These Blackwater videos taken in Iraq are appalling. I’m not sure which one is the worst, but running over a women and just continuing on without so much as radioing for help has to be up there.
Remember- they hate us for our freedom.
by John Cole| 51 Comments
This post is in: War, War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Sociopaths
These Blackwater videos taken in Iraq are appalling. I’m not sure which one is the worst, but running over a women and just continuing on without so much as radioing for help has to be up there.
Remember- they hate us for our freedom.
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, War, Bring on the Brawndo!, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment, The Dirty F-ing Hippies Were Right
James Fallows pointed me to this depressingly smart piece by Stephen M. Walt, up now at the Foreign Policy website. Walt gives us 10 lessons we should learn from our Iraq fiasco, from number 1 — we lost — through the point Fallows highlights, number 3, in which we learn what happens when the political and media Villages rush to outdo each other in feckless groupthink and morally bankrupt cheerleading folly.*
Because it is not clear if any U.S. approach would have succeeded at an acceptable cost, the real lesson of Iraq is not to do stupid things like this again.
The U.S. military has many virtues, but it is not good at running other countries. And it is not likely to get much better at it with practice. We have a capital-intensive army that places a premium on firepower, and we are a country whose own unusual, melting-pot history has made us less sensitive to the enduring power of nationalism, ethnicity, and other local forces.
Furthermore, because the United States is basically incredibly secure, it is impossible to sustain public support for long and grinding wars of occupation. Once it becomes clear that we face a lengthy and messy struggle, the American people quite properly begin to ask why we are pouring billions of dollars and thousands of lives into some strategic backwater. And they are right.
So my last lesson is that we shouldn’t spend too much time trying to figure out how to do this sort of thing better, because we’re never going to do it well and it will rarely be vital to our overall security. Instead, we ought to work harder on developing an approach to the world that minimizes the risk of getting ourselves into this kind of war again.
In between Walt’s insistence that we honestly confront our loss in Iraq and this rather pious last hope, this short essay examines many important, depressing truths. Read the whole thing. We’ll need to keep reminding selves and others of these desperately hard-won realizations, given that the usual suspects, only to willing to spend somebody else’s blood, are urging us into the next war.
<div align=”center”><iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/5vUDmFjWgVo” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
(And yes. I know I’ve posted this tune before. You gonna make something of it?)
*No matter how often I watch the Mustache of Understanding talk about “American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Bagdad,” his faux-macho willingness to send other folks kids to blow up still other folks and their kids makes me mouth vomit.
Image: Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen, (attr.) Laughing Fool, c. 1500.
[Cross posted at The Inverse Square Blog]
Things To Think About Before We Blow Sh*t UpPost + Comments (62)
by Zandar| 46 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, War
Looks like Bashar al-Assad is ready to deal.
The Syrian government has accepted U.N. envoy Kofi Annan’s plan to forge peace and end violence, Annan’s spokesman said on Tuesday.
Annan has offered Syria a six-point plan – supported by the U.N. Security Council – as a way to halt the violence.
The proposal seeks to stop the violence and the killing, give access to humanitarian agencies, release detainees, and start an inclusive political dialogue to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people, according to a U.N. statement.
Hey look. Smart power and stuff. It’s like it works or something, and that there are ugly foreign policy problems that can be solved without blowing things up. Can’t wait until the usual suspects tell us how awesome the United Nations suddenly is, and that President Whatshisface had nothing to do with this.
This post is in: Military, War, Assholes, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
I am not a lawyer. I was never an MP, and I only took a couple of low-level Psychology classes in college. I’m not remotely qualified to opine on the legal aspects of the events in Panjwej, Afghanistan last week. What is publicly known is that for reasons known only to him, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales left his encampment where he was attached to a Special Forces team, went into the nearby village, and there, by his own admission, killed sixteen people, eleven of whom were from the same family. He did this using his individual weapon, and a knife or bayonet. He wounded six others. At some point during this, he set several of the bodies on fire. He then returned to his camp, where he was questioned about the gunfire by the other Americans there. He apparently admitted having killed several people and then surrendered his weapon and was taken under arrest, at which point he demanded to see an attorney (reports indicate that he had a specific attorney in mind from the get-go) and refused to answer any further questions.
In the days since, we’ve heard various stories about how his personal finances were in difficulty, about how he had multiple combat tours and had been passed over for promotion, that he had a traumatic brain injury, and all sorts of things that people are coming up with to try and explain why he did what he did. A lot of it has a whiff of ‘the other’ to it, as if by discovering some unique personal tragedy or problem for SSG Bales, that the author could show how he is different from us and how this act is unique to Bales and, by implication, people like him. The short version of my response to this is “Bullshit.”
Hundreds of thousands of US Servicemembers have been diagnosed with PTSD. Tens of thousands have been diagnosed with TBI. Tens of thousands have both diagnoses. Only a handful have committed serious crimes, and only one is accused of murdering sixteen civilians in their beds. SSG Bales is, and of right ought to be permitted to put on whatever defense he finds most availing, in a trial that will be as fair as possible. Considering statements made by his lawyer, I believe that it is highly likely he will use some kind of a diminished capacity defense. Personally, I think that TBI and/or PTSD aside, he could very well just be an asshole.
