I THINK IT’S PROBABLY OK to question Joel Stein’s patriotism:

I DON’T SUPPORT our troops. . . . But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you’re not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you’re willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it’s Vietnam.

Actually, to some people it’s always Vietnam.

UPDATE: The Mudville Gazette notes a rather sharp contrast.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein is unimpressed. So is Major John Tammes: “‘a fighting tool of American imperialism’? Really, sir, that is so 1968.”

MORE: Hugh Hewitt interviewed Stein. Here’s a transcript.

And though Stein wrote “you’re not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico,” that may turn out not to be the case.

Meanwhile, as number two, the LAT seems to be trying harder.

STILL MORE: J.D. Johannes is glad that Stein is out of the closet: “Stein, a humor columnist whose writing I have enjoyed over the years is pointing out an uncomfortable truth for the left. If the troops support the war, want to win, want to see it through to the end, how can calling for their immediate withdrawal be supporting them? . . . The anti-war-left’s support for the troops is a charade. They know the soldiers and Marines volunteer and probably make the same calculus as Stein that the troops are guilty of crimes against conscience. But to advance their political objectives, they swallow hard and pretend to support young men and women whose objective is to kill terrorists. ‘

EVEN MORE: Laura Lee Donoho is very unhappy.