Drawdown 1965
Filed Under Just Plain War, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
In the last few years there’s been a lot comparisons between the current Iraqi adventure and the Vietnam war, two towering blunders in US foreign policy, not to mention the immeasurable loss of life and the cataclysm in the social conscience of a nation.
Iraq is not Vietnam — or is it?
(Illustration found here).
Noted investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter takes a look this morning at Jack Kennedy’s attempt to button-up Vietnam in the early 1960s and President-Elect Obama’s near-like pledge to get US GIs out of Iraq.
In an extremely-interesting piece at antiwar.com, Porter outlines the obstacles faced by JFK to get the troops out of Vietnam by 1965 — horribly the very year LBJ escalated the conflict — and those problems centered on the US military itself.
One unnerving aspect is Obama’s keeping Bob Gates as defense secretary.
Porter says that could be the opening salvo:
- But the one historical precedent of a president seeking to get an unwilling military to go along with a presidential troop withdrawal plan suggests that Obama will be unable to implement his plan for Iraq without the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff fully on board.
That is the lesson of President John F. Kennedy’s effort in 1962 and 1963 to get the U.S. military commanders in Vietnam to adopt a plan for withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam by the end of 1965 — the only other historical case of a president who tried to pursue a timetable for rapid withdrawal of combat troops from a war against the wishes of field commanders.
…
But the little-known story of Kennedy’s timetable for U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam underlines the critical importance to a president of having his two top national security officials on board in order to have any chance of prevailing over the resistance of commanders in the field.
Kennedy was trying to present himself to the national security community as centrist by striking a strong anti-Communist posture in public.
But behind the scenes, he was trying to push through a timetable for withdrawal from Vietnam.
…
Nevertheless the Pacific Command and the commander in Saigon continued to drag their feet on the 1965 deadline.
Like Petraeus and the top commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, in relation to Obama’s plan in 2008, they argued that the proposed rapid timetable for complete withdrawal from Vietnam was too risky.
…
And if he becomes too distracted by his primary concern — the U.S. economy — or is reluctant to have a confrontation with his national security team over the issue, Odierno and Petraeus are likely to drag their heels just as U.S. commanders stonewalled Kennedy over Vietnam.
And, of course, LBJ took the baton and killed thousands with it.
Obama must stand firm — history requires it.
F-k the Bird!
Filed Under Double Standard/Religious, Musings | Leave a Comment
Mark Twain hit the real bird squarely on the truth’s head:
- “Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for — annually, not oftener — if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians.
Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.“
(Illustration of Wounded Knee found here).
Americana as revisionist history.
Thanksgiving has got to be one of the most horribly-ironic holidays on record.
Stuff your faces you fat-ass somofabitches!
As football, full-blown feasts and fancy napping are the pure chance of a goodly-chunk of US peoples today, there should be some notice of shame.
Not!
Most people nowadays are shamed of their wallets.
Journalism professor Robert Jensen offered this up three years ago and the essay was re-posted this morning on AlterNet.
Some choice morsels:
- One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.
…
One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hardy Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims’ first winter.
Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough.
But it’s also true that by 1637, Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders.
The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.
…
The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians’ land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving “wild beasts” from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, “both being beasts of prey, tho’ they differ in shape.”
Thomas Jefferson — president No. 3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the “merciless Indian Savages” — was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn’t stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, “[W]e shall destroy all of them.”
…
In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who “settled” the country — and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things.
But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable — such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States — suddenly the value of history drops precipitously, and one is asked, “Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?”
Read the whole essay, if you dare.
And to Mr. Obama I say, ‘Fuck the Bird,’ the false past is the false American Dream.
‘Success’ In Iraq
Filed Under Musings, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Decider George is like a rotten, aching and throbbing tooth, one of the them backside, big-old molars, one that can’t be worked on or even pulled, sitting there in the headcase, making life even more miserable with each countdown-passing second.
Yesterday, the outgoing commander-in-chief told a crowd of people most-likely destined again for the Islamic front on the Global War on Terror, tiny foreign mishaps the past near-eight years has been nothing-less than glorious — No regrets about invading and destroying occupying Iraq.
