He Knew

July 1968 - six months after The Tet Offensive put the lie to Vietnam, and 3 months after MLK was killed, and about 40 days after RFK was killed, and kinda in the middle of another whole year of some big bad shit going down in USAmerica Inc. 

LBJ's son-in-law, Chuck Robb, was serving as commander of a combat rifle company in Vietnam. Johnson had asked him to send tape-recorded messages describing what was happening on the ground in what a lot of us came to call "Johnson's War".  This picture is said to convey the anguish of a president as he learns the truth about how political policies play out in the lives of real people.

It's always about more than anybody wants to tell us it's about.  So included in the mix is Johnson's anguish over being remembered as the Accidental President needing to ride the coattails of two dead Kennedys, while struggling to come out of their shadows; the guy who lost Southeast Asia, built concentration camps for black people, and made it almost impossible for Dick Nixon to lose in November of that year.

That's not to ignore some truly big-fuckin'-deal things like Medicare and Civil Rights and Public Education and other good things as well.  I'm just trying to remind myself to see the whole thing - or as much of it as possible; to go back and look at it again once in a while, because there's probably something I missed - like not remembering ever hearing about what was playing on the tape recorder in that picture.

Dude - Chill

First - somebody needs to be a little more careful about keepin' that guy away from the coffee. Jesus - it's like grandma's Chihuahua got into the Aderall.

And I'd dearly love it if the Zombie Lie of "the surge worked" could be laid to rest.

Three things about "the surge worked" that even I know:

1. The sheiks started to get pretty reasonable about not fighting us when we started to pay them to stop fighting us, because...
2. The sheiks realized we were telling them we'd fuck off and leave 'em alone if they cooled it long enough to let us pretend we'd won the thing
3. The propaganda of "The Surge Worked" is what worked.

This guy is doing the classic Deflecting Denialism thing - "our policy didn't fail; we failed to carry through on the policy..."

And it ends up being: "Iraqis are still fighting back and killing Americans, so obviously, we haven't killed enough Iraqis - let's go kill some more Iraqis".

And so, secondly - how many times do we need to learn the same lesson?  You don't kill your way to a solution for political problems.

People have been trying this same shit forever.  It's partly the lesson of The Greater Fool - "I will prevail where others have failed" - and that's all well and good, Skeezix, but ya gotta remember that better people than you have been trying to conquer the world for a solid 40,000 years at last count, and guess what - the world remains undefeated.

So knock that shit off.

Iraq-mire

NYT:

WASHINGTON — In a major shift of focus in the battle against the Islamic State, the Obama administration is planning to establish a new military base in Anbar Province, Iraq, and to send 400 American military trainers to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi.

The White House on Wednesday is expected to announce a plan that follows months of behind-the-scenes debate about how prominently plans to retake Mosul, another Iraqi city that fell to the Islamic State last year, should figure in the early phase of the military campaign against the group.

The fall of Ramadi last month effectively settled the administration debate, at least for the time being. American officials said Ramadi was now expected to become the focus of a lengthy campaign to regain Mosul at a later stage, possibly not until 2016.

The additional American troops will arrive as early as this summer, a United States official said, and will focus on training Sunni fighters with the Iraqi Army. The official called the coming announcement “an adjustment to try to get the right training to the right folks.”

--and today's Understatement-That-Makes-It-Sound-Like-Ya-Really-Don't-Give-A-Fuck award goes to:

The United States Central Command’s emphasis on retaking Mosul depended critically on efforts to retrain the Iraqi Army, which appear to have gotten off to a slow start. Some Iraqi officials also thought the schedule for taking Mosul was unrealistic, and some bridled when an official from the Central Command told reporters in February that an assault to capture the city was planned for this spring.

A slow start - from 2003.  12 years.  That's not a slow start.  That's not a start of any kind.  That's an ending, and it's called "petrification"; or "putrefaction"; or some other term we use to indicate that it's over.

Iraq has no army, and Iraq has nothing out of which anybody can hope to build an army; because there is no Iraq.  Iraq exists only as the memory of a few arbitrary lines the British drew on a piece of paper 90-some years ago.  It's Done. It's Kaput. It's Finished. It's Dead Dead and Fucking Dead.  Give it up already.

And gee - it's almost as if somebody put the whole thing in motion on purpose; like they figured on it being one big unfixable FUBAR; and they'd leave it for the Dems to waste time and resources trying to tidy up for a while; and when enough Rubes are ready for the Etch-A-Sketch move, they amp up the rhetoric with, "well - it's Obama's problem now - been Obama's problem for a while - he can't just blame it all on Cheney forever - looks like leadership trouble to me - y'know the Bush Doctrine is good policy, but Obama's incompetence blah blah blah..."

This is a very standard play. 

• Fuck something up
• Point at it and say, "Hey look - it's all fucked up"
• "I have a plan..."

