Category: War

Once upon a time, sounds like a fairy tale beginning but even as we’ve sunk to the depths of incivility in more then our politics in this country, it isn’t a fairy tale I assure you. For once there was a closer resemblance to debating issues and cross political party ideology, good or bad, were really discussed seriously.

What do the Vietnam congressional debates have to do with the now, as Sen. John Kerry says “lawmakers’ meetings during the Vietnam War offer useful lessons for the discussing the Afghanistan war.”

Record number of Army suicides in June

7/15/2010 Officials have been grappling with how to identify, treat soldiers at risk

The U.S. Army on Thursday reported a record number of suicides in a single month among active duty, Guard and Reserve troops, despite an aggressive program of counseling, training and education aimed at suicide prevention.

Suicides for the first half of the year are up 12 percent over 2009. In June, 32 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide, including 21 on active duty.

The June report came as the Army also released a 20-minute training video on suicide prevention titled, “Shoulder to Shoulder – I will never quit on life.”  Continued

I am and have always been a vocal proponent of therapy, medication, and introspection.  All three in tandem have proven to be invaluable to my own understanding of self, as well as an effective treatment plan.  I am not the only person who has reaped great benefit from them, too.  Recent developments, however, have given me a greater understanding of the limitations of each of these methods of attaining mental health.  By this I mean that a friend recently pointed out once again my infamous difficulty in setting adequate boundaries for myself and alongside it, unintentionally exhausting people with my need to constantly reach out.

This past holiday weekend I visited two Civil War battlefields:  Antietam and Gettysburg.  While part of my motivation to go was purely the tourist’s curiosity, I also went to remind myself of the multitude of ironies present in armed conflict.  It does me well to contemplate what I believe to be the overall futility of warfare, regardless of the context.  I certainly found plenty of both.  I chose to go in part to celebrate Independence Day in a completely different sort of context.  While I do appreciate the sacrifices made to establish a new nation and with it a groundbreaking experiment in Democracy, my pacifist beliefs often leave me deeply conflicted.  To move nearly one hundred years forward in time from the Revolutionary War to the conflict that tore a hole in our nation’s fabric seemed much more suited for the occasion.    

In the USA, we tend to selectively omit (or at least not accurately reflect) true historical facts in our collective understanding of history.

Our revolution being funded by King Louis XVI and the French monarchy is not the first thought we have when we watch fireworks on the 4th of July. Nor do we think of the direct causal effect of American War funding with King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette losing their lives due to US war funding bankrupting France… but let’s revisit our history.

The French government regarded the American revolution as an opportunity to weaken the British empire. Since its defeat in the Seven Years’ War, France had been rebuilding its military power and mending diplomatic fences.

Humbling the arrogant British would be sweet revenge and would have the practical advantage of evening out the balance of power in Europe.

The French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, saw the potential advantages of aiding the American rebels. A prudent statesman, he would not lightly risk the possibility of a disastrous war with Britain. Differences of opinion within the French government also inclined him to caution.

King Louis XVI was dubious about helping enemies of a monarch with whom he was at peace. The Comptroller General of Finances, Baron Turgot, passionately declared that a war with Britain would push France into bankruptcy.

Vergennes persuaded the King and his fellow ministers to agree to a policy that he considered both practical and safe, providing covert assistance to the Americans. A sum of 1 million livres was set aside for this purpose.

The French Alliance :: The Politics of War

Iraq, Rapidly becoming the Forgotten War!!

There have been 4,729 coalition deaths — 4,410 Americans, 2 Australians, 1 Azerbaijani, 179 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7 Danes, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonians, 1 Fijian, 5 Georgians, 1 Hungarian, 33 Italians, 1 Kazakh, 1 South Korean, 3 Latvian, 22 Poles, 3 Romanians, 5 Salvadoran, 4 Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, 2 Thai and 18 Ukrainians — in the war in Iraq as of May 5 2010, according to a CNN count. { Graphical breakdown of casualties }. The list also includes 13 U.S. Defense Department civilian employees. At least 31,860 {31,839 last month} U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. View casualties in the war in Afghanistan

“This is an impressive crowd: the Have’s and Have-more’s. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.”

George W. Bush

“It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.”

Margaret Thatcher

“Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time.”

Margaret Bonnano

lest we forget …

Folks this book by Tom Engelhardt just came out — it’s got good antiwar writing in it, and a good perspective can bring out its especially good points.  But, hey, that’s what reviewers are for!

(crossposted at Orange)

The Conspiracy of the Elite has always been able to throw the kill switch. It’s what they do. They kill whatever stands in their way. Whether it is the resistance to their domination by the common man. Or a “Leader” who doesn’t want to go along with their agenda of world domination. Or the Earth herself who does not yield to their rape and pillage without a fight. This Elite of banksters, financiers, industrialists, military professionals and philosophers of elite exceptionalism gather under names like Bilderberg, Trilateral, CFR, G8 and others in secret and public places always protected by a phalanx of kill switch security armed to euthanize the prying eyes of the public and those brave enough to resist.  

To deny this conspiracy of the elite is to deny the earth orbits the sun or the tides are effected by the moon. To deny an elite gathers in secret to decide the fate of nations or the value of money or to plan war and recession is to deny we need water and air to survive. It is a truth which is self-evident.

This is going to be short.

Meant to inform of this day, to send you to one extremely dedicated individuals own post, to hopefully send some to search out even more {if you haven’t followed the real issues}, for the trolls who won’t see these issues on conservative blogs or news? sites, and we probably won’t hear a peep on any of the Sunday Morning empty blab shows or news outlets.

And many more related, long needed but ignored, other area’s as to Veterans Issues!

VA secretary visits project

End this fucking war NOW!

Private security contractors protecting the convoys that supply U.S. military bases in Afghanistan are paying millions of dollars a week in “passage bribes” to the Taliban and other insurgent groups to travel along Afghan roads, a congressional investigation released Monday has found.

The alleged payments, which are reimbursed by the U.S. government, help fund the very enemy the U.S. is attempting to defeat and renew questions about the U.S. dependence on private contractors, who outnumber American troops in Afghanistan, 130,000 to 93,000.

LATimes.com

Bold text added by the diarist

  So taxpayer money is funding contractors in Afghanistan who in turn fund THE TALIBAN with US Government reimbursable bribe money.

Seriously?

WTF???

More areyoufuckingkiddingme below the fold