Veterans' Day 2007: Sentimentality in uniform

Well, here it is Veterans' Day 2007. It used to be called Armistice Day in remembrance of the end of The Great War, which, after the unpleasantness of World War II, got a name change. Not that anyone really cares about World War I these days. That's ancient history, so yesterday and it has nothing to do with what's happening now.

And I suppose it doesn't, for there were reasons the great European powers went to war with one-another 93 years ago. Stupid, petty reasons to be sure but reasons nonetheless. Or so the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Great Britain thought; for when we delve just a little beneath the surface what we find is a trio of royal cousins wanting an excuse to whack the crap out of each other. A lot of death, destruction and mayhem could have been avoided if the King of Great Britain, the Kaiser of Germany and the Czar of Russia had been locked in a room and beaten one another to a bloody pulp, last man standing the winner.

So how does this relate to the current "war" on terror? Because, at least in the early days of World War I the civilian population cheered declarations of war, the boys enlisted and, with much pomp and ceremony, marched off to die. And, at least according to the "polls" Americans overwhelmingly supported the opening notes of Operation Iraqi Liberation. But like the Vietnam burned babies that we are, we, the American people, have soured on President George W. Bush's little occupation of Iraq.

But we haven't soured on putting on a big sendoff for our boys and girls in uniform. Here's a sample of the latest teary-eyed, heart-tugging ceremony for the Iowa National Guards' 186th Military Police Company, in a story by reporter Melissa Walker in this morning's Sunday Des Moines Register

A soldier took a loved one down a quiet hallway to comfort her and privately say goodbye.

A freckle-faced boy wore his father's Army cap and looked up at him with pride.

A young man held his wife's hand and smiled as he patted her stomach, their baby growing inside.

There were hundreds of moments like these at the send-off on Saturday for the roughly 130 members of the Iowa Army National Guards 186th Military Police Company The company is headed to Fort Dix, N.J., for training before its deployment to Iraq.

Aw, isn't that touching. It makes this company of trained killers seem so human. Oopsie! I called them "trained killers!" I meant professional military police officers be sent to Iraq to "train" the Iraqis to police themselves. Odd, isn't it! I always thought Saddam Hussein's Iraq was something of a police state? Oh, well, silly me.

And to add a little noise and color to the sendoff ceremonies the Patriot Guard Riders, a group of Harley-Davidson ridding, flag waving, middle-aged cases of arrested development are donating their services to protect these brave boys and girls from the Reverend Fred Phelps and his merry band of Westboro Baptist homo haters. Fortunately for Register readers any reference to the Patriot Guard Riders or Fred Phelps was edited out, or both packs of assholes decided not to show.

But if we revel in the wonderful sendoffs for our "heroes" in uniform, equally we revel when they come home in a box or under their own power. We love the spectacle of flags and marching soldiers, their weeping families when they return. It only lasts a few minutes at most on the TV screen but it's so-o-o-o "emotional."

Anyway, like I wrote back on September 27 on this blog: As long as there is an All Volunteer Force. And as long as troop levels remain constantly around a 100,000 to 150,000 the American public will put up with the continued occupation of Iraq and subjugation of its people. This is the cynical and terrible arithmetic of Iraq.

To illustrate my point of September 27 last may I offer some quotations from the Veteran's Day story by George Basler in this morning's the Binghamton, NY Press & Sun-Bulletin

They're a different kind of veteran than previous generations, because they're fighting in an all-volunteer army, military officials said. Most of the country, exempt from a draft, can go about its business without being touched by war, or even thinking about it.

Opposition to the war disturbs Vincent Ruffo, 50, of Port Dickinson, who served in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005 as a sergeant with the 204th Engineer Battalion. He was in the National Guard for 20 years and also served at the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York City following the events of 9/11. He thinks too many people are forgetting that day, and why the United States is fighting. Maybe it will take another tragedy to wake people up, he said.

"What makes me mad is when people say we're a country at war. We're not a country at war. We're a military at war," [Joseph Merrill] the deputy Binghamton clerk said. He has more respect for people who are vocally against the war, even though he doesn't agree with them, than he has for people who say they support the war, but don't give anything back.

With that I close this Veterans' Day tirade.

Do we need a coup d'etat to right the Ship of State?

We have truly entered the era of dangerous stupidity. To wit, this essay posted at the progressive/left Web site Online Journal.com, by contributor John Stanton, titled Uniformed, active US military: Last hope for the US Constitution and the Republic. Writes Mr. Stanton:

"The uniformed, active duty members of the United States military are now the only force potent enough to stop the corporatization of America's public goods: its land, its air, its water, its people, its institutions, its infrastructure, and its rapidly deteriorating social compact.

