this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters
cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.
image and poem below the fold
Iraqis lower the body of a US airstrikes victim into the grave in Ramadi, Iraq, Monday Oct. 17 2005, . U.S. warplanes and helicopters bombed two villages near the restive city of Ramadi, killing an estimated 70 militants, the military said Monday, though witnesses said at least 39 of the dead were civilians.
(AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
What kinds of aircraft bombs will be used against me?
There are two types of bombs: fragmentation and blast bombs. Some fragmentation bombs can penetrate armored steel from 50 yards away. Blast bombs include fuel-air mixtures with multiple detonations. The first detonation, 5 to 10 meters above the ground, disperse a concentrated fuel mixture. The second detonation, a fraction of a second later, ignites the fuel while it is in the air. This creates a massive, deadly fireball.from What Every Person Should Know About War
by Chris Hedges
Chapter 4, Weapons and Wounds
Pages 47-48
Thistles
by Ted Hughes
Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.
Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up
From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.
Then they grow grey like men.
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.
– – –
view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)
support veterans for peace
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support the fallen
support the troops
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read This is what John Kerry did today, the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day
…renaming this series Iraq War Grief Every-Other-Daily Witness, since I’ve fallen off a bit lately from regular posting. Yesterday, when I didn’t post, I thought that I might be running out of steam.
Jerome a Paris asked “Why do you do this? It hurts.” I have to say that he’s got a point. I didn’t really have much of an answer for him then, and I don’t now, either.
I got another email from Alan Rowe’s sister, Diana, a couple of weeks ago. Alan’s wife, Dawn, has decided to run the Marine Corps Marathon on October 30th. She’s never done it before, but is training now in honor of her husband, and to raise money for TAPS – The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, Inc.
I made a small contribution, and wished Dawn the best of luck in her marathon – one step at a time.
I think that’s what I’ll do, too – just take it one step at a time.
Hey RubDMC, I think we need the regular reminder.
I believe that I have posted here before that I don’t always check this diary series, because the pain is sometimes difficult on a regular basis. However I agree with the user “roses”, in reply to the post you cited above that, “for me your diary is a vital dose of reality, and remembering is part of my civic duty.”
I totally disagree with any sentiment that your series should be discontinued.
Please, if you need a break from this series, take it, but don’t discontinue it completely.
Thanks.
I’m sure it gets to be a drag doing the same thing for so long. Please take a break if you need to.
But I agree–I read these every day, and it makes all the other bullshit disappear. People are being hurt and killed, and that’s all that matters. I hope you continue, because I find your series of dairies invaluable.
But please know how valuable and widely read this series is.
And the dearth of comments is deceptive; we read it, we just… have no words.
I’m grateful for whatever you do post. I need the visual reminders of what I never see and the poetic light of understanding. No harm in taking a break, just don’t quit. The pain is part of the path.
I too, do not check on a daily basis…sometimes it IS too much but we all need to remember that innocent people are dying on a daily basis. I thank you for reminding us. It is too easy to forget just how horrific the Bush Regime is.
Rub, even if you do take a break and do this every other day, I want you to know that I do read it and think it’s an important reminder to all of us that there is a war going on, and that it affects so many people, and goes beyond just the soldiers fighting the war. I hope you’ll continue.
.
Americans do not know the horror of war in Iraq, most people tune in on another TV channel.
Iraqis lower the body of a US airstrikes victim into the grave in Ramadi today. U.S. warplanes and helicopters bombed two villages near the restive city of Ramadi, killing an estimated 70 "militants", the U.S. military said, though witnesses said at least 39 of the dead were civilians. AP Photo/Bilal HusseinThanks so much for your daily coverage, it’s much needed.
The heart of neocon policy and American failure is … Iraq.
The Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson framing was about WMD and … Iraq.
The NYT Judith Miller cover on WMD search and her articles was all about … Iraq.
The LIES & DECEIT of the Bush-Cheney cabal was about going into … Iraq.
Chalabi, Bremer, Negroponte, Khalilzad as ambassadors were involved with … Iraq.
▼ ▼ ▼ READ MY DIARY!
I am very grateful for the reminders. Do what you need to do. If that means taking a break or staggering it a bit… that’s fine. Take care of YOU.
As to the photo… Those are small bodies… 🙁
DJ, I was just thinking the same thing! so sad….
As always, I review your diary. You know that. I sometimes comment or just acknoledge it. There are times I am not at home to comment. I just ask you to do what is best for you. I know it gets hard at times. War is not an easy thing to do something about. YOu have given many ites a valuable service. I, for one, applaud your endeverments here. Hugs and stay the good person that you are.
but I’ve always found that they give me … a bit of courage. They empower me to keep reading, keep thinking.
