War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

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The Sybian
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by The Sybian »

howard wrote:I have little doubt opinions have changed. Additional to the reactions of individuals, the responses by the media, and by the societal institutions are starkly different. Like courtmartials, convictions and prison terms.

Now, we condemn, convict and imprison the whistleblowers.
Would the media have reported stuff like that 40 years ago? I have the impression the media back then held back stories pertaining to national security issues, or Presidential scandalous stories like JFK banging celebrities. What about Japanese internet camps? Was there a large outcry over that? I'm not challenging, just asking.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

Stuff like what, Chelsea Manning's leaks? or Snowden? I'm not sure what you mean.

IIRC, the media didn't break the My Lai story per se, but the army investigation and bipartisan congressional inquiries (Mo Udall and Barry Goldwater) into the incident came long before the media got ahold of it, a year and a half after the massacre. Sy Hersh, unsurprisingly, was first to report.

The 'system' actually functioned to a degree unimaginable now.

edit: confusing use of words

eta: again, My Lai happened in March 1968; this was from December 1969:

Image
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

Since we were talking about the Vietnam War, I just saw this story:

The girl in the picture
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by The Sybian »

howard wrote:Since we were talking about the Vietnam War, I just saw this story:

The girl in the picture
Wow, powerful stuff. I'm always fascinated seeing the real person behind iconic pictures like that. So amazing that the photographer was able to be there for her recent medical procedure. It's really interesting that the photographer ended up helping her get to a hospital. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a war time journalist, and watch horrific shit happen to people, and not help.

I hope they do an interview with the monk who lit himself on fire or the guy screaming while a soldier holds a pistol to his head.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Jerloma »

howard wrote:Doctors Without Borders: U.S. asked if Taliban was 'holed up' at hospital before attacking

And this is exactly why they did it:
An internal review by MSF confirmed that wounded Taliban fighters were among the patients treated at the facility, including two whom staff members concluded were of a higher rank. But the medical group’s leaders maintain that was not a reason to bomb a fully functioning hospital with 105 patients and surgeries ongoing, the only one of its kind in northern Afghanistan.
This is what our nation has become. Not only a military that does this kind of mass murder, but a populace who tolerate, ignore, deny or justify it. What a country!
Seems appropriate...

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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Jerloma »

The Sybian wrote:
howard wrote:Since we were talking about the Vietnam War, I just saw this story:

The girl in the picture
Wow, powerful stuff. I'm always fascinated seeing the real person behind iconic pictures like that. So amazing that the photographer was able to be there for her recent medical procedure. It's really interesting that the photographer ended up helping her get to a hospital. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a war time journalist, and watch horrific shit happen to people, and not help.
Sometimes they don't or can't, and the consequences can be pretty drastic.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

heh. I have that photo in my home office. I knew nothing about the background or context of the photo, I like it as a reminder. Unironically, it helps reduce my depression.

Cool web site. Thanks, J-lo.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Jerloma »

It is without a doubt powerful and a perfect reminder that hey...you don't have it so bad.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Shirley »

That website just ate up an hour and a half when I should have been sleeping. Incredible stuff in there.

My favorite (maybe the wrong word) anecdote was from that famous pic of the US soldier returning from a Vietnamese POW camp to his ecstatic family. Apparently his wife had delivered divorce papers three days earlier. So, just in case you ever wondered why the kids were out front.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

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Who knows? Maybe, you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom.

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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by DC47 »

The Sybian wrote:ETA: erased my rant on all of the failed NeoCon predictions and justifications for Iraq. No need to get off topic on your Afghanistan question. Can we just let the Russians go in this time and sit back and watch them waste boatloads of money and force to accomplish nothing?
Imperial powers have been tag-teaming in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for a long time now. The French couldn't hack Indochina, so we stepped in and proved we couldn't either. The Russians took the first cut at Afghanistan, and then we stepped in shortly after the smoke cleared from the last charred Soviet tank. The English mangled the situation in Egypt and the lands to the east. We took over handling chronic war in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and now Syria. Threw in a bit of system change in Iran, Irag, and Libya just to show we had a more expansive imperial vision. The Russians may be willing to take Syria off our hands. It's only fair, seeing as to how we took on the Taliban when they tired of that quagmire.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by DC47 »

I had the impression that ISIS was hiding vehicles, arms and fighters in and around mosques. And that the American and allies (those that have not quietly bailed on the 'alliance') are not bombing them. If they will bomb MSF hospitals, why are they not bombing mosques? Would the press be worse because these are 'holy places?' Are they actually bombing them but I simply don't know about it?
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

Who knows? Maybe, you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom.

