military
mikethemadbiologist | November 11, 2007The WarDefense Department claims that 'only' 30,000 U.S. servicemen have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that number is a gross underestimate:
On Veterans Day, politicians will praise the 30,000 troops "officially wounded" in action in Iraq and Afghanistan as if this "statistic" were some kind of "fact." In doing so, they'll harm the men and women who carry the burden of our nation's defense in today's very dangerous world.
That 30,000 number is a fantasy.
Here's the truth about the human cost borne by the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as shown by data from the U.S. Department…
mikethemadbiologist | October 21, 2007Get ready for some more conservative cognitive dissonance: man finds Jesus and comes to believe that the occupation of Iraq is immoral:
A U.S. soldier who said his Christian beliefs compelled him to love his enemies, not kill them, has been granted conscientious objector status and honorably discharged, a civil liberties group said on Tuesday.
Capt. Peter Brown -- who served in Iraq for more than a year and was a graduate of the elite U.S. military academy West Point -- said in a statement issued by the New York Civil Liberties Union that he was relieved the Army had recognized his beliefs…
mikethemadbiologist | October 16, 2007Twelve Army captains who served in Iraq conclude the following:
Iraqi security forces would not be able to salvage the situation. Even if all the Iraqi military and police were properly trained, equipped and truly committed, their 346,000 personnel would be too few. As it is, Iraqi soldiers quit at will. The police are effectively controlled by militias. And, again, corruption is debilitating. U.S. tax dollars enrich self-serving generals and support the very elements that will battle each other after we're gone.
This is Operation Iraqi Freedom and the reality we experienced. This is what we…
mikethemadbiologist | October 9, 2007What's one more criminal in the mix, anyway? So what if a government contractor supplied weapons to Liberia's Charles Taylor and the Taliban (italics mine):
Viktor Bout, was paid tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars while illegally flying transport missions for the United States in Iraq. Bout is the notorious Russian weapons merchant whose fleet of aging Soviet aircraft rivals that of some NATO countries in its size and capacity. By marrying his access to Soviet bloc weapons with his airlift capacity, Bout established himself as the world's premiere purveyor of illicit weapons to the…
mikethemadbiologist | October 7, 2007The Washington Post has an excellent story about the WWII interrogators of high level Nazis. Unlike the minions of Little Lord Pontchartrain, they managed to gather intelligence without torture:
When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.
Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about…
mikethemadbiologist | September 29, 2007Maha on how violent resistance often fails over the long run:
Every time a peaceful resistance is put down, somebody is bound to say they should have used guns. But when an armed insurgency is put down, or when it turns into a cycle of violence and vengeance dragging on for generations, for some reason this doesn't count against the effectiveness of armed insurgency. And how often does the residual anger from one war blossom into the next one?
In fact, I'd say nonviolent resistance has a pretty good track record, particularly as far as long-term results are concerned.
Of course, many of the…
mikethemadbiologist | September 27, 2007Protester in Myanmar (from here)
I don't have much to add about the situation in Myanmar; maha has some good posts about it, along with AmericaBlog. But the above picture is a study in contrasts.
The foreground speaks for itself, but if you look at the upper left background, you'll see an advertisement for the movie 300. To my mind, 300 represents a juvenile, fantastical crusade for freedom from dictatorship. But unlike 300, most struggles against dictatorships and juntas during the last century have not involved smashing things, bellowing, and rippling abdominals, but ordinary people,…
mikethemadbiologist | September 25, 2007If "Gathering of Eagles" needs a new emblem, this one is currently available
At the recent anti-war protest in Washington D.C., a pro-war group known as "Gathering of Eagles" assaulted Carlos Arredondo, a father of a Marine killed in Iraq:
Carlos Arredondo, 47 year old father of two sons, arrived in the nation's capitol on Monday, 09/10/07 to share a memorial he has made to honor for his eldest son, Alex. Carlos has visited thirty of the United States with the traveling memorial to his son Alexander. Lcpl. Alexander S. Arredondo, USMC was killed on 08/25/04. He was 20 years and 20 days old.…
mikethemadbiologist | September 8, 2007...attack Iran. Bartcop describes his correspondence with a U.S. naval officer (via maha--thanks...; italics mine):
I have a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. (LSO: Landing Signal Officer- she directs carrier aircraft while landing) She told me we are going to attack Iran. She said that all the Air Operation Planning and Asset Tasking are finished. That means that all the targets have been chosen, prioritized, and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers, missile cruisers and so forth....