...The uniformed US military is allowing itself to be transformed into a corporate monster. Even now, some military leaders act just like the callous CEOs in private industry. They throw away lives like a CEO blithely chops away 1,000 livelihoods. As it stands, within a decade the uniformed services will be totally polluted with over-the-horizon leaders who see their service to the country as little more than a CEO training exercise. At that point, the uniformed services will become little more than corporate muscle that is used to eliminate local or regional resistance to the corporate takeovers."

Here I pause and exclaim:"Allowing?!" The uniformed military already is a "corporate monster." It was transformed into a corporate monster on on July 1, 1973 when the law, signed by Richard Nixon in 1971, ending the draft and putting the Selective Service on standby, went into effect.

And I think Mr. Stanton is behind the time in his assessment it will be within a decade when military officer training is little more than training exercises for future CEOs and smooching up to the corporatist world. Take for example this March 16, 2006 posting from ThinkProgress.org

Less than 6 months ago Gen. Richard B. Myers retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military officer in the country. He’s quickly found alternative employment. From the Chicago Tribune’s The Swamp:

Northrop Grumman, one of the nation’s largest and best-known defense firms, announced Wednesday that Myers, an Air Force veteran and former fighter pilot, has joined its board of directors.

As one of 11 “non-employee” directors, Myers will earn $200,000 a year, according to a company spokesman. Half of that sum is paid to the company’s 12 directors in stock.

In exchange for his 200K, Myers will have to attend “eight scheduled board meetings this year, two of which are conducted by phone.

This is only one example. Generals and Navy admirals sliding into cushy corporate positions is the norm, not the exception. Yet this doesn't seem to deter Stanton in his call for a military takeover of the government.

How long until the uniformed military carries out its core duty to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States? The uniformed military is the only US government institution that has the tenuous trust and respect of the American people. The US Senate, House, presidency and judicial branches -- advised by their corporate handlers -- have used the uniformed US military to serve their own individual interests, not those embodied in the Constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence. The premeditated policies of the current US government are literally killing the American people and creating foreign enemies that future American youngsters will be asked to kill. America can't even run a legitimate presidential election.

Two decades of this madness is enough. The uniformed military needs to be true to its oath of office. It's the domestic enemies that are destroying the country. The US Army oath for officers states, " . . . I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter . . ."

What a sad commentary on the state of current affairs when a progressive Web site posts an essay calling for a military putsch against the federal government. I understand Stanton's anguish and frustration with the corporatist reality of our political system but to call for a military dictatorship borders on insanity. Take for example the murder acquittal of Army sniper Jorge G. Sandoval Jr. or the clearing of murder charges for two soldiers at Fort Bragg, as reported by Robert Perry in this morning's edition of ConsortiumNews.com, against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively. What lesson does this convey to our troopers of the All Volunteer Force? That if you're in uniform you can get away with murder? If that is the case why uphold the Constitution?

A 1999 study by Duke University professors Paul Gronke and Peter D. Feaver found: "Military elite officers, far more than elite civilians, are prone to view civilian society as troubled and in need of reform. Elite military officers, far more than elite civilians, are prone to think that civilian society can be repaired if only military values were more widely accepted."

Wishing for a military overthrow of the federal government is neither wise nor desirable, especially considering the widening philosophical gap between the all volunteer professional military and the rest of the population. That this country will fall under a military dictorship within the next ten years I have no doubt. And that the antiwar left will rue the day it ever supported the Milton J. Friedmen inspired All Volunteer Force, of this I also have no doubt.

We respond to reader comments

In response to Monday's posting from CBN blogger David Brody, a reader wrote:

That David Brody ought to remember to wipe his wife’s lipstick off himself before he gets his picture taken. Or has he been PHOTOSHOPPED???
You wouldn’t go so far as to photoshop Brownback in a brown shirt, now would you?

Never one to let the fans down, I took up the challenge. I hope you like the results.

Mother & cancer victim, 42, ready to ship out to Iraq

From the way the BuzzFlash.com headline read--Worthy of Monty Python, Except This is the Real Tragedy Bush Has Brought Us: GI to serve in Iraq after cancer battle. "The 42-year-old mother of two from Los Angeles is again poised for duty after an aggressive treatment plan — including a May 22 lumpectomy, a second surgery a week later and a five-day targeted radiation treatment."--I was going to feel sorry for this woman. But then I read the body of the Yahoo.com AP news story:

Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Cowie's mission — and dream — of serving in Iraq almost ended before it began when tests on a tumor confirmed the worst: She had breast cancer.

