Category: Uncategorized

Memorial Day

In Memoriam:

If your Memorial Day has been like mine, there has been little time to stop and remember those who gave their lives for our nation.

Join me, if you would, in taking a moment to reflect upon all of the men and woman who died in service of the United States.

The casualty lists for every war this Republic has been engaged in, right back to the Revolution, is linked, if you’re interested.

I confined myself to a small subset of that with a visit to the military cemetery at Fort Lawton. I took some pictures, none of which I have processed. But mostly I walked around and took in the ages and names of those resting there. In some ways it was like a small town churchyard, with families buried near one another, old men and women, infants and children all represented.

One marker stood out for me — a young man, born when I was 9, and under that marker before I was 30, a casualty of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. There were some mentions of Vietnam, Korea, WWII, even one veteran of the Civil War and Spanish American War. But none quite so disheartening as that.

On my way there, I was listening to radio broadcast of a Vietnam-era nurse describing her experiences. It was pretty awful to listen to but worse to endure.

Kunstler’s weekly jeremiad

Left a comment on We Want Solutions!:

The eco-advocates want cars, too, and all the prerogatives (like free parking and country living) that go with them, just like the WalMart shoppers. If this were not so, then why do the eco-advocates cream in their jeans whenever somebody presents a snazzy new vehicle that runs on a fuel other than gasoline? Indeed, why are some of the eco-friendly pouring all their efforts into the invention of such things instead of into walkable communities and the reform of our stupid land-use laws?

Because they see the first part of your complaint — solutions that fit into the way we live now — as a transitional step to the way we used to live and perhaps will again. Not all of us are writers without kids and their attendant school functions, athletic endeavors, etc. It’s all very well to post these weekly jeremiads but if you admit the changes that need to be made are deeply systemic and therefor difficult, why sneer at people who are taking steps, no matter how small (in your jaundiced view) they may be?

“We didn’t go in with a plan. We went in with a theory”

This Memorial Day will make two consecutive months that 100 US soldiers have died in Iraq[*]. This president’s stubbornness means that 2,000 more will be dead by the time he leaves office. Unless….

For all of…:

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) recently said he “won’t be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq” by September. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said he’ll need to see “significant changes” by September. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) wants a change if the policy isn’t working “by the time we get to September.” Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) said, “There is a sense that by September, you’ve got to see real action on the part of Iraqis. I think everybody knows that, I really do.”
We’ll see. Anyone who has ever bet on congressional Republicans bucking the White House on war policy has lost money. Either way, whether war supporters like it or not, September is circled on DC’s calendar.

3 Septembers ago, we learned that no one planned for the occupation, to the point of ignoring the possibility of one.

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 10/17/2004 | Post-war planning non-existent:

WASHINGTON – In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration’s plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon’s plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners’ parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material – and for good reason.

The slide said: “To Be Provided.”

A Knight Ridder review of the administration’s Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country. The administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country shattered by war, a brutal dictatorship and economic sanctions.

In fact, some senior Pentagon officials had thought they could bring most American soldiers home from Iraq by September 2003. Instead, more than a year later, 138,000 U.S. troops are still fighting terrorists who slip easily across Iraq’s long borders, diehards from the old regime and Iraqis angered by their country’s widespread crime and unemployment and America’s sometimes heavy boots.

“We didn’t go in with a plan. We went in with a theory,” said a veteran State Department officer who was directly involved in Iraq policy.

Theories work best when they’re based on empirical facts: ignore them at your peril.

Bush ignored spy agencies’ warnings on Iraq, Senate panel says – International Herald Tribune:

The 2003 assessments used strong language in warning about the possible rifts within a postwar Iraq.

“Iraq would be unlikely to split apart, but a post-Saddam authority would face a deeply divided society with a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so,” one assessment said. It warned of “score-settling” and “heightened competition for power among the different groups.”

The assessment left to its last sentence a striking, if understated, preview of the insurgency. “Rogue ex-regime elements could forge an alliance with existing terrorist organizations or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare against the new government or coalition forces,” it said.

Sounds like they’re following the script pretty well.

Sunday Discussion Group:

“The higher casualty rate is a result of Dubya’s ‘surge’ strategy of increasing the visibility of our military presence in Iraq — and if that approach is kept up through the end of his term, 2,000 more Americans will have died by the end of January, 2009…. Every Democrat or other progressive with access to a microphone, TV camera, or keyboard can help by reminding people that those 2,000 lives are the price we’re going to pay for not putting an end to the war.”

3,300+ so far, 2,000 more to come, and for what?

As Brad Delong often says:

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach him now. Impeach Richard Cheney too. And Condi Rice. And Stephen Hadley. And Donald Rumsfeld. And Colin Powell. And George Tenet. And everyone on any of their staffs. Do it now.

phrase of the day: War Trolls

For Whom the Bell Trolls:

Perle, Bolton and co often pontificate on the unique moral evil of terrorism. But in their contempt for human life and their appetite for war they are not that different from Osama bin Laden. Unlike Osama, they will not be found in the Hindu Kush carrying a Kalashnikov. They are war trolls, endlessly manipulating the public from TV studios. In this sense they are more like the Roman senators who grew rich and fat while the legions went out to ‘create a wasteland and call it peace’, as Tacitus once put it.

[tip of the straw boater to Wolcott]