Always…
mikethemadbiologist | August 7, 2007I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago, but meetings and work blew up on me. But just because the story is old, that doesn't mean the crazy has gone away. Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Boyda of Kansas recounted a conversation she had with a rightwing talk show host:
And finally, I would just like to share a story. When I was speaking back at home with one of a very right wing conservative talk show hosts and after, thank God, after we were off the air, I said something that I assumed he would agree with and I just said 'you know, I'm really worried about these guys and gals, but mainly…
mikethemadbiologist | July 29, 2007Thomas Bewick is best known as the eighteenth century's premier woodcut engraver and ornithologist. His ornithology books were so well-written that they were popular for a century after his death. However, he was also a passionate political activist, who had seen what war did to his country and his fellow citizens' liberties. Bewick wrote (italics original; from Nature's Engraver by Jenny Ungow):
One would think that the gaining of Worlds, would not compensate the misery & horrid waste of human life, which are the certain attendants of War, and one would wonder, what kind of materials…
mikethemadbiologist | May 31, 2007Matt Stoller makes a very interesting observation about Senator Obama, although I think it could apply to most of the presidential candidates in both parties. Stoller writes:
But I think a lot of this kind of nonsense has to do with a basic lack of responsibility among citizens. Last week, I spoke to a friend who graduated from Harvard Law and just got done clerking for a high level judge. He's smart and highly credentialled, and he supports Obama because he thinks Obama doesn't believe in American exceptionalism and will decolonize our foreign policy. I walked him through the rhetoric…
mikethemadbiologist | May 28, 2007Let's contrast Thomas Friedman with Mark Twain this Memorial Day. Thomas Friedman on the Charlie Rose Show, May 30, 2003:
I think it [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie....
We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, take out a very big state right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it....
What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?"
You don't think, you know, we care about our…
mikethemadbiologist | May 16, 2007The 'godly' singing "The Old Rugged Cross." Or something
The last thing most people in the Coalition of the Sane want when they are being treated for a serious illness in the hospital to have the staff try to convert you to another religion. And when you force a sick patient to choose between following the dictates of his religion or not eating in an effort to convert him, that is not 'godly', that is inhumane. It's also par for the course for Christopathic Uruk-hai.
From the Des Moines Register (italics mine):
U.S. Navy veteran David Miller said that when he checked into the Veterans…
mikethemadbiologist | May 12, 2007One of the odd ideas to have arisen is that one can have a good idea, but not express it well. With rare exceptions, in my experience, that isn't the case: poorly communicated ideas are usually a result of poor ideas. With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to revisit one of former Secretary of War Defense Donald Rumsfeld's utterances.
While reading this, keep in mind that Rumsfeld once told Paul Wolfowitz (yes, that Wolfowitz) that one should "Begin with an illogical premise and proceed logically to an illogical conclusion." Here's a classic Rumsfeld:
The message is that…
mikethemadbiologist | May 7, 2007I've made this point before: when you use the National Guard as a backdoor draft, instead of civil defense and disaster relief, people suffer. From Kansas:
The rebuilding effort in tornado-ravaged Greensburg, Kansas, likely will be hampered because some much-needed equipment is in Iraq, said that state's governor.
Governor Kathleen Sebelius said much of the National Guard equipment usually positioned around the state to respond to emergencies is gone. She said not having immediate access to things like tents, trucks and semitrailers will really handicap the rebuilding effort.
The Greensburg…
mikethemadbiologist | March 27, 2007I ask this seriously. Among rank and file Democrats, there is a common belief that Democratic politicians are being dragged to right by the need for compromise. But I don't think that's the case with Clinton: she is a conservative Southern Democrat without the regional accent. And the southern blue dogs have been pretty weak on the Iraq Occupation. From Matt Stoller (italics mine):
There is just no way that she can say that she will end the war and that she will continue a military mission in Iraq to contain extremists and ward off Iran. Those are mutually exclusive. As Matthew…
mikethemadbiologist | March 25, 2007A story in the NY Times about a very interesting Israeli group, Breaking the Silence (Shovrim Shtika), finally got me motivated to blog about it (I've been meaning to for a while). Here's one bit from the article that was interesting (italics mine):
At the recent talk and discussion session, one man stood and said Mr. Manekin and his friends were hurting Israel, especially its image abroad, in order to salve their own consciences. Many in the audience nodded in agreement. Tall and dignified, about 45, the man said that he, too, had served in the West Bank, "and I'm proud of what I did there…
mikethemadbiologist | March 18, 2007Many of you will know of Freeman Dyson as a world-class physicist. But he was also assigned to RAF Bomber Command during World War II. Here are his thoughts on bombing of urban areas, from Disturbing the Universe:
At the beginning of the war, I believed fiercely in the brotherhood of man, called myself a follower of Gandhi, and was morally opposed to all violence. After a year of war, I retreated and said, Unfortunately nonviolent resistance against Hitler is impracticable, but I am still morally opposed to bombing. A couple of years later I said, Unfortunately it seems that bombing is…
mikethemadbiologist | March 17, 2007This is from the ACT UP protest against Joint Chief of Staff General Pace's bigoted remarks:
Not exactly a position paper, but if you're not laughing, you need a humor transplant.