Wood-Be Inferno
Filed Under Environment, Musings | Leave a Comment
Via ClimateProgress this morning:
We show that increases in temperature cause annual mean area burned in the western United States to increase by 54% by the 2050s relative to the present-day … with the forests of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains experiencing the greatest increases of 78% and 175% respectively.
Increased area burned results in near doubling of wildfire carbonaceous aerosol emissions by mid-century.
This outlook is painted in a scenario of moderately increasing emissions of greenhouse gas emissions and leads to average global warming of 1.6 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050.
Moderate (or medium) is the focus of the above weather synopsis, both in CO2 emissions and warming temperatures.
However, reality might be different.
Last March, the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change met in Copenhagen, Denmark, with more than 2,000 registered participants and nearly 1,600 scientific studies from researchers in more than 70 countries.
A key finding:
Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised.
For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived.
These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events.
There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.
The IPCC is The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tasked by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity.
The panel was established in 1988 and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
And the IPCC’s worse-case scenario?
Again from ClimateProgress:
The A1F1 scenario takes us to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide of 1000 ppm (parts-per-million)in 2100 — otherwise known as the end of human civilization as we have known it.
Actually it’s worse than that.
The 2001 IPCC report largely failed to model amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks.
The 2007 IPCC report, which began to consider such feedbacks, warns that even averaging 11 GtC (billion metric tons of carbon) a year this century could take us to 1000 ppm.
Complicated is not the half in the science of global warming — immediate and current physical impacts does, however, like more tornados, longer hot spells and bigger forest fires.
And the best online site I’ve discovered is Climate Progress to somewhat explain this phenomenon that’s taken not-so-long to get here.
Climate change/warming/cooling in itself appears to be a natural state of the planet, depending upon many variables
There’s even been a “Little Ice Age” somewhat recently (not millions and millions of years ago, anyway), from the late 14th century to the end of the 19th century, but the real change in climate change came just 150 years ago.
The Discovery Channel online has a fairly simple global-warming timline, outlining the movement of climate down through the eons:
The Industrial Revolution added a new player to the climate game: Humans.
Suddenly, we were burning coal and oil in vast amounts and releasing huge amounts of carbon-rich greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
All that carbon has been locked up deep in the earth, where it could not interfere with the climate.
So there you are.
‘Tragedy’ Escalates
Filed Under Just Plain War, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Despite tough tours in Iraq, an even-more persistent and deadly situation:
But he says he never encountered an enemy as tenacious as what he saw immediately after arriving at this outpost in Helmand Province in Afghanistan.
In his first days here in late June, he fought through three ambushes, each lasting as long as the most sustained fight he saw in Anbar.
…
The bombs found so far have been largely homemade with fertilizer, though they have still killed more than 20 British soldiers and United States Marines to the north and south of Nawa.
“If they had better weapons, we’d be in real trouble,” said Lance Cpl. Vazgen Matevosyan.
(Illustration found here).
The upticking war in Afghnistan lies in the vast, ugly shadow of Iraq.
Iraq was on top of the list from the get-go — going after Saddam was topic “A” 10 days after the inauguration — eight months before Sept. 11. “From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime…Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”
In December 2001, even as the incursion into Afghanistan was just winding down and Osama and his boys were reportedly pinned down in the Tora Bora Mountains, George Jr. was meeting repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on Iraq.
This hyper-active bunch’s biggest concern was fueled by the CIA’s conclusion that Saddam couldn’t be knocked-out-of-the-box except through some kick-ass “shock and awe.”
And, of course, George Tenet’s now infamous “slam dunk” claim that Iraq possessed WMD.
A showcase for horrifying, dumb-ass planning: The U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq as of December 2006 and assumed the military would be almost completely “re-deployed” out of Iraq within 45 months of the invasion.
In the UK, bloody-dumb business at 10 Downing: “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, though military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route… There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”
Apparently: What aftermath?
Afghanistan tanked as much-needed, required resources were diverted to the war in Iraq.
From USAToday in March 2004:
In 2002, troops from the 5th Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq.
Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures.
The CIA, meanwhile, was stretched badly in its capacity to collect, translate and analyze information coming from Afghanistan.
When the White House raised a new priority, it took specialists away from the Afghanistan effort to ensure Iraq was covered.
A good look at the overall cause/effect of the Iraqi war on Afghanistan can be found here.
And in the Iraqi blowback: In their quiet moments, aid workers call it “the tragedy:” the billions of dollars that never arrived here. The troops that landed somewhere else. The bright minds that turned to that other, greater subject. And, in all those events, the sad sinking of the promise that greeted the American-led victory over the Taliban in November 2001, more than seven years ago.