But let's be sure not to talk about any of that.  And let's definitely not concentrate on how our mighty military will once again be showing us their Selflessly Courageous Awesomeness by going back to some desert shithole to fight and to bleed an to die so Halliburton and Royal Dutch Shell and Northrup Grumman can add a coupla nickels to their Quarterly Earnings Reports, and then turn around and use a good buncha those hard-earned Blood Dollars to create an even more reliable generation of Coin-Operated Politicians.

Let's just keep blabbin' about what a wonderment it is that there can be so many voters in the big squishy middle who can't quite make up their minds about all this.

Fuck me silly, Bubba - I just can't stand this shit sometimes.

Paid Up Patriotism

I've always felt uncomfortable with what seems like mandatory displays of patriotism - all the shit you see on Facebook and Twitter and on any given "news" show on radio or TV; and now including SportsBall events.  It's always seemed like I was back in high school in the late 60s, when guys wearing letter jackets were free (and encouraged) to beat up any kid who dared not stand up and sing the anthem or genuflect as the flag went by.

But not even in my darkest heaviest skepticism (some would say cynicism) did I ever really think we had sunk so low.

And I think it really sucks that we need Smedley Butler to come around once in a while to warn us again about the totally shitty misuse of any American soldier in service of wielding the political power necessary to pursue such grotesque profit at such an obscene expense.

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.

In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914.

I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.

I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.

I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912.

I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916.

I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.

In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Youngsterism

Californina is making an effort to raise the age at which it's legal for people to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21.

I remember, way way back in the day, when we were all blabbing about "how it ain't right for  kids to get drafted at 18 and have absolutely no say in electing the slaggards who're sending them off to die in some place they can't even pronounce...".

We got Amendment #26 outa that one.

So let's consider for a minute that raising both the drinking age and the smoking age to 21 is a really good idea.  People's brains aren't terribly well developed until they hit their mid-20s, which is why we should be moving some of those BFD Life Decisions a little further towards that maturity threshold.  (If you can get your kids not to take up cigarettes (eg) before they turn 21 or 22, the chances that they'll stay non-smokers for life go up something like 300 Jillion percent.)

Now, since we're making these changes in order to protect our kids from the evils of nicotine and liquor, how about we take one more step and move the Age of Enlistment up there too.  You're not gonna convince me that joining the US military is somehow safer for the average 18-year-old than just about anything else thay might try - especially since the first 6 months in the military is the period when a ridiculous buttload of kids get introduced to, and then hooked on, all manner of unhealthy habits.  Yes, this happens in college, and yes, it happens to plenty of kids who go to work right out of high school, but the numbers are  higher for those in the military.

Which lands us smack in the middle of the intersection of Obvious and Wise-The-Fuck-Up: not many college freshman and shoe clerks are getting shipped back into Iraq, or off to Afghanistan or whatever Shit-hole-istan is next on our list, so let's acknowledge the fact that just being in uniform is inherently more dangerous than not being in uniform.  And guess what - it's not just more dangerous for the kids; it's more dangerous for everybody to have kids in uniform wandering around with automatic weapons and hand grenades (fucking duh, muthuhfuckuhs).

Or maybe we could just try to be a little more consistent with some of this shit for a change.

Heroes Are People Too

I've always had a hard time articulating what rattles around in my brain when it comes to issues of military and war and the use of force.  Saying war does shitty things to "those other people" is fairly easy.  The hard part is understanding what we're doing to the war-fighters themselves.

Sending people to war is often itself the real crime.

From truthout:

"If someone orders you to kill someone else and tells you it's for a very, very good reason and you do it with the best of intentions but it turns out that you were lied to and actually killed an innocent person, then does that make you a hero, a murderer or a victim?" Haan says. "I know it doesn't make you a hero. I can't say if it makes you a murderer, but it definitely makes you a victim."[xxvii]

Resolving Cognitive Dissonance

Alvin York was something of a rambunctious bad boy in rural Tennessee who got religion and tried to dodge the draft in 1918 by claiming Conscientious Objector status.  The draft board denied his petitions and appeals, and he was drafted for service in WW1.

His religious fervor conflicted with his "duties" as a soldier in the US Army, and since cognitive dissonance generally moves an individual to change his behavior and/or his thinking, Alvin did what most every young man does who gets hammered every day with military training and indoctrination - he (more or less) simply rationalized his way into thinking god wanted him to be a good little soldier, and of course, that led him to alter his beliefs enough to view the German soldiers as a line of turkeys that he then proceeded to shoot one-by-one in the back - and that makes him a true American hero and we all wish we could grow up to be just like him.

Where's The Outrage?

From RTD:

RICHMOND -- A felon and admitted longtime gunrunner caught on Interstate 95 headed to Boston with handguns in the trunk of his car is set to be sentenced Tuesday in federal court.

