Absolutely Disgusting

I read this moments ago, and could not wait until later to post on it. I've NEVER been so outraged at a person I've never met. How cold, calloused and self-serving must one be...? This review of the Salon article is from Cassy Fiano:

I came across an article on Salon entitled “How to leave a soldier” that has apparently been making ripples across the blogosphere. It absolutely infuriated me, and I knew I had to write about it.

Before I get into the article, though, let me explain some things in the interest of full disclosure. My significant other is a Marine. We live together in North Carolina while he’s stationed at Camp Lejeune. He’s an 0311 (infantry rifleman) who has been to Iraq twice and is deploying to Afghanistan this year. The first year of our relationship was long distance, with him in North Carolina and me in Florida. We’re together now, but the Corps brings us apart occasionally for training and such, and of course, for deployments. Never, ever would I do something so cowardly as to send him a Dear John letter while he was deployed.

But that’s exactly what this woman did. Meet Courtney Cook, an extraordinarily shallow and callous woman.

You’d be surprised how easy it is to leave a soldier on deployment. You can do it with a letter. (He can’t argue with you. He doesn’t have a phone.) If you lay the groundwork early, saying to the soldier before he leaves, “This will be the end of us, we might as well admit it,” it’s that much easier. The letter won’t even come as a shock.

And if you have children with that soldier? You can handle all that with a letter, too. He’ll write it — because he cares about the kids, because he wants to work with you to do what’s best for them even though you’re leaving him — and you’ll give it to them. Here again, you will avoid a nasty confrontation. Who will they cry to? You? You’re just the teary-eyed bearer of the letter. Him? The one who’s sweating it out in the desert?

There will be no moving truck, no boxes, no house torn asunder. The soldier is peeing in a bucket as you pack. He doesn’t care who gets the couch.

It isn’t enough for her to be this callous, shallow, superficial, and selfish. She’s recommending other women do the same thing, too. One of the worst parts about this is that she feels like it was a good thing to tell him while he’s away at war that she’s leaving him. She presumably doesn’t care about the effect this has on soldiers while they’re deployed.

Be sure to head over to Cassy's blog to read the entire review, and if you have the stomach for it, head over to Salon to read the original post. If you head over to Salon, take a vomit bucket with you.

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