The “tragedy” these aid workers are referring to, of course, is the war in Iraq. Not that the Iraq war itself was tragic but that it was calamitous in its results for the other war that suddenly fell to the lower tier. More than any other factor, it is the American invasion of Iraq that looms over Afghanistan and all of its dashed hopes.
Hence to the dangerous, complicated and escalating new/same operation in Afghanistan.
Last October, Gen. David D. McKiernan, head of US/NATO forces in Afghanistan and only four months on the job, said an “Iraqi-style surge” will not work in a country of mountains and few paved roads.
McKiernan described Afghanistan as “a far more complex environment than I ever found in Iraq.”
And this past March, McKiernan opened his big-general’s mouth and told the BBC the war cannot be won via military might: “But there are other areas — large areas in the southern part of Afghanistan especially, but in parts of the east — where we are not winning.”
So then last May, the good general was fired.
Defense honcho Bob Gates, in showing McKiernan the door, was quoted as saying the US needs “fresh eyes” and “fresh thinking” on the becoming-debacle of Afghanistan — so instead named as a replacement an old eye and mind in the form of one, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a true-blue, fierce military nut and fervid warrior of the dark side.
So praise from Dick Cheney: “The decision to send Stan McChrystal…is a good one… “I think the choice is excellent. I think you’d be hard put to find anyone better than Stan McChrystal.”
McKiernan, for his part, claimed he was “dismayed, disappointed, and more than a little embarrassed” about getting the axe — a telling insight into the chaos of the US involvement in Afghanistan.
Also revealing is how the now-retired McKiernan’s emotional outburst — catch words, ‘dismayed, disappointed, embarrassed’ — does kind of float like President Obama’s alliterated vow to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaida.
First and foremost, however, those freakin’ Taliban.
Not only with increase in use of IEDs and suicide bombers, the Taliban are also viewing politics on a world scale.
From foreignpolicy.com last week:
Although 4,000 U.S. Marines entered the Taliban’s heartland in southern Helmand province at the beginning of this month, the Taliban seem to be largely bypassing the Americans to focus on the British contingent in the center and north of the province.
This should not be a surprise.
Public dissatisfaction with the war is growing in Britain and Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s unpopular Labour government is facing a general election by June 2010.
Taliban strategists likely believe they have a chance to drive the British from the field.
The UK has indeed been mauled — Twenty-two soldiers, including eight within one 24-hour period have been killed.
According to Pakistan’s The News, a senior British general said the insurgent level in Helmand province was under-rated from three years ago: “We thought that the insurgency still existed in Helmand, but the violence and scale has been shocking,” General Sir Timothy Granville-Chapman said.
Indeed.
In a British poll result released Tuesday by the UK’s The Independent: More than half of voters (52 per cent) want troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan straight away…Fifty-eight per cent view the war as “unwinnable”, with 31 per cent disagreeing.
And with the US?
Obama’s plan right now is to nearly double the US Afghan presence to about 68,000 troops by this year’s end, but from all indications, McChrystal will ask for more boots on the ground, as did one of his advisors today in Washington, though, I’m sure he missed the extreme-ugly irony.
According to VOA:
Senior Washington analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies says the United States and its allies need to take the Afghanistan war more seriously.
…
“This war has been fought without resources, but above all without realism,” he said.
…
Cordesman says the current U.S. and British military operation in Helmand Province was launched without adequate preparation for civilian aid after the military delivers stability.
But he said it might still be successful, and could become a model for what is called the clear-hold-and-build approach to defeating insurgents.
In any case, he says, it will provide valuable lessons as Afghan, U.S. and NATO forces prepare to move into other parts of Afghanistan.
In any case, how many US body bags before Afghanistan in its serious realism is understood?
A tragedy.
Stormy Days Of Fever Heat
Filed Under Environment, Media, Politics | Leave a Comment
The earth is indeed melting away.
(Illustration found here).
Clouds, those wispy, sometimes dark and ominoness floating forms we all take for granted as part of our natural environment whenever we look up — when clouds move into together and won’t let the sun shine in, everyone gets a little bit sad.
Now start crying as it seems a cloud can kill — eventually.
From the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science comes research into cloud cover and its impact on global warming:
Using observational data collected over the last 50 years and complex climate models, the team has established that low-level stratiform clouds appear to dissipate as the ocean warms, indicating that changes in these clouds may enhance the warming of the planet.