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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Keg »

Can you copy and paste for those of us who don't subscribe?
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

Sure. I don't subscribe, it was not locked for me, but here. I doubt it will be news to you, curious to hear your reaction.

 Who Runs the Pentagon?
Not Defense Secretary Ashton Carter—while he may be more than a figurehead, “the building” has no boss.
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Yesterday 5:00 am
http://www.thenation.com/article/who-runs-the-pentagon/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 The crippling and pervasive defects in us national-security policy—costly exertions that, time and again, fail to yield the promised results—are patently obvious, consistently bemoaned, and yet effectively tolerated. To say that the apparatus principally responsible for implementing those policies is an underperforming behemoth qualifies as a considerable understatement. The kindest verdict one can offer regarding the Pentagon is that it marginally outperforms its first cousin, the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The next president will enter office in January 2017 vowing to correct those defects. The likelihood that he or she will succeed in doing so is nil. The reasons why are legion, but prominent among them is the fact that those who ascend to the top of the national-security apparatus invariably arrive in the Pentagon as unwitting agents of the status quo. By the time they land one of the top jobs, they have long since forfeited any capacity for critical thought.

To illustrate the point, consider the case of Ashton Carter, now a year in office as secretary of defense. The 25th person to hold that position since its inception just 69 years ago, Carter is seasoned, able, and undoubtedly well-intentioned. Yet he is as much a creature of the Pentagon as he is its CEO. He embodies the culture of national security, having absorbed its assumptions, worldview, habits, and language.

According to his official biography, “Secretary Carter has spent more than three decades leveraging his knowledge of science and technology, global strategy and policy as well as his deep dedication to the men and women of the Department of Defense to make our nation and the world a safer place.” Along the way, he acquired a bushel of impressive credentials. After graduating from Yale, Carter won a Rhodes scholarship and eventually returned from Oxford with a PhD in theoretical physics. His current Pentagon tour of duty is his fourth, and follows earlier stints as deputy secretary; undersecretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics; and assistant secretary for international-security policy. As they say in Washington, Carter “knows the building.” When not in government service, “Ash” contemplates ways of making the world a safer place at prestigious universities like Harvard and Stanford, while sitting on boards and commissions that provide venues for out-of-office members of the national-security elite to audition while talking shop. Depending on your point of view, Carter arrived in his present post either exceedingly well-prepared or thoroughly vetted.

Upon assuming office in February 2015, Carter wasted no time in identifying his three priorities: first, helping the commander in chief to make sound decisions and then implementing those decisions “with our department’s long-admired excellence”; second, caring for all the members—military and civilian alike—of “the greatest fighting force the world has ever known”; and third, building “the force of the future.” This last priority means “embracing the future” while simultaneously finding ways to economize through “a leaner organization, less overhead, and reforming our business and acquisition practices.”

Although offering little that is novel or distinctive, Carter’s agenda qualifies as unobjectionable. Devoid of specifics, his goals are those of a technocrat, charged with presiding over a system that he knows well and accepts. Reduced to its essence, Carter’s message to “the building” at the outset of his tenure was this: “We’re terrific! And I know how to make us better still!”

Since taking office, Carter has spent his time doing what defense secretaries do. He flies around the world visiting the troops and consulting with field commanders. He presides at ceremonies, hosts visiting dignitaries, testifies before Congress, makes speeches, holds press conferences, and appears on TV. He manages—or pretends to manage—a sprawling bureaucracy. He makes decisions, sometimes dressed up for the occasion as “historic,” but typically representing an incremental departure from past practice—lifting the ban on women serving in combat, for example. And by no means least of all, he facilitates the expenditure of money in staggeringly large quantities.

