Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
you wrote: "However, how does one not become guilty of the war crimes we commit if one joins? I mean this both legally and morally.I have no problem with a man who joins in to fight off an invader to his homeland, but how does one justify serving in the army of the invader?"
Military for me is always for defensive purposes, or to stop things like the Holocaust, I suppose. I was young when I initially joined and did not see us as an invader (I was lucky in being in after vietnam and before iraq). I was almost caught up in desert storm--if I had not gone inactive reserve to pursue a ph.d. i think I would have commanded a unit that would have been deployed. At that time I thought seriously about what I would do, because it became clear to me that it was all about the oil, and I thought if ordered to go I might just have to go to jail.
So my position evolved. I was young and had not thought it through when I joined. And you grow to value the people you are with in your units, who I still think of as some of the best people I have ever known. Its all mixed up and complicated in that way. I would probably have ended up in jail if I had stayed in, I suppose: but I will defend the folks I served with as some of the best I have ever known.
Hope that answers your question a little bit. It was an honest question, and I was not offended at all.
I started out as a private and then went to sergeant before I became a Lt., and then went to cpt.
You'll understand me, as one former NCO to a former-NCO-turned-officer, with all the brotherly love I intend, when I say: Fucking traitor. :>
FWIW, one anecdote among many:
My former father-in-law was a ring-knocker, Master's from the Sorbonne, five percenter, but also very deeply principled. He all but resigned his commission when he was a major because his Bn Cdr kept him (out of petty jealousy and punitive BS) out at Yakima during a measly mini-deployment when his wife was suddenly admitted to the hospital with aggressive cancer and their two young daughters were alone in the house. It was just stupid.
The post commanders' wife eventually heard about this, urged her husband to act, and he sent a Huey out to get the major. The brigade CO talked him out of resigning, brought him up to Bde as S3, gave him a stellar OER -- but he never forgot, and turned down battalion command when he was selected for it.
As a logistics officer at the Pentagon, he also discovered that there was no way the force could logistically support our OPLAN for returning forces to Germany if the Soviets came over the Fulda Gap. He tried to fix this, wrote a rather detailed classified report that went nowhere, and sought permission ... denied ... to publish it in Military Review and see what the rest of the officer corps thought about it. After getting rejected, he spent nine months re-writing the same report from unclassified sources, published it in MilReview, and got the changes pushed through. Eventually, they selected him for a star, even though he hadn't punched any of his command tickets ... but he said, forget it, and retired. Last I heard, he was agitating for changes to Tricare.
As you know, there are guys like that out there. They get their beat-downs, they dig in and persevere, and sometimes, they come out on top. I have a tremendous amount of respect for them, and several of them have been a big influence on me.
I just asked the following question to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, on a FireDogLake live Q&A hosted by Digby:
"Senator, are you planning to hold hearings on the illegality of the Pentagon’s propaganda training program of retired military officers that was recently exposed by the New York Times and Glenn Greenwald?"
Senator Reid's reply:
"The answer is yes. I have personally spoken to Chairman Levin and he is tremendously concerned as I. And we are proceeding accordingly."
It is my considered opinion that Obama is a world class hypocrite.
And no, I don't like Clinton and I despise the Republicans.
Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? :>
According to Nick Turse in an op-ed in the LA Times on Friday, General Electric, NBC parent and MSNBC co-owner, was one of the Pentagon's top 100 suppliers in 2006. Total GE defense revenues? $2,327,705,161.
Yes, the decimal's in the right place. GE grossed over 2.3 billion dollars from the DoD in one year.
Assuming that a news producer or commentator at either venue knew or suspected a military analyst was a Pentagon propagandist, what's the likelihood he or she would complain, or that the complaint, if voiced, would go anywhere?
Turse makes the point that Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and other traditional arms makers are now actually dwarfed by the sheer number of civilian suppliers, including innocuous household names like Procter & Gamble($362,461,808) and Kraft ($500,799,104). Even if a network's owner doesn't do business directly with the Pentagon, are broadcasters - even if they decide to practice serious journalism for novelty's sake and muster up the courage to admit their mistakes - ever likely to aggravate, not just the primary source of military-related information, but a top customer of many of their advertisers?
Unfortunately, one reason I suspect Glenn's blistering advocacy for this story hasn't received wider coverage even from friendlier outlets like Air America is the news black hole that is the ongoing Democratic primary. Absent incessant coverage of how-far-is-he-ahead and speculation on when-will-she-drop-out, this would be a perfect issue for the nominee to drop into John McCain's lap, with a request to either denounce the covert use of propaganda or defend it.
Meanwhile, any links anyone can provide to coverage of the Congressional end of the story would be appreciated.
Aych... It is my considered opinion that Obama is a world class hypocrite.
And no, I don't like Clinton and I despise the Republicans.
Who should the Democratic nominee have been? I pose the question in that manner because that race is basically over, barring a rewriting of all the rules by Clinton.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