I read a book a long time ago called Alone With the Devil: Famous Cases of a Courtroom Psychiatrist, by Ronald Markman, M.D. The title of the book refers to the fact that the forensic psychiatrist does his interviews with criminals and criminal suspects alone, and that there’s not a whole hell of a lot he can do if the subject decides to attack him. But he also refers, particularly in cases of true mental illness, to the fact that the patient himself is alone with the devil. And last, in discussing some people who “just snap”, he posits that we, all of us, are at some point in our lives, alone with the devil. Markman also cautions us that not everyone who does something really bad is mentally ill. One case he discusses at length concerns a woman who drove her car through a knot of pedestrians in Lake Tahoe, CA, and killed several of them. There was nothing wrong with her, mentally. She was just pissed off at the world, and decided that somebody was going to pay. In my own experience, I am convinced that Markman is right. The line between upstanding citizen and murderer is far thinner than most of us would imagine, or admit to imagining.
One attempt that gets kind of close to the truth of the matter, or as close as we can get with what we currently know, is this piece in the New Yorker, by George Packer.
In a sense, none of these facts matter. It shouldn’t be hard to see the bright line between war fatigue, or P.T.S.D., or whatever name you give it, and hunting down, shooting, and stabbing little children in their homes, and women and men, burning their bodies, and then returning to base and demanding a lawyer.
I am given to the irony that as one of the more prominent cheerleaders for war, Packer himself ought to think about issuing a couple of mea culpas but he doesn’t do so here.
My own feelings about this subject are much more eloquently expressed by Jason Fritz, writing at the Ink Spots blog:
This entire situation is sad – for the Army, for Bales and his family and his unit, and especially for the Afghans who lost loved ones. Let’s keep perspective on that. And let’s not take the easy way out and blame The Man for the actions of a man because it fits your narrative. That’s not justice and it’s irresponsible. Robert Bales is not the victim here – the victims are in Afghanistan.
What’s puzzling you is the nature of my gamePost + Comments (101)
by Betty Cracker| 142 Comments
This post is in: War, War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Assholes, WTF?
David Ignatius at WaPo released some tidbits from Osama bin Laden’s personal papers, which were seized after the SEAL team waxed the terror kingpin. I don’t know what I was expecting — a good old-fashioned Batman villain, maybe. But Osama comes across like the Brand Manager of the Sanitary Napkin Category at a backwater Koch Industries health and beauty products division. He fretted about consumer perceptions and brand equity, dispensed fancy titles like “Deputy Emir” to underlings and pulled together annual reports. The banality of evil still surprises.
After President Obama reversed Bush Administration policy and stopped using the phrase “Global War on Terror” to describe the twin clusterfucks in Iraq and Afghanistan and assorted US meddling worldwide, al Qaeda seriously contemplated a corporate identity overhaul in response. They felt that the more narrow focus on their own organization diluted the pan-Muslim jihadi image they were trying to project. It was like everyone was unfriending them on Facebook or something. Score one for President Obama, I suppose.
The big revelation: bin Laden wanted to assassinate President Obama because, according to bin Laden, “he is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Vice President] Biden take over the presidency… Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis.” Somewhat hilariously, the papers also reveal that al Qaeda believes Fox News lacks “objectivity.”
The Wingnutosphere isn’t sure what to make of the first revelation. Some are all, “O’dumbo is teh most unpreparered o’neegro evar at leest O’biden is wite thx for nothing o’sama u r a looser!” To a man, they are gleeful that al Qaeda dissed Fox News because obviously it follows that Fox News is the only network that embodies Judeo-Christian values. Or something like that.
One hopes further document dumps don’t reveal Osama’s fondness for “Walker, Texas Ranger” or “WrestleMania” reruns; the resulting plummet in nunchuck and novelty singlet sales might endanger the fragile economic recovery.
Here was my key takeaway from the Osama Papers: The Bearded Boogeyman who caused so much pain and suffering was, at heart, a middle-management marketing hack who happened to traffic in death and misery instead of cheap consumer goods. Had he possessed any true strategic acumen, bin Laden would have sent anonymous gift baskets to the Bush Administration and Fox News, who did more to check “Destroy America” off the al Qaeda to-do list than a thousand bumbling “Deputy Emirs.”
[X-posted at Rumproast]by $8 blue check mistermix| 135 Comments
This post is in: War
In the aftermath of the murders in Afghanistan, which became the site of a Taliban attack when government officials visited, the official line is that they will not affect the withdrawal strategy, and the unofficial line is that factions in the White House are pushing for an earlier withdrawal. Obama and Cameron are meeting in DC on Wednesday to reaffirm the 2013 pullout. The Guardian has an overview of civilian casualties, which are up 8% from last year.
Did I miss anything?
by DougJ| 126 Comments
This post is in: War
The public doesn’t want to bomb bomb Iran and even the liberal AIPAC gave Obama an standing ovation. So Obama’s right to call the Republicans’ bluff:
“This is not a game,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference at the White House timed to coincide with Super Tuesday voting in the Republican primaries in a number of crucial states. Mr. Obama gave a staunch defense of his administration’s actions to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions and said tough sanctions put in place by the United States and Europe were starting to work and were part of the reason Iran had returned to the negotiation table.
“The one thing we have not done is we have not launched a war,” Mr. Obama said. “If some of these folks think we should launch a war, let them say so, and explain to the American people.”
I’d call these idiots war-mongers but in a way that’s giving them too much credit: they’re not even trying to affect policy. Tebow gave them a rumored nuclear program, they’re just trying to make rumored-nuclear-programade. I have to admit that George Will put it best:
They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.
It’s just a rumor that was spread around townPost + Comments (126)