Anthony T. Champion, 33, of Columbus, Ga. who pleaded guilty in November to possession of a stolen firearm, faces up to 10 years in prison when sentenced by U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer.

According to court documents, Champion was stopped by a state trooper near Doswell on Jan. 31, 2013, and nine handguns in a cloth bag were discovered in the trunk of his Toyota Camry -- two were stolen and one had the serial number obliterated.

Gun freaks and Libertarians oughta be teamed up and jumpin' all over this one.

Doesn't a US citizen have the right to take his guns with him on a trip up north?

Doesn't he have the right to make a living selling guns (the ones he owns anyway) to whoever he wants to sell 'em to?

And why do we care if the serial number on one of those guns was obliterated?  It's his gun - he can do what he wants with it.

Since when is it OK for the lawdogs to search a guy's car just because he gets a little nervous and decides to stop by the side of the road and take a short walk to clear his head?

What's this country comin' to?

Interesting Tidbit:  In 2010 and 2011, 825 guns that were used in crimes in New York were traced back to Virginia (eg).  It stands to reason that some number of people were arrested here in The Old Dominion for some kind of illegal-ness connected with those guns in New York.  I wonder if any of the cops (here or there) who made arrests in any of those capers were adherents to some bullshit outfit like the Oath Keepers.  Cuz, y'know - 2nd Amendment is a holy sacrament and if we don't hold it inviolable, Jesus won't love us anymore and then we're really in trouble and ... and actually, as you widen it all out, it just gets weirder and weirder.

God, Guns, and Goons In Uniform - what could possibly go wrong?

Today's Quote

(via Charlie Pierce)

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.

In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it.

In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them.

In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed.

It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.  --James Madison, 1793.

Both Sides(?)

In the atmosphere of All Shutdown All The Time, it became fairly easy to overlook this one from a law professor at Liberty University:

The Christian mission field is a “magnet” for sexual abusers, Boz Tchividjian, a Liberty University law professor who investigates abuse said Thursday (Sept. 26) to a room of journalists.

While comparing evangelicals to Catholics on abuse response, ”I think we are worse,” he said at the Religion Newswriters Association conference, saying too many evangelicals had “sacrificed the souls” of young victims.

What is it with these god freaks?  If they're not invading the Middle East - or hatching plots in the Middle East to blow up the infidels - they're hanging "witches" or "honor murdering" teenaged girls for the sin of being raped; or they're preaching hellfire and brimstone about home and family while buying meth from their homosexual lovers etc etc etc.  And in this country, they get to do all that in the comfort and safety of a tax-free corporate office.

But back to the point - maybe we should be taking a much closer look at the high rate of incidence of sexual assault/sexual abuse in organizations with very top-down authoritarian power structures - like churches and the US military - and maybe we shouldn't be leaving them alone with the kids.

Our Glorious Empire

If this pic doesn't enbiggen very well for you, go to Federacion de Asociaciones Cannibicus for a better look.

Today's Best Blog Line

Actually it's more like the naming of a concept - something I've been trying to find for a very long time now:

Compulsory patriotism does nothing for soldiers who risk their lives -- but props up those who profit from war

So simple - like the Jitterbug - it plumb evaded me.

From a piece in Salon by an English professor at Virginia Tech:

In addition to donating change to the troops, we are repeatedly impelled to “support our troops” or to “thank our troops.” God constantly blesses them. Politicians exalt them. We are warned, “If you can’t stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them.” One wonders if our troops are the ass-kicking force of P.R. lore or an agglomeration of oversensitive duds and beggars.

Such troop worship is trite and tiresome, but that’s not its primary danger. A nation that continuously publicizes appeals to “support our troops” is explicitly asking its citizens not to think. It is the ideal slogan for suppressing the practice of democracy, presented to us in the guise of democratic preservation.

 --and--

In reality, the troops are not actually recipients of any meaningful support. That honor is reserved for the government and its elite constituencies. “Support our troops” entails a tacit injunction that we also support whatever politicians in any given moment deem the national interest. If we understand that “the national interest” is but a metonym for the aspirations of the ruling class, then supporting the troops becomes a counterintuitive, even harmful, gesture. 

Today's WTF

From The Economist:

IN WAR, it is said, there are no unwounded soldiers. Bombs that shatter bones also batter brains. Even on the periphery, war afflicts men with aching joints, ringing ears and psychological damage. Imagine, then, the human damage wrought by over a decade of battle.

America does not have to. Its wounded warriors are now seeking help in record numbers. Nearly half of its 1.6m soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have asked for disability benefits from the government. (Just 21% filed similar claims after the first Gulf war, according to estimates.) With ageing veterans of earlier conflicts also seeking more help, America’s disabled-servicemen population has increased by almost 45% since 2000.