 What Carter has not done is pose first-order questions related to national-security policy and practice. Instead, he has deferred to and thereby protected existing routines and arrangements. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Averting change while pretending to foster it represents the defense secretary’s foremost, even if unacknowledged, function. In the history of that office, only two of Carter’s predecessors have had the temerity to challenge that proposition. The first was Robert McNamara in the period from 1961 to ’68; the second was Donald Rumsfeld from 2001 to ’06.

McNamara showed up for work intent on imposing a management system imported from the postwar corporate world. He aimed to align the Pentagon with fads and fashions straight out of Harvard Business School, as implemented in the Detroit auto industry. Precisely 40 years later, Rumsfeld sought to impose an entirely new approach to waging war. With information technology all the rage among the military intelligentsia, Rumsfeld believed that fads and fashions pioneered by Silicon Valley could enable the US military to revolutionize the way it fights.

Each project deservedly and ignominiously failed. Yet in both cases, the implications of failure went well beyond the rejection of a particular reform agenda. McNamara and Rumsfeld, each in his own way, had attempted a radical assertion of civilian control. Each in turn had insisted that someone should be in charge, not merely symbolically but substantively. Each had insisted that there be but a single hand on the Pentagon tiller: his own. Eventually, arrogance did them in, compounded by the ill-advised and mismanaged wars that destroyed their reputations. One further consequence of their respective failures was to gut the concept of civilian control. Although the principle remained, the practice became squishy.

The result was by no means a handing of authority to the brass. Neither McNamara’s downfall nor Rumsfeld’s several decades later meant that the generals now called the shots. Instead, the effect of their demise was to disperse authority, leaving no one really in charge and therefore no one accountable.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

(con't)

 Today, for public consumption, all hands sustain the pretense of loyally pulling together in response to the Pentagon coxswain’s calls. In reality, however, relentless intramural competition drives behavior. Inside the building, what passes for the formulation of strategy amounts to little more than apportioning budget share. Reconciling the contradictory demands made by rival services, commands, and programs supplants the national interest as the summum bonum.

As a consequence, in place of a coherent approach to the world, aimless forward momentum prevails. This defines our present situation, with Ash Carter nominally at the Pentagon’s helm.

The military-industrial complex looks to Carter to preserve the status and prerogatives its members have long enjoyed.

It’s part of Carter’s job to prevent anyone from noticing. He does this by uttering with apparent sincerity reassuringly familiar platitudes, such as those he recited upon assuming office and has repeated since on several occasions. Yet platitudes amount to little more than a smoke screen. Behind that smoke screen, sound decisions competently implemented by a lean-and-mean organization that looks after the troops are the exception rather than the rule. The defense secretary may be more than a figurehead, but he is not the boss. There is no boss.

* * *

To appreciate the implications, consider the conflict formerly known as the Global War on Terrorism. Today, nearly 15 years after it began, it continues with no end in sight. The inability of “the greatest fighting force the world has ever known” to bring that enterprise to a successful close would seem to require an explanation. Secretary Carter offers none. Nor does he even hazard a guess as to when, how, or at what cost the final victory will be gained. Instead, he gives such questions the widest possible berth. Indeed, he ignores them.

To be fair, on what has become the most pressing front of that larger struggle, the fight against the Islamic State, Carter has not been silent. Obama’s defense chief forthrightly defends an approach to dealing with ISIS that few outside the administration itself find defensible. Echoing the president, Secretary Carter vows to destroy the Islamic State. Yet the Pentagon’s evolving campaign, which he routinely endorses, combines the worst features of mission creep with gradual escalation. Operation Inherent Resolve, as it’s called, has been small ball all the way.

That Carter spends so much of his own time managing the campaign to defeat ISIS suggests a warped understanding of what a defense secretary exists to do. Yes, as an operational problem, ISIS poses real challenges. But those challenges are not overwhelming; we’re not talking about storming Festung Europa here. Given adequate resources, a reasonably competent staff-college graduate should be able to figure out how to prevail over an adversary that lacks an air force, possesses few modern weapons, and by relying on nihilistic violence alienates the population it presumes to govern.

