War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
News watching is a curious obsession. Among the many other neurotic proclivities living in my brain-matter’s attic, most likely the deep-set roots for this constant need for situational awareness is a fear of missing something — missing the bus, missing one of the kids’ birthdays, missing an appointment, missing a vital door key, even missing…
Insane or not: Why would the US shackle itself to a place that’s been called the, ‘graveyard of empires,’ and where most of the world’s heroin has its birth? Or as Marie asked: “Uh, he went out the window. Why would someone do that?” Yes, why indeed. So why with all the shit, would bullet…
In all the hullabaloo this week about Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars,” seemingly no one took notice of the big lies that led to that horrible, incoherent inheritance. According to documents released yesterday by the National Security Archive, in January 2001, in one of the first meetings of George Jr.’s administration, the newly-minted, nit-wit…
One nefarious up-tick of a shit-bad economy is an increase in cannon fodder. The New York Times reported in January 2009: “When the economy slackens and unemployment rises and jobs become more scarce in civilian society, recruiting is less challenging,†said Curtis Gilroy, the director of accession policy for the Department of Defense. And a…
In Vietnam, so many, many years ago, the US employed a “search and destroy” tactic, but it failed big time: As one marine captain explained: “You never knew who was the enemy and who was the friend. They all looked alike. They all dressed alike.” Innocent civilians were often killed by mistake. As one Marine…
Tonight President Obama is reportedly set to go on national TV and proclaim the end to the Iraqi war, of course, without using the infamous phrase, “mission accomplished” — a tightrope walk between half-truth and full-blown lie. And the peace president will also not mention the other war zone, Afghanistan, where it’s been a nightmare…
Soldiers are people, too. (Illustration found here). War fucks people up in more ways than maybe 200. Fighting with the US military nowadays is a 24/7/365 ordeal — none of this back in (the) world Vietnam bullshit describing being in country and anywhere else, particularly hometown USA. In the near-nine years since Sept. 11, 2001…
The horror of these things — cluster bombs. Sunday, Aug. 1, marks beginning of an international ban on those terrible weapons — Cluster munitions explode in mid-air to release dozens — sometimes hundreds — of smaller “bomblets” across large areas. Because the final location of these scattered smaller bombs is difficult to control, they can cause…
Even as thousands of documents reveal a beyond-quagmire US entanglement in Afghanistan, the core entity of any kind of peace or accord in the war — Afghan police and soldiers — is a nothing more than a deadly, brutal joke. A joke, however, without a punchline. Check this video from Aljazeera English as a couple of…
The US is getting the shaft in war making. Two invasions and two bloody, nasty quagmires. Rare is the Maureen Dowd column that is more than pancake face powder, or a shoe-horned turn at national politics, and rare still is a piece with insight into the US’ two beleaguered faraway wars. In her column this…