Here’s a blast from the past to help you memorialize our dead soldiers:
[Paul] Berman’s convoluted attempt to connect Saddam’s secular Baath Party and the Islamist al-Qaida is a feat worthy of a medieval schoolman. But at bottom, it is simply a fancier version of the justification for war put forward by another liberal hawk, Thomas L. Friedman. Friedman also advocated toppling Saddam, but not because of some supposed ideological or historical connection between Baathism and Islamism. His argument was more straightforward: A “terrorism bubble” had built up in the Arab world, and it needed to be popped. As a convenient evil tyrant, Saddam simply offered a good opportunity for the United States to smash the Arab world in the face and teach it a lesson. Neither Friedman nor Berman ever explained exactly how smashing the Arab world in the face was going to turn it away from Islamist radicalism, or why the dubious attempt to install democracy by force in a fractured, wounded land with a bitter experience of colonial rule was worth risking thousands of American lives for. But intoxicated by what he with typical self-critical honesty called “the first sip of this drink called humanitarian intervention,” and fastidiously put off by what he perceived as the crudeness of the antiwar movement, [George] Packer signed on for the crusade.
That’s the liberal side of it. Then there is the real deep insanity:
The [Office of Special Plans] OSP also recruited several Middle East experts, including Harold Rhode, a protégé of the Princeton Arabist Bernard Lewis. Rhode, whose keen grasp of regional realities was reflected in his musing that one way to transform the Middle East would be to change the Farsi alphabet in Iran to Roman, was an ardent proponent, like other neocons, of installing Ahmad Chalabi as prime minister — thus restoring Shiites to power. “Shiite power was the key to the whole neoconservative vision for Iraq,” Packer notes. “The convergence of ideas, interests, and affections between certain American Jews and Iraqi Shia was one of the more curious subplots of the Iraq War … the Shia and the Jews, oppressed minorities in the region, could do business, and … traditional Iraqi Shiism (as opposed to the theocratic, totalitarian kind that had taken Iran captive) could lead the way to reorienting the Arab world toward America and Israel.”
The result?
As of May 29, 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Defense casualty website, there were 4,409 total deaths (including both killed in action and non-hostile) and 31,928 wounded in action (WIA) as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Today is Memorial Day, so I won’t dwell on the financial costs or the Iraqi or coalition casualties. When you think about our troops today, remember to think about the people who put them in harm’s way.
As a vet, fuck these assholes. And fuck this entire day of cheap discounts, idiotic displays, and the stupid “thank you”s people feel the need to vomit out. I’ll spend today at home, drunk, and playing video games with other friends. Most of us who would prefer nothing more than to forget this whole sorry spectacle and all of whom would just rather be left alone.
And with that, it’s noon so fuck it, I’m breaking out the scotch.
Plus I feel like I’ve been a memorial day ground hog day since the entire “support the troops” crap started.
I’m not a vet, but I feel the same way.
Make sure to give your car keys to a friend.
I take the METRO. And since I’m in DC I have no intentions of going anywhere today. The one thing of restraint I have to go through is not responding to all the stupid “thank you for your service” nonsense emails I get from work and friends of the family.
Great. Thanks of the thousands of dollars in medical bills that aren’t covered, thanks for the divorce, thanks for my friends that are on permanent disability and un employable because of how fucked up they are. I’m one of the lucky ones as well.
These things always strike me as for the voters and some sort of national soul cleansing over what happened. And the bitch of it is, we never got that. And by we I mean the specific we who served. Instead we’re treated to the spectacle of friends falling between the cracks, bills, and a lot of work. We got indoctrination but we didn’t get trained to leave.
And for all the “we want to hear your story” the truth is most of them really don’t. Because it’s a lot more than just fighting, it’s what few of us even there know about what’s done in our name, and we realized has always been done. And it’s not just the entire PTSD factor for those who came back scared and we fail to protect. It’s that there is no way anything can ever top that mess of adrenaline, chaos, and the utter havoc of it. And if I wanted to be honest I’d say I’d learned to like it, and the thing that pisses me off the most in a way is that it’s over. And it kinda makes you wonder about yourself.
