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steveyoungjokes · 3 years

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Veteran Feelings

[Unedited, please bear with me] I see many of my fellow veterans proclaiming that they feel sad about the fall of the U.S. client State in Afghanistan. Most of them say something like “surely we needed to leave, just not like this.” Many claim that their feelings are complicated. First of all, how did you see our exit going? It was always going to look like this! Secondly, I’m certain that their feelings are complicated. I had complicated feelings when I first realized that I was being used. That I’d been had. Taken advantage of. I served in Ramadi, Iraq, and watching it fall to ISIS was a horror. I know what you’re thinking and feeling as you watch us lose Afghanistan.

Your complicated feelings are the beginning of the realization that, despite your intentions, you were a tool for evil.

Whether it was to serve our country, pay for school, to just have a job, or (like a platoon sergeant of mine) because a judge made you, we all had reasons for joining. Most of us didn’t join up because we wanted to kill people (though there are plenty of those assholes), but our willingness to engage in violence for our country, or for college money, or whatever, was used by the folks in power to evil ends. Rather than serving your country, you served big business. I spent a total of 12 years in the Marines before becoming disillusioned and leaving the service. So when I tell you that you got played, I know how much that burns.

We weren’t in Afghanistan (or Iraq, for that matter) to build a nation, or to promote feminism or democracy, or even to capture Bin Laden; at best those were tangential goals. Even if you were sent there to give microloans to ladies, or to protect a polling place, you were only there to give a veneer of respectability to an illegal and immoral invasion. If you were sent by the U.S. government, you were helping its mission in making Afghanistan profitable for the companies that sell shit to the U.S. military and extract shit from Afghan land. At best you lent undeserved credibility to the U.S. mission there while maybe helping a local Afghan’s day better. At worst, you’re a war criminal. Most of us are closer to being war criminals than not, and that’s something we need to confront as a group and individuals.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that it was about making money. And the folks that started the U.S. invasion there (and Iraq. I’m starting to sense a pattern) didn’t lose the war, even though their home country may now be leaving the place behind. Rather than losing, they made out like bandits, making billions of dollars at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dead, millions displaced, and a country in ruins.

If you think that we were the good guys, then answer me why U.S. Marines use the Waffen-SS flag? Would the good guys use prisons at Bagram as CIA black sites to torture and murder prisoners? Would the people on the right side of history have suffocated or shot up to 2,000 prisoners in after surrendering? What of the thousands of Afghan civilians that are still being killed or wounded every year after decades of our presence there?

If we were there to help build a nation, why, after 20 years does Afghanistan still rank 169th on the U.N.’s Human Development Index? If we were there to rebuild their country, why, after spending $143 billion dollars of Afghanistan’s reconstruction is there no significant improvement in the lives of the vast majority of Afghans or development of basic infrastructure? We can talk about the kleptocratic leaders of Afghanistan, but they’re small potatoes compared to the largesse raked in by U.S. corporate interests.

If we were there to get bin Laden, why did we turn down the Taliban’s offer to turn him over. Was it because they wanted evidence, and we didn’t have any at the time? Or did we really just want an excuse to invade? Probably both. The same day that the FBI said they didn’t know who committed these attacks, President Bush said they knew who to aim our revenge toward. He claimed that they “hate our freedoms”, without any evidence to support that he was indicating the right people or that they did indeed hate our freedoms. If they hated our freedoms, why did the 9/11 hijackers target the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and not the Statue of Liberty? Could it be that they had seen that U.S. forces had, for over a century, invaded or coup-ed dozens of countries throughout the world at the behest of corporations? Perhaps they wanted to strike a blow, not at our freedoms, but at the military and economic terrorism that our government has wrought around the world in order to make sure that companies were “free” to make money without the pesky natives getting restless. Perhaps they remembered the time when U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (#girlboss), said that killing 500,000 Iraqi children was “worth it.”

