War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
From long ago, and not-so-surprisingly far, far away: Defense Secretary McElroy said after a conference with President Eisenhower Friday that the Pentagon would have “a pretty rough time” trying to avoid a military spending increase staring July 1. McElroy ruled out any increase totaling as much as two billion dollars in excess of the estimated…
“There is nothing more wicked, more disastrous, more widely destructive, more deeply tenacious, more loathsome.” “…once war has been declared, then all the affairs of the State are at the mercy of the appetites of a few.” — Erasmus and War, 14th Century (Illustration of Picasso’s “Massacre in Korea” found here via Google Images). Despite the…
An example of the fiscal foolishness of war. From Stars and Stripes: The Air Force secretary says the service has been spending about $4 million a day to keep 50 fighter jets and nearly 40 support aircraft in the Libya conflict, including the cost of munitions. Secretary Michael Donley tells reporters that the Air Force…
In the face of so much bad shit going on right now — even another US theater of war in Libya — the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan is taking a deep-back seat on the runaway bus of a 24-hour news cycle. However, death is still there as six US GIs were killed Tuesday in eastern…
“I’m sorry, please forgive me. I kept telling you, Jerry — all of you — get ready, build a shelter. Forget the card parties and the barbecues and make the admission to yourself that the worst was possible. But you didn’t want to listen, Jerry. To build a shelter was to admit to the kind…
“There is a distance, a veil between us.” — ‘All Quiet On The Western Front,’ Erich Maria Remarque (Illustration found here). War as waged nowadays — slipshod and way-unnecessary — kills in ways way-beyond the flesh. The US has destroyed a certain of segment of its population, a big chunk, in waging nasty, cruel and…
Is this a back-home by-product of a horrifying nightmare called Afghanistan? An ‘award winning’ veteran loses his shit: An enraged Seymour man shot his mother and tried to shoot his father Tuesday night after the couple refused to acknowledge their son as the reincarnated Jesus, Webster County Sheriff Roye Cole said. Cole said one mystery…
“When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback.“ – Bill Copeland (Illustration found here). In an interview Tuesday in the New York Times, David Petraeus blew smoke up the ass of history, a procedure that the good general is most good: “The momentum of the Taliban has been halted in much of the country…
“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.” – George Orwell, 1984 (Illustration found here). The US Department of Homeland Security (a near-perfect Orwellian title) via its Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in a $3.5 million study is seeking…
What the shit is the US doing, thinking? Even after nearly a decade on the ground in Afghanistan, the war there has gone beyond insane. (Illustration found here). Warfare should have at least some semblance of sense, though, the horror of it stretches one’s mind, but the main objective, one would think, would be to…