The commander said, 'Are you sure? You have an opportunity to go home and be with your family and go through this.' And I said, 'No, I have a family here. I have my civilian family, but this is where I need to be and where I'm needed,'" Cowie said.
Soldiers with a history of cancer who need monitoring every six months or less should not deploy, according to Army guidelines. But they can still deploy depending upon the soldier's condition, input from doctors and commanding officers, and conditions where the soldier is assigned.

Cowie qualified because she decided to forgo a potentially six-week radiation treatment and instead use a concentrated therapy, MammoSite. The procedure implants an angioplasty-like balloon that kills lingering cancer cells with radiation while sparing healthy tissue.

O.K., so sue me. But how can you feel human compassion for some one who willfully walks into harms way for an unjust cause? How can you feel human compassion for someone willingly accepting the role of cannon fodder for a morally bankrupt government and political system? How can you feel human compassion for a person who volunteers to oppress the rights of people half-a-world away who have done her no wrong?

About this, I hate being right

I can't begin to remember how many times over the past four years I've said or written that the United States will never leave Iraq until and unless either one of two events happen: Either a battlefield defeat of American forces in detail, meaning high U.S. casualties followed by a mass surrender, and considering the weapons and training of the Iraqi "insurgents," whoever they may be at any given time, a high unlikely scenario; or a general mutiny of all, or at the very least a sizable majority, army and marine units now in Iraq.

So this morning BuzzFlash.com starts the day off with this headline:

Surprise! The "Surge" Was Just an Excuse to Increase Long-Term Troop Levels in Iraq! Dang, You Could Have Fooled Us! "Conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to justify a drawdown of U.S. military forces, the top commander in Iraq said yesterday." Commitment to Last For Years, Petraeus Claims.

Which links us to a news story out of the Washington Post.com that says:

Conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to justify a drawdown of U.S. military forces, the top commander in Iraq said yesterday.

Asked whether he thought the job assigned to an additional 30,000 troops deployed as the centerpiece of President Bush's new war strategy would be completed by then, Gen. David H. Petraeus replied: "I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do."

Asserting steady, albeit slow, military and political progress, Petraeus said that the "many, many challenges" would not be resolved "in a year or even two years." Similar counterinsurgency operations, he said, citing Britain's experience in Northern Ireland, "have gone at least nine or 10 years." He said he and Crocker would make "some recommendations on the way ahead" to Congress, and that it was realistic to assume "some form of long-term security arrangement" with Iraq.

Why am I not surprized. What with 14 permanant bases being constructed at this very minute in Iraq. With the Democratic failure to even send a stripped-down war funding bill to the White House with a timeline for withdrawal last month. With Cindy Sheehan resigning as the public face of domestic resistance to the Iraq occupation. Nope, the country's stuck in Iraq for at least the next ten years. And that's about the only truth in General Petraeus' remarkds.

There is another reason that the United States will not get out of Iraq anytime soon.

Take for example the poor slub seen here, 34-year-old Army Pfc Michale Pittman of Davenport Iowa.

The Des Moines Register story implies, Pittman enlisted rather late in life out of economic necessity, "Pittman attended Rock Island High School and worked as a painter before joining the Army." Apparently the poor deluded bastard was also one of these *quote-unquote* Christians who is out to prepare the world for christ's second coming, convert heathens and kill infidels.

Mr. Pittman's mother, co-pastor of some bible-thumping church or other in Moline, Il, is quoted in Sunday's Quad Cities Times.com

“I thought it was going to happen to anybody’s son, not Michael,” Sandra Hughes said Saturday night when asked whether she worried about this day coming. “I put him in God’s hands and I prayed. I don’t understand it. But you don’t question God. God works out everything for good for those who love him, and I know Michael is in heaven.”

Awww,how charitable of Mrs. Hughes, thinking, hoping that god might not visit a grusome, pointless death upon her Michael. But now he's a christian martyr up in Jesus's heaven waging war on those terrible Muslim martyrs from Muhammand's heaven. Just fuck all of them.

We support our troops because...

I had an angiogram yesterday so I could not comment on The Des Moines Register neocon columnist John Carlson's latest effort, or lack thereof. Really, Carlson literally phone-in this piece since all he did was quote in toto an e-mail from one Warrant Officer Jim Funk of Ames, IA serving in Iraq with the Iowa National Guard.