The enemy of the 9/11 hijackers is the same enemy as the rest of us. Our bosses. The person who tells us what to do. This is often a political leader. More often it’s a manager at work. For most of us, the boss just controls your schedule, your attire, and your pay (while making money off your work) and maybe your health insurance. These are relatively minor levels of freedom-usurpation. However, the managers and owners of the biggest companies, especially those that sell to the U.S. military, make billions off war whether we win or not! They only need the war to go on long enough to make a buck (well, billions of bucks). Political leaders in the U.S. rub shoulders, if not take orders from, those high-powered bosses. So any political repressions that our government engages is are usually aligned with the interests of the wealthy (see, e.g. the war on drugs). The present example is no different: in 2001 the leader of the Northern Alliance made an oil pipeline deal with an Argentine Company; we made sure he was killed on September 10, 2001. But now that the Taliban has vowed to not disrupt the pipeline project, and is actively extracting and selling minerals with the knowledge and aid of U.S. forces, it’s suddenly much less necessary for the U.S. to remain there.

If you have complicated feelings, it’s because you’re mad that you’ve been had. You wanted to do good, and only bad came from it. You wanted to help Afghanistan, but the U.S. only made it worse. That’s a tough pill to swallow when you’ve grown up believing that you’re on the good side. Now that you know that we’re the baddies, I implore you to help take power from the real bad folks, those who make sure that military options are on the table because they are the options that make money for the already wealthy.

Your complicated feelings probably include anger. Just make sure you direct your anger at the right enemy. The Taliban is bad, definitely, but they’ve objectively done less bad in the world than U.S. foreign policy has. Help us change this country so that it will serve its citizens, and not harm anyone. Get money out of politics, fight for democracy in the workplace, and the right to vote guaranteed for everyone.

#afghanistan #taliban #usmc #veteran #9/11

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inkedsoldier · 4 years

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Chew the Bullet - Chapter Five

A Modern Warfare series

Casey Vos is a liaison officer for the Dutch Special Forces. She has been stationed in Afghanistan and Syria, but now works everywhere they need her assistance. Specialized in counterterrorism and intelligence, she is unmistakably a great asset for the upcoming Taskforce 1-4-1, under the command of Captain John Price.

A/N: Here it is – the official chapter five of the Chew the Bullet. Let’s continue the story. English is not my first language, but I’m getting better at it. Please, if you see any errors, let me know so I can fix it. It’s much appreciated. Well, I hope you enjoy! And please leave a note, vote or message with your thoughts! Bravo team out.

Warnings: angst, violence.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

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Price believed that the duty of every soldier is to fight for the greater good. He always fights for what’s right, but he also knows that what’s right isn’t always what you’re fighting for. He often takes drastic actions on his own, against all orders. But he couldn’t get over the fact that Kate knew Casey was still alive. “How could you keep that information from me?” he spoke through gritted teeth. On the screen of the laptop the face of Laswell appeared, who had just called in to inform the captain about new intel they received. “She asked me to, John” she answered, her face down. “She was broken. Battered and bruised. I’ve never seen her that scared before. I couldn’t say no. And after all, she did it to protect you. To protect Alex and the rest of the unit.” He sighed, “I know. She always puts herself in second place.”

As a soldier himself, he would have probably handled it the same way. “She trusts us, John. And we can trust her when she makes a decision like that,” Laswell stated. “But we can talk about this later. The agency received intel on the attack. Al-Qatala’s claiming responsibility. Alex is on the ground as we speak, looking for the stolen chems.” Casey already found out that the orders came from the Wolf in Urzikstan. “Well, you’ll need the Liberation Force on his side, so have him contact the CO,” Price informed the CIA station chief. “You know Commander Karim?” she asked. “We’re acquainted. Use my name- or they’ll kill him,” he replied before ending the call.

Aqtabi, Urzikstan Alex served in Delta Force before he started as an operative of the Special Activities Division of the CIA. He was used to operate under different identities to achieve sensitive objectives wherever he was needed. So, when Laswell asked him to go to Urzikstan he didn’t say no. Alex and his teammates played key roles in some of the most important victories against terrorist networks in 2017. But one mission still haunted him. He couldn’t forget the look in her eyes when she pushed him away from impact. He could’ve died that day in May, but she took his place instead. It was the 26th of October 2019 - almost two years and six months since that dreadful day.

There was no warm welcome for him in Urzikstan. Price had advised Laswell to use his name while meeting with the Militia leader, Commander Farah Karim. He didn’t know how the captain knew the woman, but she intrigued him. Hadir Karim on the other hand gave him an odd feeling when they spoke about the stolen gas. It was almost like he knew more about it. The planned diversion in the center of Aqtabi went well and he gained the trust of Farah and her brother. Most of the Russians made their way from the military base to the occupied town. The less personnel, the easier the attack on the airbase would go.