So if the “nation” and the voters want to go through some national catharsis over this, let them. I have very different opinions about all of this. Though despite all that I’d join up again if needed. But the most terrifying thing about that is I realize it’s not the Navy and USMC (I was a sailor but on the green side) I distrust. It’s the voters and the public. And while it’s natural for that to happen, it’s a bit odd, and I don’t think productive for a democracy in an insidious way I can’t place my finger on.
I live across the street from Arlington National as well. And I don’t think the mob of tourists is exactly comforting for those who have friends and family there. It’s a public spectacle.
/end rant
Sorry for the rant, but as I’m sure you can tell I hate this holiday.
Rightly so. They’ve demonstrated again and again since the end of WWII that they’ll shoot first and ask questions later or never.
It’s not just that. There is a real separation going on here. It’s one of the reasons most of us exist in our fraternity in private. It’s not only a distinct lack of respect for the armchair generals and chickenhawks, it’s a complete lack of trust and at times even respect for the civilians around us.
Once you realize how little your “peers” understand about what’s going on the way the world works you stop viewing them as your peer, and more of a lesser human being. It’s a different life that drives people into a tribal culture, and you ain’t in it.
Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of good in the military subculture. It’s an entire legion of friends who will have your back, and we all view ourselves as part of something greater, it’s a commonwealth. Oddly enough it’s the most left wing socialist zomg group in the US…. and the righties seem to love it? There’s a reason why we’ve been critical in breaking down racial, social and class barriers. All that crap goes out the window real fast.
But with the recent off the books wars that most people don’t fight it’s turning into a sect of people who consider themselves above the average bloke. You need a certain amount of arrogance to survive it in some cases, people who aren’t convinced of that don’t make good soldiers. But this is being compounded with the shrinking minority of society we are, the constant praise, and the idiocy of our civilian leadership.
I think it’s good, and well earned, that we are members of the most trusted institution in society. Most people realize it was Bush and congress that fucked things up and that they fired our leaders who tried to point out the fallacy in all of it. But I don’t think the stark change of our society vs your society is good. The lack of care for those of us that fall through the cracks only confirms to many of us how different we are.
For all the “support the troops” shit on the right most I knew left firm liberals. Common cause, medicine that works, equality, protect the weak, are all the founding values of the services. But there’s a darker streak that we’re part of some superior minority, better in body and in spirit, and that the rest of you are all nitwits controlled by the corrupt.
And you can probably see thinking through it, the entire “the average voter is a fucking moron, all our civilian leadership is a bunch of corrupt assholes, and most Americans know fuck all about other nations” might not be productive, but we aren’t exactly wrong either.
That’s a basic insight that any educated person goes through. You can learn it on a battlefield in Iraq or in a classroom in college. You can learn it simply by learning about geography and culture and politics.
It’s what you do with that knowledge that matters. And, yes, having contempt for people less informed than you is not healthy or productive.
The prime directive is compassion and cooperation. And that should familiar to a solider.
Most ivy league grads I know have the same disdain for their fellows. It’s not unique to soldiers. And my comment was more made in the context of today, and all the “support the troops” and then not actually doing it yet holding us up as paragons of America does.
For the record I feel that way at times. I moved into international development as a way to do something worth my time. I donate time to my community. But I still do feel it’s not my real community. I’ll give a vet the benefit of the doubt faster than I would a civilian, I’ll trust them more freely (which means a lot for me), and I’ll be less dismissive of them. And I know that’s not productive.
I know it’s a cop out, but this is one of those silly “if you don’t get it, you don’t get it” sort of situations. I know it’s a bad thing, but it’s also something I don’t think is ever going to change.
It’s complicated. And the more one attempts to think it through, the more complicated it becomes.
From the Franco-Prussian war forward the German General Staff, for largely similar reasons, considered themselves more learned than kings and acted as the Jesuits of national salvation. We all know how that turned out.
They caved to an Austrian corporal?
Well, yes… Who then harried them through a ring-cycle of their collective worst nightmares before dangling them collectively from meat-hooks with piano wire.