They allow me to SHARE as well. The Witness work has truly been an eye opener for me and friends here at the house.
((((Rub))))
I am glad for you DJ. I too find it rather like keeping my heart tuned in to reality, this way. HUgs
First: Please Continue Posting These, but there is no need to be a Daily unless you Feel The Need, We All Need to Remember what is Actually Going on! Those of us who have Experianced the Similar Already Know, but Without Regular News Coverage the Extreme Majority Fade It From Memory!!
Second: This is a Must Read Article
First As Posted On Veterans For Peace Board
it helps to reveal our Foreign Policy since the Eisenhower era, a policy that
failed us in Viet Nam and fails us today. Please pass it on to those
instumental in change.
As you can see I have sent it to VFP members in Maine. It should be sent on to
VFP members across the nation and to others working for peace. It is urgent
that we withdraw our US troops from Iraq and change the policy immediately.
Arthur
TO: Veterans for Peace, Maine From: Arthur Whitman, State Treasurer
The roots of our War Policy run deep into the Viet Nam era, into a period when
my own brother (an MIT Engineer and missile guidence systems scientist) was one
of McNamara’s “Whiz Kids”. We didn’t speak the same language; I contested his
assumptions. He sent me a tome on Thermonuclear War, the foundation document of
our Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) policy with the Soviets. Ultimate failure
in Viet Nam should have closed the book on Schelling’s policies, but it did not.
We continue them in Iraq, in Israel/Palestine.
Veterans for Peace members and those working for Peace will find this a “must
read’ as we work long-range toward a more peaceful world.
Arthur Whitman P.O. Box 586 Auburn ME 04210
awhitman@…
207/783-7865
______
Now The Article
http://slate.msn.com/id/2127862/
war stories All Pain, No Gain Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling’s little-known
role in the Vietnam War. By Fred Kaplan Posted Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2005, at 10:43
AM PT
Thomas C. Schelling won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences this week.
Today’s papers note his ingenious applications of “game theory” to labor
negotiations, business transactions, and arms-control agreements. But what they
don’t note-what is little-known in general-is the crucial role he played in
formulating the strategies of “controlled escalation” and “punitive bombing”
that plunged our country into the war in Vietnam.
This dark side of Tom Schelling is also the dark side of social science-the
brash assumption that neat theories not only reflect the real world but can
change it as well, and in ways that can be precisely measured. And it’s a legacy
that can be detected all too clearly in our current imbroglio in Iraq.
Schelling made his mark in 1960 with a book called The Strategy of Conflict, in
which he applied principles of bargaining to the practice of war. (He had been
an international trade negotiator in the 1940s, and while he wrote his book he
was a strategist at the RAND Corp., the Air Force think tank where nearly all
the defense intellectuals cut their teeth in those halcyon days.)
He saw war as essentially a violent form of bargaining. There were, he wrote,
“enlightening similarities between, say, maneuvering in limited war and
jockeying in a traffic jam, deterring the Russians and deterring one’s own
children . the modern balance of terror and the ancient institution of
hostages.”
The key dilemma among Cold Warriors of the day was the emerging nuclear parity
between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Dwight Eisenhower was
relying on a policy of “massive retaliation”-if the Soviets invaded Western
Europe, we would pummel their country with nuclear weapons. But if the Soviets
also had nukes, this policy would no longer be credible, because they could
strike back against our country, too. So, what to do?
Schelling’s answer was to retaliate “in a punitive sense” by “putting pressure
on the Russians” through “limited or graduated reprisals,” inflicting “civilian
pain and the threat of more”-in short by sending signals with force, upping the
ante in the bargaining round, intimidating them into backing down.
In his next book, Arms and Influence, published in 1966 but conceived a few
years earlier, he went further. “The power to hurt,” he wrote, “can be counted
among the most impressive attributes of military power. . To inflict suffering
gains nothing and saves nothing directly; it can only make people behave to
avoid it. . War is always a bargaining process,” and one must wage it in a way
to maximize “the bargaining power that comes from the capacity to hurt,” to
cause “sheer pain and damage,” because they are “the primary instruments of
coercive warfare.”
When, in the early months of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara were looking for ways to step up military action against
North Vietnam, they adopted Schelling’s concept.
The link was direct. McNamara’s closest adviser was an assistant secretary of
defense named John McNaughton, who had been friends with Schelling since their
days administering the Marshall Plan in Paris. They were both teaching at
Harvard when Schelling got a call to come work at the Pentagon; he didn’t want
the job, but he recommended McNaughton. His friend objected that he didn’t know
anything about arms and strategy, but Schelling told him that it was easy, that
he would teach him everything. And he did.
Schelling’s lessons can be seen clearly in the classified memorandums reproduced
in The Pentagon Papers, the top-secret history of the Vietnam War that Daniel
Ellsberg leaked to the New York Times.