Far more imposing than the operational challenge is the strategic one: addressing the conditions that give rise to entities like ISIS in the first place. Panicky Americans or demagogic presidential candidates may fancy that taking down this one organization is the key to restoring order in the Greater Middle East. Yet to nurse that fantasy is to ignore the lessons of the past 15 years, if not of the past century. Destroying ISIS is a worthy goal, but unless the underlying conditions are also addressed, doing so will merely pave the way for some successor group, likely to be just as vile. How to pre-empt the appearance of that successor—now that’s a conundrum worthy of a defense secretary’s attention.

Yet addressing that conundrum requires this admission: The problem that our ongoing war purports to be solving has no military solution; indeed, pressing for one only makes matters worse. Once heretical, these propositions today find increasing favor, even in some military quarters, and should provide the basis for a far-reaching policy reassessment.

The facts speak for themselves: The militarized approach conceived as a response to 9/11, back when illusions of US military supremacy ran rampant, has manifestly flopped. Yet even today, neither Secretary Carter nor any of his chief subordinates seem prepared to own up to this reality.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

(i told you it was long)

 In all likelihood, years of intense conditioning render them incapable of doing so. That certainly appears to be the case with the current Pentagon chief. Hence, when faced with a military enterprise gone awry, his preference is for tinkering rather than for thinking anew. So, in Iraq, Carter expands target lists, widens the mandate of US special operators, and boosts the cadre of American trainers, vaguely hoping that some combination of intensified activity might turn things around—even as he allows issues of far greater import to languish unattended. In effect, the technocrat becomes little more than a military meddler.

What should command the defense secretary’s attention? Recasting US military strategy in the Islamic world ought to head the list. This means correctly identifying the adversary—which is neither terrorism nor Islam—and then realistically appraising its capacity to inflict harm, which falls well short of existential. It also means thinking creatively about ways to offset the adversary’s strengths and exploit its vulnerabilities. Secretary Carter’s silence on such matters suggests that he finds them either uninteresting or unimportant—or that he has nothing to say.

* * *

Truth be told, even entertaining the possibility of alternative strategies spooks the constituencies that Carter represents as defense secretary. Here we arrive at the heart of the matter: Re-examining the premises of US policy in the Greater Middle East will necessarily jeopardize suppositions—about the efficacy of the US military presence and projecting US military might—that have enabled the national-security establishment to prosper for decades. The bureaucratic and corporate components of that establishment will view with alarm any hint of diminishing the emphasis that the United States assigns to possessing and wielding so-called hard power. The military-industrial complex looks to Carter to preserve the status and prerogatives its members have long enjoyed. Based on his performance thus far, their confidence is entirely justified.

By way of example, consider the case of the recently unveiled Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B), far and away the most important Pentagon initiative begun on Carter’s watch. Nothing about the LRS-B program is minor league, especially in terms of the fiscal requirements it entails. While words and catchphrases may carry promises of sound decisions, good stewardship, and forward-looking change, it’s where the money goes that matters.

In October, without anyone paying much attention, Secretary Carter rubber-stamped Air Force plans to field this new manned bomber. In the guise of “embracing the future,” he thereby acceded to one service’s preference for perpetuating its past.

According to Carter, the initial contract awarded to Northrop Grumman to develop the LRS-B—ultimately expected to be worth $55 billion—sends a powerful message, “making it crystal clear that the United States will continue to retain the ability to project power throughout the globe long into the future.” In fact, by signing off on this new aircraft, Carter was sending an altogether different message: “Not to worry; on my watch, business as usual will prevail.”

According to Pentagon estimates, the cost of the LRS-B when it becomes operational at some unspecified future date will be approximately $500 million per aircraft. Since such estimates are rarely if ever even remotely accurate, we should treat this one with a grain of salt. By way of comparison, the B-2, the current front-line strategic bomber, cost $1.2 billion each when built nearly three decades ago. Although it’s theoretically possible that new and better will also be cheaper, nothing in the history of American weapons design supports such expectations. Indeed, to extrapolate from other recent programs like the F-35 fighter, which has seen costs balloon during its 15 years of gestation, we can reasonably expect the LRS-B to carry a price tag of $2 billion to $3 billion per bomber. So the handsome down payment promised to Northrop Grumman is just for starters. By acceding to the Air Force’s insistence that it needs the LRS-B, Carter has launched a project certain to consume at least a couple of hundred billion dollars.

