I’m not usually inclined to quibble (too much) with anything that exposes the pile of horseshit upon which any of US Inc.’s so-called wars, past and present, are built. But still, this notion (see the block quote from “Davis’s unclassified paper” a little past the halfway point of the article) that congress only continued to go along (for ten years) with the occupation of Afghanistan because it was deceived by the military into believing that things were going much better than they actually were is just too much. Congress knows exactly as much as congress wants to know—which, granted, isn’t much, considering all of the various contracts on the line and the kickbacks your local representative can expect for being a reliable yes-vote whenever it comes time to decide whether to keep the money flowing into the war services industry.
Category Archives: war
When the national religion is war…
This is possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever read, and literally not worth the minute it takes to read it. So here’s the shorter version: Americans so strongly support the troops because it’s the one issue, in our hopelessly fractured political culture, upon which we can all agree and thus satisfy our collective yearning for a sense of national unity. And here I thought it was because we’ve been fed a relentless barrage of propaganda our entire lives about how the soldiers fight and die to protect our freedoms and only an ingrate or a heretic would fail to profess his support.
Happy War Glorification Day
Remember to take a little time out today from stuffing your faces with hot dogs and drinking beer to pay tribute to the brave men and women who are busy protecting your freedom by killing people who have no intention of doing you harm, in places you’ve never heard of.
Fucking and Killing
Not long after this story initially broke, we had some family over for dinner and the subject was brought up. There was much agreement about what a disgrace it was, and then one person said, “They should all be fired and replaced with veterans returning from overseas.” I love how it’s a “scandal” that a bunch of dudes on business—oh, but it’s official government business of the utmost importance, and our tax money!—in a foreign country hired women for sex. I mean, who ever heard of such a thing?! Seriously, it strains all credulity to think that any grown person, even an American, could in any way be shocked by this. Meanwhile, of course, the ongoing slaughter of children with remote control airplanes elicits not a peep of (for-public-consumption) outrage from our illustrious elected idiots and the media organs that serve them. And best of all, we get to watch Joe Lieberman, the man who gets a hard on just thinking about dropping bombs on people in sandy, faraway places, play arbiter of good taste and proper moral conduct. Americans can spill all the blood they want. But as soon as they start spilling semen, look out—heads are gonna roll!
History 101
So far, no one has a clear answer for why the Afghan sergeant turned his AK-47 on Huling, shooting him in the stomach and killing him.
For a country that celebrates its own armed insurgency against a foreign imperial power (well, its own government, actually, but nevermind) every July 4th—not only celebrates it but views it as its defining act—America sure has a difficult time wrapping its head around the whole occupier-occupiee relationship.
Accused killer rescued kittens, helped old ladies across the street, neighbors say
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the media has been working overtime to make excuses and drum up sympathy for our fallen hero, who must have been driven to this aberrant act by something other than just a total disregard for the lives of the people he murdered. The good guys just don’t do this type of thing, not without a good reason anyway.
Just check out this list of headlines from over the weekend:
Afghan shooting spree: soldier’s revenge for wounded colleague?
Soldier accused in Afghanistan shooting recalled in Ohio city as genial, smart football star
Soldier accused in Afghanistan massacre is family man, reports say
Army sergeant accused of Afghan killings struggled to pay bills, passed over for promotion
My favorite has got to be the last one. Willy Loman with an M-16. There were a couple of mentions, almost in passing, of an assault on a girlfriend and an arrest for fleeing the scene of a hit-and-run. Something tells me that if he had shot up his own base or climbed a bell tower at a university back in Washington State and started picking off co-eds, we’d be hearing a lot more about these warning signs of anti-social behavior and a lot less about how he was just a family man struggling to make ends meet.
A Very Rare Occurrence
“Bowman” is Pentagon spokesman Tom Bowman. Sorry, make that NPR’s Pentagon correspondent.
Interesting how when a lone soldier, or group of soldiers, takes it upon himself to massacre half a village, it’s described as “intentional killing of civilians” and a “crime,” whereas when a remote control airplane fires a missile into a civilian area and kills a bunch of, ah, civilians, it’s an accident. How unfair. Maybe the guy heard there were “insurgents” operating in the village and took a little initiative, you know, instead of waiting around for the drones to do it for him.
With peaceniks like these who needs warmongers?
I love the shameless stroking of Obama’s “national security cred”—based upon his willingness to continue to prosecute and expand upon Bush’s wars—in an article ostensibly denouncing “the warmongers” who want to attack Iran. Obama’s “made his bones on national security” by killing children with remote control airplanes. He might as well have said, “Hey, Mitt, how many kids have you killed with Predator drones? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now sit down and shut up.”
But we’re supposed to view Obama as the only option for peace because—so far—he hasn’t launched an attack on Iran. So what? There were plenty of people yammering about the threat from Iran back during the Bush regime, and he didn’t attack them either. I guess somebody should go on down to the ranch in Midland and present the man with a Nobel.
This is a variation on the pathetic argument that if Gore had been elected instead of Bush we would never have invaded Iraq, except instead of a hypothetical past reality we’re dealing with a hypothetical future reality—i.e., if Romney gets elected the tanks’ll be rolling into Tehran by Valentine’s Day. It’s also a pretty good illustration of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of lesser-evilist Dimbot apologists.
That’s a mighty impressive precision rifle you’ve got there, Sgt. Johnson
Echoing IOZ (echoing Rob Payne, here), I have to laugh at the hilariously backwards-ass notion of decorum on display from our intrepid news media. It’s one thing to kill a bunch of guys, and it’s another to pee on them. But to show the soldiers’ penises?(*) Why, that would be offensive!
My favorite bit, from the USA Today article quoted by Payne:
In the video, four men wearing what appear to be Marine combat uniforms are seen standing around three dead bodies, quietly talking and joking as the camera rolls. They are equipped with chest rigs, grenades, body armor and some specialized gear. One is holding a precision rifle.
Yes, a bunch of dudes standing over a pile of dead bodies with their dicks in their hands, and the most noteworthy aspect of the image is their gear? What is this, a feature for Soldier of Fortune Magazine? IOZ is right, there aren’t enough LOLs in the universe to do this justice.
(*Sorry, the “alleged” penises of “what appear to be” US soldiers.)
How’s that war on Iran going?
Regime change has probably been the goal for some time. The Bush administration had received from Congress funding for a program of support for rebel ethnic groups in Iran to work to undermine the government. President Obama recently issued a finding which extends existing initiatives and is intended to create insurgencies inside Iran, primarily by supporting Iranian dissident groups to conduct domestic terrorism and undermine the Iranian regime.
For years now, a concerted covert U.S. campaign of cyber-terrorism, commercial sabotage, targeted assassinations, and proxy wars has been under way in Iran.
It’s good to see yet another instance where Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-chief, has taken the war baton from Bush and run with it. I can hear the apologists now: “Yeah, but if Romney gets elected, he’ll probably bomb Iran, and who knows what McCrazy would have done if he had won in ’08. Probably would have nuked Tehran.”
And here’s your gratuitous rhetorical question of the day: Since we’re busy funding domestic terrorism in Iran, does that mean we’re going to put ourselves on that list of rogue nations, or does it only count as “terrorism” when somebody does it to us (or Israel)?
Pissing in the wind 