07:00 PM Al-Raab, Urzikstan - Russian Airbase Hadir had set up shop on the edge of Barkov’s base. He didn’t joke when he told Alex they had their ways to attack the terrorists. Every member of the Urzik Militia was there. Young and old. Men and women. It was a fight of fire against fire. Using improvised drones and Molotov cocktails they managed to breach the airbase, followed by the main hangar where they captured the last weapon armory before Russian reinforcements arrived.

Without air support they wouldn’t make it on their own. Luckily, an unmarked AH-64 Apache was available for this op. “Echo 3-1. Viper 1-1 on approach. Ready for tasking. What’s your position?” the voice sounded through his comms. “Viper, this is 3-1. God damn, good to hear your voice!” Alex replied. “Friendlies in the hangar, taking fire from troops on the tarmac! You are cleared hot!” The Apache pilot approached the site and readied himself to assist the operative and the foreign militia group. “Roger 3-1. Viper inbound, targets are in sight, stand by for fire,” the pilot informed.

With help from Viper 1-1, Alex and the group of men and women took over the Forward Operation Base of Barkov. Russian air capability was hereby temporarily limited allowing Western forces to move through the country. “Today was a great victory for Urzikstan. Thank you, brother” Hadir said, when they regrouped outside the hangar. “We make a good team,” Alex replied with a smile. Farah was happy about the mission, but she was still anxious. “We’ve bought time, but Barkov will retaliate,” she stated. As a girl, she and Hadir were captured by General Barkov. She spend her teens as a prisoner of war, subjected to forced labor and routinely witnessing chemical experimentation. When she escaped with help from then Lieutenant John Price and his team, she vowed to give her life to free her country from subjugation and chaos. “So will we,” Hadir replied.

10:00 PM Scotland Yard, London As a child she’d been nothing but a mess. She had lost everything and eventually tried to forget everything. Along the way she decided to go for military training and offer her life to safe another. The enforced discipline and daily routine had been good for Casey; it sharpened her mind. Being in line with either people who were scared shitless of too confident for their own good was like a normal nine to five office job for her. As a twenty-seven year old she had more experience in life then most of the people who were the same age.

She was glad that Price came to talk to her about what happened that day and the days that followed. Now the captain knew about her survival, only one man was left who didn’t. Well, one man and the other members of the unit who worked the operation. Casey kept thinking about how Alex would react if they met again. Swallowed by her all the scenarios in her mind, she didn’t hear Kyle approaching, “Hey, you okay?” She looked up with the empty mug still in her hand. “Is there something wrong?” Looking at the clock behind him Casey realized she had been standing at the coffee machine for almost half an hour. “Uh.. Sorry. Got lost in thought, I guess. You want some coffee, too?” With a flash of worry in his eyes he took a step forward, “If you want to talk about it you know you can come to me, right?” The sergeant was a special guy. Their friendship meant a lot to them and that would never change. “I’m good. Don’t worry. It’s been a rough day, that’s all,” the Dutch operator replied softly. “Okay, but keep in mind what I said. I mean it… you know that.” A small smile appeared on her face, “I know.”

While leaving the small office kitchen they run into Price. “Ah, just who I was looking for,” he said with a worried look on his face. “Alex and Commander Karim’s forces have destroyed General Barkov’s Forward Operation Base, temporarily limiting Russian air capability in Urzikstan. We need to move fast.” He gestured to the conference room on the other end of the hallway, where a team was already waiting for directions. This meant that Casey had only a few minutes to get informed by Price on the intel he received from Kate and Alex, while Gaz joined up with his team.

At one of her first briefings the anxiety hit her like a brick in the face, but during the years she became a natural at informing a team about their next mission. “My apologies for letting you all wait,” she spoke picking up the remote on the desk in front of the screen. Price nodded his head, giving her the green light to start informing the team about what had to be done in the next few hours. “Thanks to our intel, we’ve tracked the Al-Qatala cell responsible for the Piccadilly attack to a townhouse in North London.” Multiple identities popped up on the screen with the location of the property that was used to be the hideout of the terrorists. A blueprint of the building appeared next. “Three SAS teams will get inside and connect the dots. If the Wolf is in possession of the stolen Russian gas in Urzikstan, we need to find him…” Casey announced looking at the team in front of her. “But… be advised,” she continued in all seriousness. “There may be non-combatants on target. Check your shots!”