It goes without saying that this promises to be a bonanza of sorts for military contractors, shareholders, employees, and lucky members of Congress in districts where the work will get done. For the Air Force, the rewards qualify as even more fundamental: The new bomber will affirm a cherished identity. Thanks to the LRS-B, the Air Force will remain in this century what it was during the last: an institution defined by its employment of piloted aircraft to deliver death and destruction over great distances, just as Billy Mitchell, Hap Arnold, and Curtis LeMay intended.

Those positing that drones may well render the LRS-B obsolete before it ever drops its first bomb are therefore missing the point. So are those who suggest that in a cyber age, the disabling of targets may no longer require their physical obliteration. Ditto those wondering why the United States needs yet another expensive means of delivering nuclear weapons (as the LRS-B will be designed to do), given the existence of land- and sea-based missiles already providing a secure deterrent.

Will this new strategic bomber “make our nation and the world a safer place”? Only time will tell, but don’t bet on it. In the interim, however, the LRS-B program offers myriad benefits. Measured in profits and jobs and expectations of campaign contributions, those benefits are specific and concrete. In this regard, the LRS-B already rates as a huge success.

Where it matters most, Carter has delivered. His LRS-B decision signals his allegiance to the long-standing arrangements that the various components of the military-industrial complex are keen to perpetuate. Here is an implicit assurance that the Navy can count on getting that new aircraft carrier and the Army a new generation of armored vehicles or helicopters. Through such purchases, “the greatest fighting force the world has ever known” will remain, at least in its own estimation, great—never mind its inability to end wars on terms favorable to the United States.

Meanwhile, however, America’s larger military project in the Greater Middle East meanders along inconclusively, an undertaking that may one day see the LRS-B releasing a few parcels of high-tech ordnance to kill a few “terrorists.” By then, probably decades from now, it will be left to some other secretary of defense to describe the results as evidence of progress.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

Pentagon Holds Gala To Celebrate 25 Years Of Bombing Iraq

Image
Attendees at the Iraq Bombing Silver Anniversary Event discuss their favorite Iraqi villages to destroy.Image
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by DC47 »

That was a devastating critique by Bacevich. It was actually succinct given the nature of the topic. Please point me to where I can read more about this telling throwaway line:

"This means correctly identifying the adversary—which is neither terrorism nor Islam—and then realistically appraising its capacity to inflict harm, which falls well short of existential."
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by DC47 »

The question of "who's in charge of the military?" recalls an earlier rendition of a parallel question. Perhaps the answer is the same.

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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

"Soldier, do you know who's in command here?" Love that scene.
DC47 wrote:That was a devastating critique by Bacevich. It was actually succinct given the nature of the topic. Please point me to where I can read more about this telling throwaway line:

"This means correctly identifying the adversary—which is neither terrorism nor Islam—and then realistically appraising its capacity to inflict harm, which falls well short of existential."
I refer you to the great philosopher Pogo. (Except it sure is an existential threat.)

Image

Bacevich writes a lot on the theme of overuse of our military. Like here:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/ ... me-israel/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(And I disagree with his characterization of Israel's militarism, at least in degree.)

But, I think he alludes to more on correctly identifying the adversary in the long piece, as he calls ISIS an entity that is worth destroying, but not one that poses an existential threat to the USA, and one which can relatively easily be destroyed by a big powerful military using appropriate measures (as Russia is demonstrating.) Kinda like Al Qaada/The Taliban was wiped out in Afghanistan in a matter of weeks. Then given ideal conditions to resprout bigger and stronger than ever, by our stupidity in that country and in Iraq in subsequent years.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by sancarlos »

Reminds me of this, too!

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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

This shit is just commonplace now, and warrants no more than a shrug from most people. In the election thread, someone mentioned the rise of authoritarianism sentiment. This is related.