On May 22, 1964, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy sent a memo to
President Johnson. “An integrated political-military plan for graduated action
against North Vietnam is being prepared under John McNaughton at Defense,” he
wrote. “The theory of this plan is that we should strike to hurt but not to
destroy, and strike for the purpose of changing the North Vietnamese decision on
intervention in the south.” Two days later, Bundy sent a follow-on note
recommending that the United States “use selected and carefully graduated
military force against North Vietnam,” that troops be deployed “on a very large
scale, from the beginning, so as to maximize their deterrent impact and their
menace. A pound of threat is worth an ounce of action-as long as we are not
bluffing.”
In an interview 25 years ago for a book that I was writing about the nuclear
strategists, Schelling told me what happened next. McNaughton came to see him.
He outlined the administration’s interest in escalating the conflict in order to
intimidate the North Vietnamese. Air power seemed the logical instrument, but
what sort of bombing campaign did Schelling think would best ensure that the
North would pick up on the signals and respond accordingly? More broadly, what
should the United States want the North to do or stop doing; how would bombing
convince them to obey; how would we know that they had obeyed; and how could we
ensure that they wouldn’t simply resume after the bombing had ceased?
Schelling and McNaughton pondered the problem for more than an hour. In the end,
they failed to come up with a single plausible answer to these most basic
questions. So assured when writing about sending signals with force and
inflicting pain to make an opponent behave, Tom Schelling, when faced with a
real-life war, was stumped.
He did leave McNaughton with one piece of advice: Whatever kind of bombing
campaign you end up launching, it shouldn’t last more than three weeks. It will
either succeed by then-or it will never succeed.
The bombing campaign-called Operation Rolling Thunder-commenced on March
2, 1965. It didn’t alter the behavior of the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong in
the slightest. Either they didn’t read the signals-or the signals had no effect.
On March 24, almost three weeks to the day after Rolling Thunder began,
McNaughton-again following Schelling’s lesson-sent the first of several
pessimistic memos to McNamara: “The situation in Vietnam is bad and
deteriorating.” Our aim at this point, he wrote, should be merely to “avoid a
humiliating U.S. defeat.” Keep up the pressure to affect the North’s “will” and
to provide the U.S. with “a bargaining counter” so that we “emerge as a ‘good
doctor.’ We must have kept promises, been tough, taken risks, gotten bloodied
and hurt the enemy very badly.” But victory was not in the cards, and we should
seek a way out.
The bombing escalated. When that didn’t work, more troops were sent in, a
half-million at their peak. The war continued for another decade, killing 50,000
Americans and untold numbers of Vietnamese. McNamara grew increasingly
disillusioned but kept up the pretense of a light at the end of the tunnel. In
the spring of 1967, John McNaughton died in a helicopter crash. In November of
that year, McNamara, exhausted and in despair, resigned-or he was fired, it’s
never been clear which-and went to wring his bloodied hands in the World Bank’s
fountains.
Tom Schelling didn’t write much about war after that. He’d learned the
limitations of his craft. If Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz had studied
history better, they, too, might have appreciated those limits before chasing
their delusional dreams into the wilds of Mesopotamia.
________
Fred Kaplan is Slate’s “War Stories” columnist and the author of The Wizards of
Armageddon.
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2127862/
“It Is Worse Than Vietnam, Because The Enemy Is Punier And The Original Ambitions Greater”
This is linked to Thomas Bartons ‘Military Project’ NewsLetter who also Has ‘Traveling Soldier’ and is an Article from the UK!
Thomas is a VFP Member and can get abit Strong in the Language, but these are Now being read by a Huge Nimber of Active Military as well as Vets. It’s a Take Off of the UnderGround News Papers of the Vietnam Era, Published In-Country Vietnam and on Bases Here and Around the World as Vietnam Active Military Started Going Against The War In Masse!!!!!
a man after my own heart!!!!!!! You said it!!!!
Senior military investigator found dead in Iraq
By Kim Sengupta in Basra
Published: 17 October 2005
I’m coming in late, but wanted to post. Your steadfastness in this series has been remarkable. And like MSOC above pointed out, we’re all reading, but so often there are just no words. I always try to recommend to show my appreciation – but dare I say we appreciate YOU most of all, so take care of yourself first. A wise man here said you have to feed the good wolf … so if a break or two – or more – is what you need, we’ll understand.
One of my favourite poems that speaks to the dearth of comments, is Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth;
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gal.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
It’s so much harder to talk grief than it is joy, isn’ it? But we all must experience it. Take care Rub.
Rub, if you need to take a break, I am sure that there will be plenty of people who will be happy to take a turn. 🙂