Comments on: Mr. President: When are you going to stop beating your wife?

By: rmp

rmp — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:29:20 +0000

From this U.S. News and World Report story, it looks like civilian deaths have really gotten top level attention. The “protect the troops argument” can’t always win when you win battles and lose the war. Probably no matter how we fight, we will still end up losing a lot more than we will gain.

Civilian Casualties Could End Airstrike Support
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2009/06/17/civilian-casualties-could-end-airstrike-support.html

By: William Timberman

William Timberman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:25:27 +0000

If we want to give them money, fine. Let’s fly over and kick it off the back ramps of C-141′s, C-17′s, C-130′s, whatever have you, and come back where we belong. Until we renounce this magisterial nonsense once and for all, until we can’t find anyone willing to sit in the middle of the White House, or the Pentagon, and express grave concerns about all those places in the world which have the temerity to ignore our advice, until we prevent the idiot Congresspeople who can’t even tie their own shoes from pontificating about what Iran’s government needs to do before we deign to speak to it, I’ll have no willing part of any of this.

I don’t really care whether we deem it monstrous, demi-benign, semi-enlightened, or unfortunately necessary. We have whole departments of government busily coining self-serving euphemisms for all manner of acts which are unjustifiable at best, and obscene at worst.

There must be someone in this country who still has a sense of shame. On would think….

By: rmp

rmp — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:08:11 +0000

I’m not in favor of being in Afghanistan either, but no one is going to listen to us, so we might as well use the money to better their lives, not to bring democracy. From what I am reading, I don’t think Hillary, Barack or Holbrooke have democracy as a goal either. It’s better to live in the villages so those damn drones and their Las Vegas pilots will stay the hell away.

Here’s some thoughts from my favorite senator about the general:
Senator accuses general of misleading Congress over torture
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/17/senator-accuses-general-of-misleading-congress-over-torture/

By: dirigo

dirigo — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:05:05 +0000

We need to teach men and women how to fish, not fish for them.

There’s some psychology for you …

By: William Timberman

William Timberman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:56:21 +0000

I'm sorry, rmp, but I find this especially depressing: winning hearts and minds. Not our hearts to win. Not our minds. We have absolutely no excuse for being there in the first place. Imagine the Mexican Policia Federal strutting up and down your street, telling you about democracia, handing out dulces to your grandkids, and pointing machine guns at you in intersections. Until we understand what that feels like, it doesn't matter what fucking general we send to places where he doesn't belong, especially not one deluded enough to think that he owns it.

By: cocktailhag

cocktailhag — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:25:58 +0000

They’re wildly excited by their garden, which has been a great success, no disheartening deaths or failures so far. The co-op has officially joined the Cocktailhag fan club, evidenced only in part by the nice check they just cut for me. And Jeff and Amy upstairs still want to build a deck above, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be back before fall. I’ll of course keep you posted. This time we’ll try to make it a lazy, boozy dinner, rather than a crunch-time project thing.

By: rmp

rmp — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:25:49 +0000

Obama was so eager during the campaign to claim his expertise on Iraq and speaking out against it much earlier than most, that he championed “we should have concentrated on Afghanistan” too much. So he has complete ownership of the “right” v. the “wrong” war. No one has succeeded in Afghanistan and it is unlikely that Obama will.

Take all the war money and give it to the people to upgrade their lives. Stop the damn drug war and they will have to find other crops. Give them the means to protect themselves, instead of proteting them. Have an exit strategy, not if we are there long enough, we will eventually succeed. Right just like we did in Nam. We succeeded when we got the hell out of Nam even though it was not our choice.

Our biggest mistake as the most powerful nation in the world was to escalate our enemy to equal status. Hell, they were only a few thousand crazies and we let them scare the shit out of us.

By: dirigo

dirigo — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:10:23 +0000

Send Naomi and Ben my best, and keep me informed of your travels back East.

By: cocktailhag

cocktailhag — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:01:23 +0000

Hey, Dirigo, I just talked to Naomi, and that made me think of you. You’re right, of course, in the worst way… We are seeing Vietnam revisited, at least in the sense of no president wanting to “lose” a war, no matter how irretrievably lost it already is. Plus ca change, and all that. I’ll be out there again soon, by the way.
T

By: dirigo

dirigo — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:53:27 +0000

It “blows my mind” (as we used to say) to consider, as I am more and more inclined to do, that Afghanistan is looking – more and more – like Vietnam.

“Hearts and minds.” [Destroy the village in order to save it.] Drop a two thousand pounder and hope for the best. Rationalize it to the natives who have no clue about our rationality and justifications.

Hello?

Let’s up the ante to nearly 50,000 troops and ship some more two thousand pounders.

And then what?

I’m staggering away from my computer screen and rubbing my eyes as I reflect on the continuing torture saga, considering use of the god damn psychologists who had influence on it, and whether releasing more “sadistic” pictures will lead to harming our troops. Apparently the shrinks have been re-hired, the pictures held back for now.

What is the “psychology” of the intelligence community today, and that of the military? And how is that being “spun” to justify the atrocities committed at Gitmo, and other travesties, such as the bombing cited here? How could the new pictures be explained? What would be the point, since the initial “tranche” pretty much said it all? It’d be a bit redundant wouldn’t it, like trying to make the rubble bounce?

Ah hah! Have a joint press conference, presided over by the Pentagon’s public affairs officer, the shrinks, and Gen. Mc Crystal, as he appears in our foggy glasses to look like a clone of both Gen. Westmoreland and Gen. Abrams.

Oz is Oz, and it’s deja vu all over again.

It’s almost impossible for me, having some experience in the military during certain famous fateful days of yore, to imbibe in this; which is why, perversely, I crank up the Stones when “depressed” on rainy, windy nights (I’m resisting providing another provocative You Tube link however).

But hell, if you’re going to be perverse – or subversive – you might as well go all the way.

Sympathy for the devil …