Because of inconsistencies in historical observations, trends in cloudiness have been difficult to identify.
The team broke through this cloud conundrum by removing errors from cloud records and using multiple data sources for the northeast Pacific Ocean, one of the most well-studied areas of low-level stratiform clouds in the world.
The result of their analysis was a surprising degree of agreement between two multi-decade datasets that were not only independent of each other, but that employed fundamentally different measurement methods. One set consisted of collected visual observations from ships over the last 50 years, and the other was based on data collected from weather satellites.
“The agreement we found between the surface-based observations and the satellite data was almost shocking,” said Clement, a professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami, and winner of the American Geophysical Union’s 2007 Macelwane Award for her groundbreaking work on climate change.
“These are subtle changes that take place over decades. It is extremely encouraging that a satellite passing miles above the earth would document the same thing as sailors looking up at a cloudy sky from the deck of a ship.”
And what about some top secret US military pictures from high above the earth which enhance the shocking effect (and truth) of a dying planet?
The last guys in charge of the US hated the words, “global warming,” and so did everything in their power to censor any science about the subject.
Declassified US military spy-satellite photos taken over the past decade reveal water and very little ice over the Artic — bad global-warming evidence, suppressed by George Jr and his boys, just released by President Obama’s administration.
From the UK’s The Guardian:
One particularly striking set of images – selected from the 1,000 photographs released – includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow.
One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore.
A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.
The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice — a record loss — were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.
Nor has this loss shown any sign of recovery. Ice cover for 2008 was almost as bad as for 2007, and this year levels look equally sparse.
…
Disappearing summer sea ice poses considerable dangers, scientists have warned.
Ice shelves are used by animals such as polar bears as platforms for hunting seals and other sea creatures. Without them, they could starve.
In addition, ice reflects solar radiation.
Without that process, the Arctic sea could warm up even more.
The phenomenon threatens to set off runaway heating of the planet, say climatologists.
And what about funds for keeping track of this runaway climate thing?
The latest revelations have triggered warnings from scientists that they no longer have the funds to keep a comprehensive track of climate change.
Last week the head of the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Professor Jane Lubchenco, warned that the gathering of satellite data — crucial to predicting future climate changes — was now at “great risk” because America’s ageing satellite fleet was not being replaced.
This ‘thing’ with climate change/global warming is most-likely its appearance as a snail’s pace of a problem and won’t effect anyone in a long, long time — humans react to more immediate dangers first.
The big problem is that the problem is already here — what was once confined to the tropics is now in middle America.
From Bloomberg:
Mosquitoes that can transmit dengue fever, a disease that’s sometimes fatal and is more common in the tropics, are now found in 28 U.S. states and may extend their reach further as temperatures warm, a study said.
(Illustration found here).
The reasearch study from the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group, also reported dengue infections have multiplied by thirty in the last 50 years, with as many as 100 million annual cases and 22,000 deaths worldwide.
Mosquitoes are tough-skinned little sumbitches — they can more easily survive and spread when winters are milder, so global warming may increase transmission.
Hey, don’t kill the freakin’ messenger — even David Letterman knows us humans are in reality ‘Dead Meat.’
‘Same Donkey…New Saddle’
Filed Under Media, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
An example of why this so-called ‘War on Terror’ is such a complete, abysmal failure.
Sen. James Webb, Democrat from Virginia, has called for an investigation into the details surrounding an attack on a US outpost in eastern Afghanistan last year, which left nine soldiers dead, and offers past Army lies as an incentive.
“The manner in which the Army mishandled the aftermath of Pat Tillman’s tragic death raised serious questions about the integrity of some who held high positions in its leadership structure,” Webb, who saw intense combat as a Marine platoon leader in Vietnam, said in an e-mailed statement.
“This incident raises similar questions. Its importance is not merely to provide lessons learned for future operations. It speaks directly about the Army’s ability to speak honestly to itself and to the American public.”
Webb is after details from the top down.
He sent a letter earlier this month to the Pentagon’s IG citing an unreleased draft report on the July 2008 attack in the village of Wanat near the Pakistan border — the draft report was sharply critical of Army brass prior to the assault — and the senator wrote: “I believe a more thorough consideration of senior command accountability is warranted.”
The historian’s draft report said soldiers at the remote base were short of basic necessities such as water and sandbags and repeatedly complained that they were in a precarious position.
A few days before the assault, the report continues, a U.S. helicopter attack mistakenly killed all of the Afghan doctors and nurses from a local clinic, infuriating villagers throughout the area.
Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom, the platoon leader who was killed at the Wanat base, sent word up to his senior commanders that he was worried that a retaliatory attack was imminent, the draft report states.
Rather than bolstering security, officers at Bagram air base ordered the withdrawal of all intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets from the area.
Brostrom’s father, retired Army Col. David. P. Brostrom, alerted Webb’s office to the Army historian’s report. “After I read the report, I was sick to my stomach,” Brostrom said.
The killing of Tillman, a former NFL player, is why the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, and the US Army itself is the reason: The documents also show that officers made erroneous initial reports that Tillman was killed by enemy fire, destroyed critical evidence and initially concealed the truth from Tillman’s brother, also an Army Ranger, who was near the attack on April 22, 2004, but did not witness it.
And this from Malalai Joya, a former member of the Afghan parliament, in a commentary in the UK’s the Guardian:
You must understand that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban.
Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s.
For expressing my views I have been expelled from my seat in parliament, and I have survived numerous assassination attempts.
The fact that I was kicked out of office while brutal warlords enjoyed immunity from prosecution for their crimes should tell you all you need to know about the “democracy” backed by Nato troops.
In the constitution it forbids those guilty of war crimes from running for high office.
Yet Karzai has named two notorious warlords, Fahim and Khalili, as his running mates for the upcoming presidential election.
Under the shadow of warlordism, corruption and occupation, this vote will have no legitimacy, and once again it seems the real choice will be made behind closed doors in the White House. As we say in Afghanistan, “the same donkey with a new saddle.”
And the beat goes on…
War’s Media “Bloodbath’
Filed Under Just Plain War, Media | Leave a Comment
There are old war correspondents and bold war correspondents but no old, bold war correspondents…
– Joseph L. Galloway
In an age of seemingly perpetual war all over the globe, those reporting from the front are dying at an alarming rate.
From Agence France-Presse:
Fifty-nine journalists have been killed around the world so far this year, in an alarming rise from 2008 that has become a “bloodbath” of the media, a watchdog said Thursday.
The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) said 53 journalists were killed in the first six months, up from 45 in the first half of last year, but highlighted another six killings in July including Russian journalist and rights activist Natalya Estemirova who was murdered on July 15.
Mexico leads the media blackspots with seven journalist killings this year, according to the PEC.
It said there were six in Pakistan, five each in Iraq, the Philippines, Russia and Somalia, four in Gaza and Honduras, three in Colombia, two each in Afghanistan, Guatemala, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Venezuela and one in India, Indonesia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, and Madagascar.
The big threat is not necessarily from actual combat as politics plays the death card more often than not, and local news people are more apt to die than a foreign correspondent.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 742 news people have been killed since 1992 worldwide (through July 8, 2009) with murder the main charge in 71.8 percent of the time vs. only 17.8 percent dying in actual combat.
And the biggest perpetrators?
- Political groups: 32.1 percent
- Government officials: 18.3 percent
- And the military: 5.8 percent
- Local/national reporters die 86.5 percent of the time, while foreign news service people at only 13.5 percent.
The guts to these murdered journalists — those who actually did the killing received complete impunity in 88.7 percent of the cases.
In March 2007, Reuters reported on a study by the International News Safety Institute (INSI): More than 1,100 journalists and support staff have been killed carrying out their work in the past decade and the annual toll has jumped since 2003, the year of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
And it’s worse at home:
Worldwide, last year was the worst for media workers with 167 killed worldwide, up from 149 in 2005 and 131 in 2004. That compares with 94 in 2003, 70 in 2002 and 103 in 2001.
The total tally since the start of 1996 was 1,101, said the report, “Killing the Messenger.”
Nearly half were shot and the vast majority — at least 657 people — were murdered covering news during peacetime in their own country.
J-School with a flak jacket.
And according to Joe Galloway (from above) for a war reporter to avoid getting killed — among a long list:
Strive to look as much like a private of whatever service you are travelling with. You do NOT want to stand out like a sore thumb. BLEND IN! If you look different you may thus appear important to someone peering through a sniper scope. If he is low on ammo or short on time he will definitely shoot you first. Those on the recent media exercise who declared that they had to look different, and donned brightly colored shirts and vests or stripped the camo cover off their kevlar helmet and substituted white tape with a large PRESS emblazoned thereon, are idiots. It is not worth dying to make a statement about your civilian status.
…
Avoid animals. Period. Cute dogs and other critters bite. Then you go to the rear to get your rabies shots.