Funk is a helicopter pilot, so he's one of those death ex machina guys who very rarely ever soils his hands as he deals out destruction and mayhem on those below. So without further ado let's sample and examine WO Funk's missive as related by Carlson:

"Hello media, do you know you indirectly kill American soldiers every day? You inspire and report the enemy's objective every day. You are the enemy's greatest weapon.

First WO Funk plays the typical reactionary opening gambit of blaming the media. It's not the president's fault that American soldiers are getting killed in Iraq, it's the media's. That's logical.

WO Funk follows with testosterone laced chest thumping:

The enemy cannot beat us on the battlefield so all he does is try to wreak enough havoc and have you report it every day. With you and the enemy using each other, you continually break the will of the American public and American government.

"We go out daily and bust and kill the enemy, uncover and destroy huge weapons caches and continue to establish infrastructure. So daily we put a whoopin on the enemy, but all the enemy has to do is turn on the TV and get re-inspired. He gets to see his daily roadside bomb, truck bomb, suicide bomber or mortar attack. He doesn't see any accomplishments of the U.S. military (FOX, you're not exempt, you suck also).

Care to read more of this example of machismo gone mad letter? Oh, let's do. This is like watching a bad horror flick.

Funk continues:

A couple of days ago we conducted an air assault. We lifted troops into an area for an operation. The operation went well and our ground troops killed (insurgents){why do you suppose the word "insurgents" is surrounded by parenthesis marks?} and took several prisoners, freed a few hostages and uncovered a weapons cache containing munitions and chemicals that were going to be used in improvised bombs.

Ah, yes, here WO Funk describes the good works our fighting forces do in Iraq. Nothing like whacking a few hajis, eh, WO Funk?

The good warrant officer continues his bellicose rant in a similar vein and concludes:

"Media, we know you hate the George Bush administration, but report both sides, not just your one-sided agenda. You have got to realize how you are continually motivating every extremist, jihadist and terrorist to continue their resolve to kill American soldiers."

What a mature observation. The media is all to blame. God forbid that the mere prescence of your august self, WO Funk, and that of your comerades has anything to do with the Iraqis' ire. If it weren't for the meddling of the "liberal" media Richard Perle's prediction that the Iraqis would greet their American liberators with flowers and chocolates would become true. Embedding those pliant journalist in the initial invasion was a mistake, WO Funk. Hell, the "media" should just get the hell out of Iraq and re-run clips from old John Wayne movies and tell us it's actually footage from the front, shouldn't it WO Funk!

The good warrant officer's attitude and that of 29% of Americans who share it, many of whom will never come close to wearing a BDU, plus the timidity of Congressional Democrats means the United States will never get out of Iraq until either one of two things occurs: A complete and total defeat in detail of a major unit of America forces in Iraq, as the German army at Stalingrad, or a unit wide mutiny by disaffected American troops. I'm not holding my breath that either of these ever occurs.

Face it folks, we're stuck. We're stuck in Mesopotamian muck for a very long time.

USMC winning hearts & minds in Afghanistan

Ever wonder why the United States Marine Corp is held up as a paragon of American military virtue? So do I. Here's how our Fightin' Leathernecks are working hard to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan, courtesy Editor&Publisher.com

JALALABAD, Pakistan -- U.S. Marines fleeing a militant ambush Sunday opened fire on civilian cars and pedestrians on a busy highway in eastern Afghanistan, wounded Afghans said. Up to 16 people were killed and 34 wounded in the violence, officials said.

As the Americans sped away, they treated every car and person along the highway as a potential attacker, said Mohammad Khan Katawazi, the district chief of Shinwar. But Maj. William Mitchell, a U.S. military spokesman, said those killed and injured may have been shot by the militants.

More than a half dozen Afghans recuperating from bullet wounds told The Associated Press that the U.S. forces fired indiscriminately along at least a six-mile stretch of one of eastern Afghanistan's busiest highways — a route often filled not only with cars and trucks but Afghans on foot and bicycles.

That's not all. In a related incident, uniformed Americans--it is unclear from the story if the Americans involved were US Army soldiers or Marines--deleted pictures taken by an AP photographer.

An American soldier then took [AP photographer Rahmat] Gul's camera and deleted the photos. Gul said he later received permission to take photos from another soldier, but that the first soldier came back and angrily told him to delete the photos again. Gul said the soldier then raised his fist as if he was going to strike Gul.

The story says "soldiers" but since I, as an American citizen, can't even tell the difference between Army and Marine Corp BDUs, why would anyone expect an Afghan civilian to?