01:00 AM Camden Town, London They exited the van that was parked at the entrance of the small alley behind the townhouse. “Targets are up, boys. Let’s kick this off,” Price spoke through the comms. Casey looked at him with a smirk on her face and the captain knew all too well why. “And girl,” he stated rolling his eyes, earning a wink from the Dutch lieutenant. Gaz had to cut through the lock of the fence that stopped them from moving further. It was pitch black in the alley. The only light came from the houses where people were still awake. The stars were hidden behind a wall of clouds. It was a cold moonless night. Moving up the alley they finally reached the backdoor of the small backyard. “Bravo six, moving on the rear garden,” Price informed on comms. It was time to roll and get rid of another part of the terrorist cell. Slowly they moved up to the back of the house when the other team made their presence known. “Bravo six, this is Alpha 2. About to enter the west alley.”

Casey watched up to the kitchen window and prepared her entrance. She placed the foldable ladder against the wall and climbed up carefully. “Bravo six, moving interior,” Price stated. Inside the house it was clear that the suspects were here. Talking could be heard from the other room. Someone was asking for tea and one of the female voices was clearly not happy. A door opened and one of the guys silenced the woman just in time by putting a hand over her mouth. Casey walked to the door of the front room and opened it without making a sound. “Drop ‘em,” Price commanded. She first took the two guys in the room, who were clearly carrying handguns. The woman in front of her ducked to the ground. Before she had the chance to grab the AK-47 under the table, Casey downed her. “Secure,” she said making her way back in formation, while Alpha-3 entered through the front door.

Panicked voices could be heard from the upper levels of the building. A man named Mark was yelling to one of the other Al-Qatala members about them being here. It was time to go dark and use night vision goggles. Securing the first floor went as planned. Before going up to the second floor, Casey changed mags so she would not run out of ammo while they cleared the next floor. Again in formation they went up to the second floor. Out of nowhere the plan went south. Moving up to the end of the hallway officer Ahn got shot through one of the doors. Casey threw a flashbang through one of the holes in the door to buy a little time, so they could drag Ahn out of harms way. A loud bang erupted and she entered the room to secure the floor.

The adrenaline raged through her body. “Rally to the stairs,” Price spoke on the comms. Alpha 3-1 and Kyle carried Ahn to safety so the medics could help him with his wounds. The third floor was secured in no time, leaving only the upper floor to go to before they could gather all the intel that lay around. “One floor left, Case” Price said meeting up with the girl in front of the stairs. She took point while John followed close behind. The door was locked, but the captain was carrying a tool to fix that. They cracked the door open and entered the attic with weapons ready. A woman of about 5’3 stood in the middle of the room, begging her not to shoot. “They were going to kill me. Please, don’t shoot,” she pleaded. Casey was about to lower her weapon when the woman ran backwards to grab something of the desk. Without hesitation both Casey as Price shot her. When she finally checked the desk, she was glad they made the decision to down the woman. “Fucking hell! She was going for the detonator.” Price turned around with the laptop in his hands. “Good job we dropped her then,” he responded. “And.. we got a location on the Wolf,” he continued putting the device down on the desk. A chat window was open, with an IP address shown beneath one of the messages. “Bingo!” she replied giving the captain a high five. A big smile appeared on his face.

Taglist: @imahardcase @yvessaintrogers

I’m currently fixing my masterlist - it won’t work anymore and I don’t know why... so might need to make a new one! Keep you all updated!

Question: Who do you all like to see Casey get all romantic with in the future?

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canadianabroadvery · 5 years

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In Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Shadow of a Doubt, spunky, recent high school grad Teresa Wright discovers her beloved uncle is a serial killer.

Wright’s subsequent efforts to protect herself and others from psychopathic Joseph Cotten are continually frustrated by the extraordinary denial of her family and her community lost in the “thrall” of the worldly, smooth-talking Uncle Charlie.