…
There is no way I can prepare someone who has never witnessed combat for the shock of the first sight of a badly wounded soldier, screaming in pain, begging for his mother. Or the sight of the face of a young soldier in death….a soldier of either side. You will learn to process the images and move on and do your job. But what you see in battle will never leave you.
In combat you may find that those around you may need a helping hand. Do not shy away from an opportunity to act first as a concerned human being and then later as a reporter. Help the wounded, if called to do so. Carry water or ammo or the dead if it seems needed. None of that violates either the Geneva Convention or your objectivity as a journalist.
And take care…
The Dick Bourne Identity and the World as ‘Free Fire Zone’
Filed Under Media, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Seymour Hersh had ‘em nailed all along.
From the New Yorker online:
They want to turn these guys into assassins,” a former high-level intelligence officer told me. “They want to go on rumors — not facts — and go for political effect, and that’s what the Special Forces Command is really afraid of. Rummy is saying that politics is bigger than war, and we need to take guys out for political effect: ‘You have to kill Goebbels to get to Hitler.’ ”
…
The manhunting teams must be kept “small and agile,” … and “must be able to operate clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover arrangements to travel and to enter countries surreptitiously.”
(Illustration found here.)
Hersh might have mis-spoke about an “executive assassination ring” last March after a constitutional forum with Walter Mondale at the University of Minnesota and that the program was “a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. …”
After the event, in an email exchange, Hersh told the reporter the comments he made were for an forthcoming book and “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”
Last week, however, the shit hit the public fan — it was disclosed that in June CIA honcho Leon Panetta told the Senate and House intelligence committees the agency hid a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Panetta claimed he has shut down the operation.
The House intelligence committee on Friday announced plans it would investigate the whole matter, apparently already asking the CIA for documents and, most-likely, to hold public hearings — a situation which could be of extreme interest if allowed.
Calling young, highly-trained assassins/killers moving across the globe part of a “counterterrorism prgram” is ironic at best.
The US has been in the business of special killings for years — they tried to kill Castro with an exploding cigar (among other devices), along with attempts at Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Afghanistan’s Gulbadin Hekmatyar, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Iraq’s Abdel Karim el-Kassem, Chile’s Marxist leaders and, very likely, in conjunction with Israel, Yasser Arafat.
Cheney’s version had On-The-Job-Training in Iraq.
From the UK’s The Guardian in December, 2003:
Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said yesterday.
…
US special forces teams are already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign jihadists before they cross the border, and a group focused on the “neutralisation” of guerrilla leaders is being set up, according to sources familiar with the operations.
“This is basically an assassination programme. That is what is being conceptualised here. This is a hunter-killer team,” said a former senior US intelligence official, who added that he feared the new tactics and enhanced cooperation with Israel would only inflame a volatile situation in the Middle East.
“It is bonkers, insane. Here we are — we’re already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we’ve just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting up assassination teams.”
The Bush White House didn’t give a shit about what anyone thought — much less those peoples in the Middle East.
Dick Cheney told the ugly truth when he slobbered out the US must go to “the dark side” to win the Wide, Wide World Global War on Terrorism, but he’d been on the dark side of shit a long time.
From the New Yorker blog quoted at the top of this post:
“It’s a finesse to give power to Rumsfeld — giving him the right to act swiftly, decisively, and lethally,” the first Pentagon adviser told me. “It’s a global free-fire zone”
…later, they were expanded, turning several nations in North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia into free-fire zones with regard to high-value targets.
The term “free-fire zone” means exactly what it says — fire at will at anytime into a certain designated area, creating an intense-indiscriminate view of killing with tons of collateral damage — and became more known from during the Vietnam era.
And the Dick, with five military deferments because of other, more-important shit:
“Everybody’s arguing about the high-value-target list,” the former senior intelligence official said. “The Special Ops guys are pissed off because Cheney’s office set up priorities for categories of targets, and now he’s getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.”
All it takes, however, is one asshole put in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The only saving grace for all of us is the fact Dick Cheney, though a nasty asshole, is in reality a near-moron incompetent.
Exit
Filed Under War & Politics | Leave a Comment
In the realm of stalemate/quagmire:
But after nearly eight years of fighting in Afghanistan, the war’s strategic rationale still remains tenuous. Central Asia holds little intrinsic strategic value to the United States, and America’s security will not necessarily be endangered even if an oppressive regime takes over a contiguous fraction of Afghan territory. Given Afghanistan’s numerous challenges, and the fact that a protracted guerrilla war will weaken the United States militarily and economically, the fundamental objective should be to get out of Afghanistan.
(Illustration found here).
