War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
“Always find your target true And we will always pay for you To turn a terrorist’s skin a paler hue.” — To A Drone: A Poem (Illustration found here). The so-called drone war in the Af-Pak theater is getting more dumb-ass everyday — not only are these remote-controlled killers running nearly blind, but this whole…
One of the great bad boys of history, Osama bin Laden, is reportedly living in a house in northwest Pakistan, hanging with his chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in relative comfort, and apparently still calling the shots for al Qaeda all over the globe. According to CNN, the third member of the most-sought-after trio in recent…
In a conflict that’s moving quickly from mismanaged to just plain foolish, Afghanistan is seeing a spike in civilian deaths, especially in the southern part of the country where US and NATO troops are attempting, once again, to drive out the Taliban. The International Red Cross, despite reporting the number of bystander injuries are “hitting…
In deep spaces of the dark side, there’s no daylight, ever. Dying! Dying in the night! Won’t somebody bring the light So I can see which way to go Into the everlasting snow? — Emily Dickinson The Dick apparently will not be denied and will not go peacefully into that ugly, ugly night. Although looking…
Last Thursday — Oct. 7, the ninth anniversary of the start of the Afghan War – Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War gathered in front of the Walter Reed Hospital in DC to launch “Operation Recovery,” an attempt by the group to air the horror, and thus bring to a halt, the re-deployment of soldiers…
Fear is a soft sounding word, nothing scary about it, at least until some circumstance is attached. Last week, my first post on fear concerned the quiet, unassuming fright in the storing of mega-dangerous spent nuclear fuel at reactor sites — fear without example. Although the message is low key — all that radioactive material piling…
Odd is history. What little of history I’ve seen, one truism for sure is that history does repeat itself — what comes around goes around. People who’ve had a strong hand in developing parts-and-parcel the world’s current shit-storm also enjoyed a role in events past — revealing a character study in nasty, carry-a-big-stick-and-use-it warmongering. Even…
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…
Killing people from afar has always been the safest bet in any kind of murderous situation — the longbow ended the age of chivalrous knights, and the firearm put the archer out of work — even a rock in a sling could put bad shit on a much bigger, uglier opponent. In fact, an entire…
What a complete, horrible mess the US nine years and some 24 hours following the attack on the World Trade Center, an event apparently which has become a turgid line drawn in the sands of time — we’ll always be caught nasty-faced in the before and after. In the front-page explosion off the San Francisco…