But my point was that the alienation of the warrior class in a dominant military culture can get politically “complicated.” The framers of our constitution did a pretty good job inhibiting these tendencies but even we have seen national populism empower generals and gave them political heft; perhaps not to the same extent as the gentlemen of the Oberste Heeresleitung enabled by a mad king, but still. General Staff resources became a nutcracker applied to monarch, administrators or legislative assembly as required.
In the aftermath of the Great War Germany was chaotic and these same generals who put down mutinies in favour of the republic; but always on their own terms and for the greater good of a mythical national culture in which they figure prominently.
Your thoughts give content to the true meaning of warriors send in battle by We the People. Well meant apology for not taking care of the mentally and physically wounded returning home from battle. I hate any war of choice or “pre-emption” where the spoils go in the pockets of the 0.1% and those high-earning mercenaries (Blackwater/Xe and the like). Ass-covering in Washington DC is most embarrassing and the lack of taking responsibility for errors made. Damn, civilians suffer along with the best we sent into harms way.
I’ve had friends who landed up in companies like Xe, and I myself did a stint as a civilian for private contractors. Don’t make the mistake that everyone makes out like bandits there, it’s rarely the case.
But when you realize the amount of us on food stamps while in, the job prospects when out, and the need to get the rush back you realize how this happens. It’s a very complicated series of circumstances that leads someone there. I won’t judge them, and I do “get it”.
But that is another conversation we don’t want to have collectively. The only collective we that’s really ready mostly just has sworn off the rest.
Were Christopher Hitchens still around, I’m sure he’d still be trying to justify the whole enterprise.
I haven’t forgotten that since the early 70s. I watched too many classmates get shipped to Vietnam and by then the consensus opinion was pretty much “what the hell are we fighting for”. But aside from learning that governments create bogus justifications for war, we also learned that getting troops out was harder than going in.
So every Memorial Day I think of my dad who thought that at the young age of 18 (1944) he needed to leave his Nebraska farm and join the Marines to fight in the Pacific. Afterward, he went on to have a rich, productive life. I also think of my Dad’s brother who never got out of training, but on the last day of WWII he flew his plane on a training exercise off the coast of Florida and never came back.
And I also think how after he had seen the politics and lies and destruction of the Vietnam War, my Dad was ready to send me to Canada if at any time my selective service number came up.
So I grew up understanding why we honor sacrifices by our military personnel. But we also need to honor their commitment enough to engage them only in conflicts that measure up to their sacrifice.
The convergence of ideas, interests, and affections between certain American Jews and Iraqi Shia…
Wait…what?!?
Yeah, he went there.
Once you get over the fact that you are not supposed to go there, you can contemplate uncomfortable truths.
Like, did the neo-cons really think it was a good idea to kick out the Sunnis and let Iran dominate Iraqi politics?
No, they did not. They thought that the Shia would reject Iran and usher in a better example for the Shia to follow. One that would have nothing to do with Hizbollah and Hamas, that would embrace democracy, and would see the Israelis as fellow-repressed victims of the Sunni tyrants.
You know, real deep delusion. And, no, not all of the neo-cons were Jewish, but the ones that were thinking on that level were. We’re talking about folks who did know the demographics of the Arab world, and the tensions between Sunni and Shi’ite and Arab and Persian. They understood what democracy in Iraq would mean in those terms. And they convinced themselves that liberating the oppressed Shi’a of Iraq and turning them into democrats would undermine Iran and be a boon for Israel. Blisteringly stupid is that is, it’s the belief system used by Richard Perle and Paul Wolowitz and Douglas Feith and Elliott Abrams. Cheney bought it because all he wanted was to lift the sanctions on Iraq (same as Libya and Iran). Bush didn’t buy it because he wasn’t smart or curious enough to even ask why.
As we all know, right-wing Likudnik Americans are very unrepresentative of the American Jewish population. But they have a huge amount of responsibility for what happened to Iraq.
“Blast from the past” It’s a movie title 🙂 http://linkapp.me/Suy3p