As the US eased its ass into Vietnam — the first US combat mission, Operation Chopper, occurred Jan. 12, 1962 — the media, much less the general public, had not a shit-thread of a clue of what had been developing in Southeast Asia. In 1955, with the help of massive amounts of American military, political, and economic aid, the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN or South Vietnam) was born.
And where nearly 60,000 US GIs would eventually die due to the lying arrogance of America’s leaders.
No one back home, back ‘In the World,’ understood, but veterans knew the score.
From the VVAW:
As GIs in Vietnam we saw the often-stark realities of Vietnam and could compare them to the “truth” the American people were being told.
We saw the corrupt Saigon generals making money hand over fist while their armies would not fight.
We saw the hate in the eyes of the local villagers who never welcomed us as “liberators” bringing us bouquets of flowers as we had seen in World War II movies.
The only Vietnamese who seemed to want us there wanted greenbacks in return for drugs, booze or women, or all three.
We also saw the enemy fight and had to admire both his bravery and tenacity in taking on U.S. tanks, planes and helicopters with grenades and rifles.
We supposedly valued human life while our enemy did not.
Yet we paid the owners of the Michelin plantations $600 for each rubber tree we damaged, while the family of a slain Vietnamese child got no more than $120 in payment for a life.
Nowadays, there’s a strong backstory on Afghanistan.
“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier
Go, go, go like a soldier
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!
– Rudyard Kipling “The Young British Soldier“
Kipling, bard of the late, great British Empire, was referencing the Brits continual horror in Afghanistan — they were beaten three times, in 1839, 1878, and then again in 1919 (though it was considered a tactical ‘win’ for the UK that last time) before they could get the message.
And in the more-recent of history, the USSR.
The Soviets knew, however, in the early stages of the invasion, the war was un-winnable: The realization that there could be no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan came to the Soviet military leadership very early on. The issue of troop withdrawal and the search for a political solution was discussed as early as 1980, but no real steps in that direction were taken, and the Limited Contingent continued to fight in Afghanistan without a clearly defined objective.
For another near-nine years before calling it quits — bringing on the end to the age of the Soviet.
So along comes the US of A in 2001 and near-nine years later, nothing.
Except for 669 US troops killed there (along with a shitload of civilians, especially at weddings and funerals), bringing the total for both disastrous wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) to 5,002 as of Tuesday.
The US, full of 9/11 hubris, began airstrikes Oct. 7, 2001 against Taliban and al-Qaida targets.
And with the fall of Kabul on Nov. 13, 2001, the Taliban retreated from most of northern Afghanistan, and for the next near-five years, the conflict was pushed to a far, back burner.
Now the stove is hot, real hot again, and with it the memories of the Queen’s Guards and the Soviet troopers, getting slaughtered.
Even Defense honcho Bob Gates knows some kind of endgame is approaching: Gates said that victory was a “long-term prospect” under any scenario and that the U.S. would not win the war in a year’s time. However, U.S. forces must begin to turn the situation around in a year, he said, or face the likely loss of public support.
“After the Iraq experience, nobody is prepared to have a long slog where it is not apparent we are making headway,” Gates said in an interview. “The troops are tired; the American people are pretty tired.”
Sick and damn-tired, I’d probably say.
Malou Innocent, from the piece quoted at the top of this post, laments the US should have already lessened its presence in the region:
Perhaps most troubling about the reflexive “stay the course” mentality of some Americans is the widespread insensitivity about the thousands of people — civilian and military, domestic and foreign — killed, maimed, and traumatized in war.
But history shows that, sooner or later, disenchantment will manifest in public and congressional attitudes. After nearly a decade in Afghanistan, even the memory of 9/11 might not be sufficient to outweigh the sacrifice in blood and treasure.
…
Unfortunately, bureaucratic inertia and a misplaced conception of Washington’s moral obligations (an argument that more often than not legitimizes America’s military occupation of a foreign people) threaten to trap the United States in Afghanistan for decades.
Overall, remaining in Afghanistan is more likely to tarnish America’s reputation and undermine U.S. security than would withdrawal.
Yes, that all-encompassing factor — ‘history shows‘ — but will it be too late?
Astronomical
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A couple of celestial phenomena have graced eyes and telescopes most recently, especially this evening as the longest total solar eclipse this century swept across Asia, starting in India, sweeping east across China and into the Pacific Ocean.
A blogger/astronomer who chased the eclipse from a mountain outside Hangzhou, China:
8:05 a.m. (8:05 p.m. E.D.T.)
