Let’s Kick ‘Boots on the Ground’ to the Curb.
In the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks, “boots on the ground,” Vietnam-era shorthand for ground troops, has become the rhetorical equivalent of camouflage fashion. Tossing out the term gives politicians a battle-toughened air, while distancing them from the fact that they’re calling for the United States to send young Americans into battle.
“I rarely if ever hear anyone who wears boots use the term — it’s a chest-thumping thing,” said retired Maj. Gen. Bob Scales, a military historian and former commandant of the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.
The more complicated the topic, of course, the more tempting to give it a facile descriptor. That’s how standards like “kick the can down the road” (stall a vote in Congress); “collateral damage” (civilian deaths); and “person of interest” (not quite a suspect but we sure hope so) came into being.
This week, as presidential candidates and members of Congress debate military intervention in Syria, there’s a sanitizing quality to “BOTG” that makes it more pernicious than most clichés. Take this observation, from Lindsey Graham, one of the Republican presidential candidates who’s been beating the drum for boots: “The age of half measures has to end. At the end of the day when you put 50 boots on the ground you’re telling ISIL you’re not really serious as an American president to degrade and destroy them.” Speaking of half-measures, what does the senator from South Carolina mean by “50 boots?” Is that 25 soldiers, or does one boot equal one soldier?
Or take Hillary Clinton’s response when asked by John Dickerson, the moderator of Saturday’s Democratic debate: “How did you get it wrong with Libya if the key lesson of the Iraq war is have a plan for after?”
“Well, we did have a plan,” Mrs. Clinton said, “and I think it’s fair to say that of all of the Arab leaders, Gaddafi probably had more blood on his hands of Americans than anybody else. And when he moved on his own people, threatening a massacre, genocide, the Europeans and the Arabs, our allies and partners, did ask for American help and we provided it.” She added: “And we didn’t put a single boot on the ground, and Gaddafi was deposed.”
Her opponent Martin O’Malley cried foul, with an anecdote about a soldier’s mother who told him, “My son is not a pair of boots on the ground.”
Nobody was dissuaded, of course. A quick scan of TV transcripts shows more than two dozen references to military footwear since Sunday.
Ted Cruz, notably, used the term to criticize others’ posturing: “You know, I think there are far too many politicians, when it comes to boots on the ground, that are eager just to commit to boots on the ground to show how tough they are,” Mr. Cruz said on CNN on Tuesday.
The New America Foundation’s Douglas Ollivant, a retired Army officer and director for Iraq at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, said the lure and the danger of the term for politicians is that “it’s totally undefined. This is military slang that has moved into common parlance but the boundaries of what it means are not clear.”
“Iraq 2007 was boots on the ground, no doubt about it,” he said. But in the current debate, when presidential candidates and members of Congress clamor for military intervention in Syria, “if a Delta Force guy does a raid and leaves in 30 minutes, is that boots on the ground? I’m not sure.” >>>
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/lets-kick-boots-on-the-ground-to-the-curb/?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Martin O'Malley @MartinOMalley
A mother of a service member to Governor O’Malley: "My son is not a pair of boots on the ground. These are American soldiers.” #DemDebate
Gabriela Domenzain @GabiDomenzain
@MartinOMalley stopped by WWII #veteran "thank you, we appreciate what you said: we're not boots on the ground."
...it's amazing to me how many progressive principles are being thrown out the window here at DU in defense of politicians. Yours is a sad and regressive view which is obviously little more than a partisan slap at Martin O'Malley for relating the sentiment of the mother in the debate.
Ignore the interests and feelings of families of our armed service members, that's a GOOD idea, I guess (NOT!)
and people apparently not noticing or caring this opinion piece comes from a NYTiimes editorial page contributor. 
is going to magically stop war, I have a unicorn for sale.
People who play those "word games" ARE avoiding the reality of a tough discussion about what is going to happen next in the Middle East. While everyone is fretting over finding a "new word" there are going to be plenty of sandals, sneakers, and rubber shoes on the ground, shooting up villages, killing men, women and children left and right, and causing mayhem. But hey--let's whine about a common term, because that's "important."
There's a reason the guy is in 3rd place--he doesn't have the bubble.
Are we so proud and clueless that we can sit here with increasing numbers of families facing poverty, veterans committing suicide every damned day, the environment collapsing, and still go about the globe fighting endless wars with "boots on the ground"
I guess we are.