In the wake of Barack Obama, Decider George really, really sucks.
(Illustration found here).
The New York Times yesterday:
- Mr. Bush said that success in Iraq — achieved by the 101st Airborne and other units based here (Fort Campbell, Ky.) — would resonate far beyond that country’s borders.
“Success will frustrate Iran’s ambitions to dominate the region,” he said. “Success will show millions across the Middle East that a future of liberty and democracy is possible. Success will deny Al Qaeda a safe haven for launching new attacks. Success in Iraq will mean that the American people are more secure at home.”
Mr. Bush said the removal of Saddam Hussein had begun a new era for Iraq.
“Because we acted, the dictator, his sons and their regime are no more,” Mr. Bush said. “More than 25 million Iraqis are free. And a young democracy has taken root where a tyrant once ruled.
Removing Saddam Hussein was the right decision then, and it is the right decision today.”
A certain legacy, a profound historical achievement achieved: A willingness, full-hearted willingness, to blubber in extreme-delusional verbiage about reality.
The perplexities of Iraq is beyond the immense — beyond military flesh and hardware, the original financial drain-hole in an era of nothing-but financial drain-holes, and even the perpetual political cauldron created by the illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq, there’s the innocent peoples.
Plain, ordinary, regular-life peoples living plain, ordinary, regular-lives.
Estimates of Iraqi civilian causalities since the invasion have ranged from about 80,000 to 100,000 upwards to 650,000 or more.
A good, overall view of the accounted can be found here.
Another aspect raised this morning by Juan Cole concerned those ordinary folks, based on a recent survey of families across Iraq.
The results ain’t successful:
- About 40% of these households were headed by women, an unusual finding for a patriarchal Arab society.
About two-thirds of these female heads of household are widows, bespeaking the horrific loss of life among Iraqi males during the past five and a half years.
Some 15% of female heads of household are divorced. Given the shortage of men produced by the war, divorcees may not easily be able to find a new mate.
And then there is this odd statistic of 7.5% of female heads of household being single.
The authors of the study interpret them as spinsters.
It is not clear if they are both orphans and spinsters, so that they are living alone, or if they are heading a household of unemployed parents or siblings.
The authors think they are having trouble finding a husband because of all the males killed in the war.
In the US, households headed by women are disproportionately poverty-stricken and it is likely this is true of Iraq in spades.
Nearly half of these families have 6-10 members, while 43% have 1-5.
Two-thirds of these families live on less than $210 per month, but given the size of the families, the average per capita income in this group is $420 per year.
The international poverty line is set at $500 a year, so two-thirds of Iraqis are living in poverty.
The population of the poorest country in the New World, Haiti, has an annual per capita income of $550.
Over two-thirds of families receive no aid from the Iraqi government, even though their needs are clear, and 50% get no aid from NGOs.
Among displaced families, 13% would not return home even if they could, so great is their fear.
Tangle all that with a knowledge the near-or-far future is pretty-much the same, or even worse.
From the Times story:
- The president recalled that a day before Thanksgiving in 2001, he visited Fort Campbell while the nation was still reeling from the shock of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“That November day, I said, ‘Once again, you have a rendezvous with destiny,’ ” Mr. Bush recalled.
“Over the past seven years,” the president said, “folks from this base have done exactly what they were trained to do,” attacking “killers and thugs” in the global fight against terrorism, which he described as “the great ideological struggle of our time.”
Mr. Bush’s upbeat assessment of the two wars made hardly any reference to the problems he will leave to President-elect Barack Obama.
Decider George’s one great success is arrogance-laced bullshitting, which he has no peer.
Huggermugger Transparency Required
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Big Al and Decider George at show-and-tell.
Four years ago near to the day:
- “There’s a lot we don’t know about his actions as White House counsel and his advice to the president,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy of the Federation of American Scientists. “What we do know is rather discouraging.”
Discouraging was a way-understatement.
(Illustration found here).