We have an eclipse! It is four minutes past first contact, and we can all clearly see a bite out of the top of the Sun, at about 11 o’clock orientation.
The sky is hazy, but we can see the shape of the Sun very clearly through the haze. We should see the corona very well, if this sky condition continues.
Reportedly, the eclipse was visible along a 155-mile-wide path over a real-shitload of peoples in India and China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar.
One wonders at the wonders.
Astronomers were also wired up today in the aftermath of a collision on the planet Jupiter.
Something — probably a small comet — smacked into Jupiter on Sunday, leaving a bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean near its south pole.
Just after midnight, Australian time, on Sunday, Jupiter came into view in the eyepiece of Anthony Wesley, an amateur astronomer in Murrumbateman.
The planet was bearing a black eye spookily similar to the ones left in 1994.
“This was a big event,” said Leigh Fletcher of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “In the inner solar system it would have been a disaster.”
The word astronomical does two meanings, one beyond that mentioned above; the word also signifies something huge, something inconceivably large or great — hence from a bitch-dust-up with cost of health reform, the rich have accumulated humongous wallets (h/t ThinkProgress):
Congressional Budget Office data show that between 1979 and 2006 (the most recent year for which these data are available)…the after-tax income of the top 1 percent of households increased by 256 percent, after adjusting for inflation, compared to an increase of 21 percent for families in the middle income quintile.
Increased by 256 percent!
An astronomical total eclipse of the mind.
‘Please, please bring us home…’
Filed Under Just Plain War, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Four more US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Monday and this morning news of eight suicide bombers striking government compounds in two eastern towns as this near-decade-long war is going from bad to worse to even worser (if there is such a word/situation).
Thirty US GIs have already been killed this month, and coupled with 25 more deaths from other NATO forces brings the total to 55: The deadliest since this whole mess started in October 2001.
Down on the down stalemate as the Iraq and Afghan operations are becoming inter-twisted with comparisons to Vitenam.
(Illustration found here).
Over the weekend a video clip was released of a US GI captured/snagged by insurgents.
A sad reminder of the bullshit involved with these wars.
The US is in a hypocritical losers stance, this time in Afghanistan.
Captured American Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, of Ketchum, Idaho, showed evidence both pathetic and revealing.
Via antiwar.com:
The soldier gave his name, age and hometown on the video, which was released on a Web site pointed out by the Taliban.
He said the date was July 14 and that he was captured when he lagged behind on a patrol.
He was interviewed in English by his captors.
He was asked his views on the war, which he called extremely hard; his desire to learn more about Islam; and the morale of American soldiers, which he said was low.
Asked how he was doing, the soldier said: “Well I’m scared, scared I won’t be able to go home. It is very unnerving to be a prisoner.”
He later choked up when discussing his family and his hope to marry his girlfriend.
“I have a very, very good family that I love back home in America. And I miss them every day when I’m gone,” he said.
He was prompted by his interrogators to give a message to the American people.
“To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it’s like to miss them, you have the power to make our government bring them home,” he said. “Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here, wasting our time and our lives and our precious life that we could be using back in our own country. Please bring us home. It is America and American people who have that power.”
A U.S. military spokeswoman in Afghanistan, Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, said the Taliban was using their captive for propaganda.
“I’m glad to see he appears unharmed, but again, this is a Taliban propaganda video,” she said. “They are exploiting the soldier in violation of international law.”
And this claim of “violation of international law” coming from a country that tortures, illegally invades other countries, eavesdrops on its own citizens, creates a band of roving assassins, among a shitload of other nefarious enterprises — what a mouthful!
And now word that Bergdahl most-likely has been taken to Pakistan, which would make it even harder to get his release, despite the jawing of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the incident is “outrageous” and shows “It’s a real sign of desperation and inappropriate criminal behavior on the parts of these terrorist groups, so we are going to do everything we can to get him.”
And once again, ‘inappropriate criminal behavior,’ as pot calling the kettle liar.
Cronkite Continued
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All the blubbering coming from broadcast news last night on the death of Walter Cronkite yesterday made me want to grab a barf bag and run away.
These talking twit-heads on TV are nothing but smoke and mirrors — not at all connected to the news business, but a shadow, a sham and shit-long-way from the professional profession Cronkite and his peers practiced just a few short years ago.
(Illustration found here).
In the mid-1970s, when I landed my first newspaper job at a daily in Alabama, journalism was at the pinnacle of its appeal — the Washington Post had greatly helped bring down a corrupt administration and newsrooms across the US were most-likely bustling with pride.