Nobody Knows the Identities of the 150 People Killed by U.S. in Somalia, but Most Are Certain They Deserved It
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Sabo »

howard wrote:This shit is just commonplace now, and warrants no more than a shrug from most people. In the election thread, someone mentioned the rise of authoritarianism sentiment. This is related.

Nobody Knows the Identities of the 150 People Killed by U.S. in Somalia, but Most Are Certain They Deserved It
At first, I thought that was an Onion headline.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by govmentchedda »

Sabo wrote:
howard wrote:This shit is just commonplace now, and warrants no more than a shrug from most people. In the election thread, someone mentioned the rise of authoritarianism sentiment. This is related.

Nobody Knows the Identities of the 150 People Killed by U.S. in Somalia, but Most Are Certain They Deserved It
At first, I thought that was an Onion headline.
That, like most Greenwald pieces, is very good.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Johnnie »

howard wrote:This shit is just commonplace now, and warrants no more than a shrug from most people. In the election thread, someone mentioned the rise of authoritarianism sentiment. This is related.

Nobody Knows the Identities of the 150 People Killed by U.S. in Somalia, but Most Are Certain They Deserved It
I want Trump to use this.

"Oh, my foreign policy gets questioned but the current president gets a pass for doing exactly what I want....And much more? At least I'm going after terrorists. The Intel on this can't even confirm that these were terrorists. Where's the international community to condemn these war crimes?"
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

Who knows? Maybe, you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom.

Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago
Oh yeah…
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DC47
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by DC47 »

Especially nice closing line.

Ever since the days when the Vietnam draft loomed in my future, I have thought it a damn shame that there wasn't a selective initial draft of 540 people who worked in Washington D.C. before the rest of us were up.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

Plus nine others, but since they are too old, take their children/grandchildren
Who knows? Maybe, you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom.

Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago
Oh yeah…
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by DC47 »

My bad to leave out that crew. But let's not be ageist. Those nine could form a special judicial team to decide which of the elected officials takes the point on the next patrol.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

more Bacevich. He has a new book out, so he pimps it by writing excellent pieces around the web, I guess.
Let’s End America’s Hopeless War for the Middle East

nice reaction piece from Daniel Larison at American Conservative:
Pro-War Dead-enders and Our Unending Wars
Who knows? Maybe, you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom.

Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago
Oh yeah…
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

Who knows? Maybe, you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom.

Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago
Oh yeah…
howard
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by howard »

Who knows? Maybe, you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom.

Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago
Oh yeah…
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by A_B »

"a figure that dispels the often quoted, but problematic, “22 a day” estimate yet solidifies the disturbing mental health crisis the number implied."

WTF. That doesn't dispel shit. Both numbers are horrifying.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by mister d »

Its 14 less per week, AB. Can't you be happy about anything?
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Johnnie »

Easier to kill yourself than die waiting for your rating.

Thoughts and prayers. Thank you for your service.

(No but seriously, I teared up reading that. What the fuck, man.)
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Pruitt »

That is a horrifying statistic. Naively I ask how can the military spend $600 billion a year and not dedicate more money to this huge problem?
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by degenerasian »

Pruitt wrote:That is a horrifying statistic. Naively I ask how can the military spend $600 billion a year and not dedicate more money to this huge problem?
it's all about leaders and weapons. Even the soldiers in the field are lower priority. Vets? phhhttt
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Johnnie »

Pruitt wrote:That is a horrifying statistic. Naively I ask how can the military spend $600 billion a year and not dedicate more money to this huge problem?
They do. In the form of clickable computer based training and hour plus long PowerPoint slideshows.

Ya, know. Things that make you want to kill yourself.
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Re: War (uunh!) What is it Good For?

Post by Pruitt »

Johnnie wrote:
Pruitt wrote:That is a horrifying statistic. Naively I ask how can the military spend $600 billion a year and not dedicate more money to this huge problem?
They do. In the form of clickable computer based training and hour plus long PowerPoint slideshows.

Ya, know. Things that make you want to kill yourself.
I can just imagine those presentations being prepared in a communications office by people who have never seen combat or had any psychiatric training.
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