Alberto Gonzales went on to the AG post, then got all twisted around in politics, lied, and then lied again, leading him to resign before Congress took his head.
Gonzales turned out to be the most back-biting, political-weasel ever to occupy the AG post.
And the Decider George White House did it all.
This is precise:
- So we wound up with a White House fueled by propaganda and coverup.
It happened after 9/11, when it eventually came out that he ignored a daily briefing entitles “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the US.”
It happened after Hurricane Katrina, when it quickly became clear that Brownie hadn’t done a heckuva job.
It happened in the Gonzales investigation, the Valerie Plame scandal, the FISA scandal, after Dick Cheney shot some poor guy in the face, torture, corruption, on and on and on.
Bush and Cheney treated the White House as a hiding place and every move they made was treated like a state secret.
The idea of “executive privilege” was stretched to absurdity. Secret emails, secret memos, secret conversations, secret wiretaps, secret prisons with secret prisoners, etc.
Transparency was apparently a dirty word for this White House.
If you needed to know it, they’d hold a press conference.
Otherwise, you can shut the hell up and stop asking questions. What, do you think this is some sort of democracy or something?
And it’s getting worse.
And it’s still Dufus Dick.
According to Washington Monthly:
- A growing body of investigative reporting and memoirs by Bush White House insiders-turned-dissenters suggests that most of the administration’s most controversial national security decisions—on wiretapping, the Iraq War, and renditions—originated in the Office of the Vice President, hashed out by Cheney, vice presidential counsel David Addington, and aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Cheney’s papers are the Amazon rain forest of Bush administration records: they are of immense importance to the big picture, and there is a real risk that they will be lost before we know exactly what’s in there.
If there is one overarching priority between now and January 20, it is to surround Cheney’s office with every possible legal barrier to removing so much as a Post-it Note from the premises.
…
When Obama takes the reins in January, he will inherit the same bureaucratic apparatus Bush used, and with it the records of how he used it.
This is the best opportunity for the new president to shine a light on the past eight years with the stroke of a pen.
He should direct the government’s inspectors general to undertake exhaustive, top-to-bottom audits of the classified documents their agencies have produced under Bush, declassifying and releasing everything for which secrecy isn’t of demonstrable national security interest.
One specific trove of documents is a priority: the records of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.
The OLC is the executive branch’s legal sounding board—the president asks its staff whether something he or she wants to do is legal, and the OLC sends back an opinion explaining why or why not.
OLC lawyers are in an unusual position, halfway between attorneys and judges.
They give advice to the president, but that legal interpretation has a heft that gives government officials who follow it a degree of immunity—”what is effectively an advance pardon for actions taken at the edges of vague criminal laws,” Jack Goldsmith, the head of the OLC from 2003 to 2004, wrote in his 2007 book The Terror Presidency. “It is one of the most momentous and dangerous powers in the government: the power to dispense get-out-of-jail-free cards.”
Mr. President-Elect, open the books!
‘Very Pleased’
Filed Under Musings, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Delusion is the child of ‘What, Me Worry?’
Especially if one doesn’t like homework and just goes with a gut instinct.
In a pre-recorded interview broadcast Sunday on a Japanese television network, Decider George blubbered through his lying, delusional teeth he was very pleased with how the Iraqi war has been handled and how wonderful the country has become the last five years.
Despite the slaughter.
(Illustration found here).
In the TV interview:
- Saddam was an enemy of the United States and a lot of people thought he had weapons of mass destruction, Bush said, adding “remarkable” progress had been made in Iraq since the late dictator was toppled in 2003.
“People have been able to take their troops out of Iraq because Iraq is becoming successful. I’m very pleased with what is taking place there now,” he said, adding there still is “a lot of work” to be done.
Successful at what?
Suicide bombings? Like the one yesterday at the entrance to Baghdad’s Green Zone or the killings countrywide.
Or even the horror of rape rolling across Iraq and into Jordan.
Or even back in the good, old US of A and shortchanging the benefits for families of killed GIs.
Decider George — We will be “very pleased” when your ass is gone!