My cohorts and I knew we were doing a job that could make a difference.
J-school doesn’t really reveal the reality of journalism.
Upon entering that Alabama newsroom I was greeted by a band of misfits, weirdos, chain-smoking crazies and all kinds of strange and fascinating characters, all in pursuit of getting THE story out and making sure it was correct — I knew I was home.
When All the President’s Men was released in 1976, the pride of journalism sounded like the roar of a chattering IBM Selectric typewriter — I saw myself as Dustin Hoffman playing Carl Bernstein, as did probably a trillion other reporters around the world.
Newspaper work then was the work of self-esteem, albeit with low pay, long hours and a horrid fright of misspelling somebody’s name or screwing up a factoid.
When I re-entered journalism in the 1990s after a long absence, I was shocked.
I watched in horror as a wonderful little community newspaper was completly dismantled by a media corporation while editorial and advertising became joined at the hip, or maybe it was the lips.
Journalism now sucks greatly through a small straw.
Glenn Greenwald has a most-excellent post about the whole journalism/Cronkite bullshit here.
News work has been deep-sixed with a deep throat.
Black and White Good Night
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End of trust and straight-talk – Walter Cronkite died today at age 92.
(Illustration found here).
In memory, Ben Bradlee with a piece posted today in Newsweek on Cronkite and Watergate:
In October 1972, Cronkite devoted two segments, back to back, to the Watergate story.
The first was 14 minutes, the second eight.
I think that second night was curtailed by CBS chairman William S. Paley because Paley was scared of it.
The fact that Cronkite did Watergate at all (let alone at that length) gave the story a kind of blessing, which is exactly what we needed — and exactly what The Washington Post lacked.
It was a political year, and everyone was saying, “Well, it’s just politics, and here’s the Post trying to screw Nixon.”
We were the second-biggest newspaper in the country trying to scramble for a good story — whereas Cronkite was the reigning dean of television journalists.
When he did the Watergate story, everyone said, “My God, Cronkite’s with them.”
A near-about same story with LBJ and Cronkite’s view of Vietnam:
As the TET offensive continued into February, the anchorman for the CBS evening news, Walter Cronkite, traveled to Vietnam and filed several reports.
Upon his return, Cronkite took an unprecedented step of presenting his “editorial opinion” at the end of the news broadcast on February 27th.
“For it seems now more certain than ever,” Cronkite said, “that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.”
After watching Cronkite’s broadcast, LBJ was quoted as saying: “That’s it. If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”
Cronkite was still a straight-talker: He disliked the current war in Iraq, telling Esquire magazine, “Indeed, we are in another Vietnam. Almost play by play. It’s a terrible mistake that we’re in Iraq, and it’s a terrible mistake to insist on staying there.”
No one paid any attention.
Cronkite had been pushed further and further away from the modern reality of journalism — He was the image and very-much-so the voice of a generation, which apparently trusted and accepted that’s the way is…
‘Let Me Do The Talkin’ Lois’
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I didn’t think the Emmys had the grapes — not like that time they nominated Vince Edwards: He’s just a damn doctor, Jim.
(Illustration found here).
Who said Seth MacFarlane is imbecilic? Go ahead, you homo, tell me and I’ll trim his toenails with an axe.
A nomination for Best Comedy was heaped upon Family Guy this morning, the first nod to an animated series since The Flintstones in 1961, and proves the axiom that if you waterboard an entire country long enough, they will admit to an affair in Buenos Aires (or as we like to say: Bone the Heiress).
Not funny, but I’m in control of this blog.
Now all we have to do is juju the competition:
“Entourage” — nothing but lying, scheming, and Washington, DC, no, Hollywood (what’s the difference) and it’s got that turd-knockin’ cry baby, Jeremy Piven.
“The Flight of the Conchords” — never seen it, but it’s gotta suck!
“How I met Your Mother” — nasty.
“The Office” — just a room full of losers scratching out a living hawking paper products, what’s the humor in that we ask you? (Not you, asshole! We’re talking to those geeks over in the far corner).
“30 Rock” — Very funny and I’m going to marry Tina (“I can see Russia from my house“) Fey when I grow up, but the show just can’t carry the weight of Peter Griffin battling a giant rooster, or Stewie wearing a Nazi uniform displaying a McCain/Palin sticker.
“Weeds” — Dude, I live in Humboldt County, California, what the shit? Gemma back my freakin’ bong!
And if only Antiques Roadshow can win Outstanding Reality Program — that would be better than nailin’ Lois Griffin after a J Geils concert.
keep looking »