspective. At the very least, these statements aren't as subjective, hyperbolic, and mean-spirited as the average Ann Coulter soundbite. Objectivity, even if it slants away from the vocal majority, is still better than unopposed subjectivity.