How the Right is baiting us to play their war games.

[happydreams]

Here I am listening to Al Franken on FM 1090 and I get this strange WTF feeling. Then it turns to anger. Franken is talking about Haditha and that the Marines who did it were not trained to deal with an insurgency and that therefore it is Rummy's denial that there is an insurgency has prevented the soldiers from being trained. He goes on talking about how the soldiers are improperly trained.

WTF? I asked myself. How do you properly train an imperialist military? It is almost as if Franken is acting as an unsolicited advisor/analyst for the "problem". "Let's get some training for the troops on how to deal with the insurgency. Haditha is the natural consequence of any terror campaign, which is a neccessary component of any war of conquest. Remember "Shock and Awe". You cannot train people to be more humane when the goal is to conquer.



My Lai redux is what Haditha is.



Then I had a memory flash of Saturday Night Live from the 70's when John Belushi was a Mafiosi in a therapy session trying to get in touch with his feelings. :crazy:

[Tace]

1. Franken... I Dunno'

He's running for office. I fully expect him to make no sense whatsoever.

[Kurovski]

3. LOL.

Very good.

[happydreams]

4. It seems you have to express tacit approval of the Iraq War, or

at least the motives for being there to run in politics. Disgusting

[sweetheart]

2. right title, odd op

Make war, mr bill, no no no sluggo.

[OhioBlue]

5. I didn't listen to the program

but in your paraphrase, I can understand what Franken seems to be saying. The blame for atrocities such as this do not stop with the foot soldier. It goes much deeper into the way this so called war was waged. The signals that were sent out "us against them", "dead or alive" the impression that the Geneva Conventions and accepted rules of engagement don't apply in this situation, the dehumanization of Muslims, the REVENGE for 911 feeling that was pounded into the thoughts of Americans...

If his stance was that the blame goes further up the chain of command, I would agree. There were so many mistakes in the way the Iraq war was executed and sold to the public - there is no way to absolve those at the higher levels from the atrocities.

[happydreams]

7. My concern is that Franken is not putting the Iraq War in the starkest

terms. You said: "There were so many mistakes in the way the Iraq war was executed and sold to the public..." . They weren't mistakes they were lies, there is a big difference: mistakes simply implies incompetence, lies implies a criminal act. We need to stop accepting these watered down versions of what this war of conquest is about. That it is a war of conquest there is little doubt when we know that, among other things like oil, and natural gas, there are fourteen permanent military bases. This ends the discussion on what the true intention of this "war".

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. Marines aren't a peacekeeping organization. There were

trained to do exactly what they did.

[The Magistrate]

8. It Is Quite Possible To Train People For The Task, Sir

Training for a unit that is going to be employed in a guerrila suppression campaign must concentrate on conveying to the soldiery thorough understanding of some essential items of guerrila war. The most important to convey is that the strategy of guerrilla campaigns is political, not military, and that a guerrilla force aims always at provoking the conventional opponent into atrocious reactions to its acts that will be politically disasterous in the context of the struggle. Thus, the commission of acts such as the Haditha massacre is playing into the hands of the opponent, and doing just what he wants you to do. Conventional military technique focuses on the idea that you must impose your will on the enemy, and not allow him to make you act in the ways he desires you to do. Guerrilla suppression campaigns require the application of this familiar understanding of the conventional battlefield to less familiar political and social and cultural spheres.

[happydreams]

9. Could you please provide me with an example of

where your eloquently phrased idea has worked.



Thank You

[The Magistrate]

10. To the Best Of My Knowledge, Sir, It Has Not Been Tried

Military establishments maintain themselves in a certain degree of denial about the actual character of guerrilla war; that is why guerrilla efforts so often succeed. The general method employed amounts to an exercise of frightfulness, generally worked into gradually and without much thought, and on some occassions it succeeds, where a guerrilla force does not have a wide and solid political footing, or is geographically isolated. But it is a costly and very innefficient method, that does great damage not only to the society against which it is employed, but to the military force executing the policy.