 --snip--

Nearly 1m veterans are now waiting. On average it takes the VA about nine months to complete a claim. In some big cities the average delay is over 600 days. Those who appeal against a refusal usually wait two years for a resolution. Mr Obama entered the White House with a promise to fix the system, but waiting-times have increased considerably on his watch. Even the navy SEAL who shot Osama bin Laden says he is waiting for his claim to be processed.

But, hey - let's not let all that ruin our day or anything.  In fact, we should look for something heart-warming and sentimental to keep us from thinking too hard about how fucked up all this is. So here's the story about a dog named Lemon Pay who was mutilated by bad guys in a Mexican drug gang:

A dog named Pay de Limon (Lemon Pay) runs, fitted with two front prosthetic legs at Milagros Caninos rescue shelter in Mexico City, on August 29, 2012. Members of a drug gang in the Mexican state of Zacatecas chopped off Limon’s paws to practice cutting fingers off kidnapped people, according to Milagros Caninos founder Patricia Ruiz. Fresnillo residents found Limon in a dumpster bleeding and legless.

After administering first aid procedures, they managed to take him to Milagros Caninos, an association that rehabilitates dogs that have suffered extreme abuse. The prosthetic limbs were made at OrthoPets in Denver, Colorado, after the shelter was able to raise over $6,000.
(Reuters/Tomas Bravo)

So we send people to fight and to bleed and to die in a coupla of really stupid wars, and when they come home broken, we fuck them (and/or their families) around for a year or two while we complain about how expensive and difficult it all is.

But somebody finds a fucked up dog and holy crap, dude - better get on that one right away cuz y'know - the Mexicans can pay us in cash up front and everything.

And Jesus wept.

(ed note: really hoping the dog story isn't an April Fools thing - that would really mellow my harsh)

Today's Best Post

a perfect little quickie from Democratic Underground:

...women don't belong in combat.  Neither do men.

Sen Jim Webb, (D-VA)

Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They’ve lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did. But in receiving veterans’ benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: “All gave some, some gave all.” This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.

And not only did they pay. They will not say this, so I will say it for them. They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party’s nomination to be commander-in-chief. And they are owed much more than that — a guarantee that we will never betray the commitment that we made to them and to their loved ones.

The New Navy

From Addicting Info:

Since its launch 18 months ago, the USS Independence has come down with a severe case of corrosion. You see, the hull construction is a composite structure with some components utilizing steel, and other components using aluminum. If you expose an item made up of both steel and aluminum to an environment containing an electrolyte, such as seawater, it produces galvanic corrosion...

So the US Navy will be able to continue America's totally righteous domination of the world - anywhere, any time - except in places where they have oceans.

An Aha Moment

"Conservatives" will always argue against making any serious cuts in Defense Spending by trying to make it all about National Security.  They have to ignore the 6 million American jobs that are directly dependent on the Pentagon because of course, "gubmint don't create no jobs", so they have to rationalize the flat-out waste of things like F-22 and F-35, the B-1 and the B-2, and the maintenance of a Doomsday Capable nuclear arsenal etc etc etc.  Hey, ya just never know when them Rooskies might start feelin' peckish, so we need to be ready.

I have to admit, I've been a little reluctant to hack away at the military budget because of the those jobs.  I remember a few times when cutbacks put a lot of good people out of work and had a pretty bad ripple affect across the economy; and I remember thinking Reagan's huge deficits were OK because the gi-normous military buildup was really just a federal jobs program in disguise.

But guess what.  Turns out it was mostly bullshit.  Imagine that - somebody with a vested interest in keeping the money flowing telling me stories about jobs that weren't really true just to keep the money flowing.  Sometimes, my own ignorance and gullibility shocks even myself.

So here it is - a new look from The National Priorities Project, and The Project For Defense Alternatives

hat tip = Wonkette

Here's the PERI link

Here's the PDA link

Disclaimer: Everybody's playing an angle of some kind, but not all angles are equal.

Service To Their Country

This young man is a great example of who we want serving in a professional military, and a perfect example of what we stand to lose when we make stupid decisions on what we want those pros to do.

Col Wilkerson

When I piss and moan about 'honor', this is part of what I have in mind.

Larry Wilkerson is no hero owing to the simple fact that he didn't say any of this when he was in a position to make it stick, and to make a difference by coming out with it. It's possible that he was just too close to the problem at the time; or that he was living the nightmare scenario for any military pro, where you start to get the feeling that the people in charge are leading you off the cliff, but your training and experience are telling you just to keep your head down and do the work. "Theirs not to reason why" and all that shit.

In the end, though, every soldier has to make a judgement call as to whether or not his orders are inside the legal and ethical boundaries. You don't ever stop being responsible for your own actions.



Watch the whole series here.

For Memorial Day

Here's another one that bears repeating, particularly on this day.