Category Archives: Military & War

“Leaving Iraq, Honorably”

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“The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation — regardless of our noble purpose.

We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.”

[Chuck Hagel, Republican senator from Nebraska – washingtonpost.com]

The Fog of War

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The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a documentary film directed by Errol Morris and released in December 2003.

The film depicts the life of Robert Strange McNamara, United States Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, through the use of archival footage, White House recordings, and most prominently, an interview of McNamara at the age of 85. The subject matter spans from McNamara’s work as one of the “Whiz Kids” during World War II and at Ford to his involvement in the Vietnam War as the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson

1. Empathize with your enemy.
2. Rationality will not save us.
3. There’s something beyond one’s self.
4. Maximize efficiency.
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
6. Get the data.
7. Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
10. Never say never.
11. You can’t change human nature.

We have learned none of McNamara’s lessons. A powerful documentary. And, please, you can’t have an opinion about this movie unless you’ve seen it. Happy to discuss with anyone that has.

The Secret Letter from Iraq

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Written last month, this straightforward account of life in Iraq by a Marine officer was initially sent just to a small group of family and friends. His honest but wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate, the Pentagon spin masters and fierce critics.

Biggest Outrage — Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq, not that I get to watch much TV. Their thoughts are consistently both grossly simplistic and politically slanted. Biggest Offender: Bill O’Reilly.

Best Chuck Norris Moment — 13 May. Bad Guys arrived at the government center in a small town to kidnap the mayor, since they have a problem with any form of government that does not include regular beheadings and women wearing burqahs. There were seven of them. As they brought the mayor out to put him in a pick-up truck to take him off to be beheaded (on video, as usual), one of the Bad Guys put down his machinegun so that he could tie the mayor’s hands. The mayor took the opportunity to pick up the machine gun and drill five of the Bad Guys. The other two ran away. One of the dead Bad Guys was on our top twenty wanted list. Like they say, you can’t fight City Hall.

Take a couple of minutes to read the entire letter.

“Baghdad Is Burning”

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The following is an excerpt from a dispatch written by William Langewiesche to his editors in June of this year (2006) and published in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine. I was unable to find the full text online but will watch for it and post link if/when I find it.

“The government is hardly a government at all. There is some small hope–a last, residual hope–that the new prime minister may be able to pull things together, and through force (rather than conciliation) keep the civil war from growing. Nobody really expects it to happen, and they give him at most a few months. Afterward? The middle class is trying desperately to get passports and take refuge elsewhere, especially in Damascus and Amman. Meanwhile, a small group of elected officials and high bureaucrats, most interested mainly in stealing as much as they can before they escape the country, huddle in the Green Zone, protected by American forces, going through the motions of governing. The money they take comes for the most part from the United States, though apparently the on-again, off-again oil production is also making some people very rich. On every level corruption here is pervasive, inescapable, and beyond anyone’s ability to contain.”

War on Terrorism

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John Seery (at The Huffington Post) thinks George Bush has lost the war on terrorism:

“Let’s face it: Osama bin Laden, holed up in his cave somewhere, must be laughing at us. He’s calling the shots, and he really doesn’t have to lift a finger. Why? George Bush is doing his bidding. His administration has suspended many civil liberties and deftly defied the U.S. Constitution. Junked the Geneva Convention. Tortured prisoners. Oversaw criminal acts at Abu Ghraib. Ignored due process at Guantanamo. Engaged in domestic spying without court supervision. Flushed billions down the toilet in Iraq. Weakened our military readiness. Set much of the world against us. The Middle East is now ablaze in terrorism. At home, we live constantly in “elevated fear” levels (whether color coded or not). Our internal politics have become poisonously divided, not united. Osama bin Laden is playing George Bush like a cheap fiddle.”

For some reason, Seery’s post reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984 (Amazon notes):

“Oceania is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant “correction” of such records. “‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'”

Update: Ashcroft Finds Private-Sector Niche – “Former U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft, whose tenure saw the creation of a burgeoning homeland security industry, has emerged as the highest-ranking former Bush administration official to lobby for and invest in companies in that field.” [MSNBC]

Kissinger: U.S. okay with communist S. Vietnam

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“Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger quietly acknowledged to China in 1972 that Washington could accept a communist takeover of South Vietnam if that evolved after a withdrawal of U.S. troops – even as the war to drive back the Communists dragged on with mounting deaths.”

This little nugget (reported by the Associated Press) was discovered in a collection of papers gathered from documents available at the U.S. government’s National Archives.

I only mention it here because it brought back fond memories of those days. I was working hard to keep my draft deferment and stay out of Vietnam. As I recall, it was important that we get on over to Vietnam so we could stop the commies. The deaths of 60 thousand Americans was considered (by our leaders) a small price to pay to “STOP COMMUNISM!”

And then one day someone in Washington decided, “You know what? I think I’m okay with letting the commies have South Vietnam. But see if you can get ’em to wait until we’re outta there.”

And it’s one, two three…what are we fightin’ for?

Good war?

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Wow. Leave it to Dilbert’s dad to make a reasonable case for attacking Iraq. Assume for a moment that it was something along these lines that put us in Iraq… would it have made sense to make such an argument to the American people? Maybe even let us vote on it? And, for the record, I no longer consider the bought-and-paid-for suits in DC as representing my interests. I’m suggesting a vote of the people. Or, perhaps, everyone but me understood from the beginning that this is what the war was about.

Army will allow tattoos on formerly forbidden body spots

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The Army says it will allow soldiers to sport tattoos on formerly forbidden body spots — the hands and the back of the neck. About 28 percent of Americans under 25 say they have tattoos. Of those aged 25 to 34, the percentage is about 30 percent. Young adults are 10 times more likely to sport permanent skin illustrations than are members of their parents’ generation. [Thanks, Jeff] Previous posts on “tattoos.”

Scott Adams on Best and Worst Jobs

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Scott Adams finds it interesting that the guy with the best job in the world gets to blow up the guy with the worst job in the world.

“I have to think that the guy who fired the rocket by remote control loves his job. I have an image of him sitting in an air conditioned headquarters someplace, feet up on the desk, a bag of Cheetohs on one side, a Budweiser on the other, staring at his computer screen. It’s about 1 am and everyone else is asleep. The order comes through on e-mail saying something like “Blow up mud hut #4,7855.” So he takes a break from playing Doom and plugs that number into the GPS system and soon his drone is hovering over said mud hut, missiles ready to go.”

Let’s add Scott Adams to the short list of people I’d like to drink beer with after work.

Thou shalt not terminate with extreme sanction

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Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson calling for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a leftist who sits atop the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East:

“If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.”