Heartbroken and distraught, she must contend with her uncle’s violent agenda while being obstructed by a naive and vulnerable community of his enablers and/or soon to be victims.

Wright’s horrifying predicament resonates as I witness my – our – psychopathic uncle – UNCLE SAM, the U.S. government – perpetrate violent crime upon crime against humanity enabled by a maddening, morally mute, over-trusting, under-informed and/or indifferent citizenry.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully wrap my mind or heart around the profound lack of outrage and empathy among government leaders from both corporate parties, the corporate media, as well as the vast majority of my fellow citizens at the ongoing atrocities of the Global War on Terror (more accurately, the “US Global War of Terror”) and the “regime change” covert and/or overt operations initially and sinisterly described as “humanitarian interventions.”

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 seemingly justified a “gloves off” bloodlust defiance by the political and military “guardians” of America of the legal and moral pillars of our democracy. All these years since, the mandates for constitutional and moral justice “for all” have gone unheeded.

The Iraq war was launched illegally and with manipulative lies. Bush’s torture program was in total opposition to constitutional, international and moral law. Its perpetrators deserved serious prosecution.

The Geneva Conventions were ratified once upon a time by a U.S. Congress. Habeas corpus, in place since 1679, so cavalierly suspended with the GWOT’s “anything goes” rationale.

When such gobsmacking evil manifests on such a collective and global level for such a sustained amount of time, it deserves a serious analysis by those of us still spiritually awake enough to protest it.

At this point in my concerned citizenship, I am moving beyond anger into an awe of the scope of the – well – I call it downright and seriously unchallenged EVIL. Looking for a more clinical term than that? How about patriarchal psychopathology?

In his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter acknowledged the long trail of U.S. international war crimes as well as the lack of historical and current accountability by this government, corporate media and its citizenry for them.

“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening . . . You have to hand it to America . . . masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Speaking of bottom-line and minimized evil, the specter of torture has reared its ugly head once again with President Donald Trump, an unabashed torture enthusiast, and the confirmation of his choice for Director of the CIA, “Bloody Gina” Haspel, notorious overseer of a secret black prison in Thailand where brutal torture was conducted. She was readily confirmed by a combination of Democratic and Republican senators. Senators, no doubt, who after fearful years of being labeled “too soft on terror” were not about to stick their necks out for decency and morality.

Too many of my fellow citizens, terminally influenced by an amoral corporate media, I am nonetheless at a loss for their easy acceptance of torture.

A Pew Research poll released in 2017 revealed that 48% of the US citizenry believed that some circumstances could justify the use of torture, and 49% maintained there were no circumstances that would ever justify it.

Every other US citizen is thumb’s up for the use of torture!

How disturbing over the last decade for the use of torture to be normalized and decriminalized by the military, citizenry, politicians, media, and those government lawyers who early on cravenly defied the obvious spirit of basic “Golden Rule” morality, the Constitution, and international law, to minimize the savagery of torture with euphemistic labels still parroted by much of the corporate media and or applied as fig leaves over the reprehensible.

“Enhanced interrogation techniques.” Thank you, New York Times. They are monstrous methods of inflicting debilitating psychological and physical anguish on victims even at times to the point of death. Techniques that, along with being illegal and immoral, are universally regarded as unreliable. They are reliable only in generating false confessions (which apparently was one of the goals of the original, craven perpetrators).

Torture is wrong. It is evil.

Reading Jacob Weisberg’s book, The Bush Tragedy, I learned that the main ego-armature for George W. Bush during his Yale University years was his participation in the fraternity culture.

Weisberg discloses that when “W” finally became head of a fraternity, he “ruled” at one point that lowly pledges be branded with real, Texas branding irons as part of their hazing.

When the Yale Daily News got wind of Bush’s sadistic and zealous intention, it disclosed it to the entire university community. The Yale administrative patriarchs immediately huddled together to deal with the negative P.R. (I’m guessing that far outweighed the actual physical or psychological welfare of the targeted pledges.)

The patriarchs’ solution? Rein in Mr. Bush, whose sociopathy they presumably minimized as an impish, “boys-will-be-boys”-ness. With the proverbial wink and nod, they insisted young Bush forego the branding irons and instead ONLY make use of scalding metal coat hangers or lit cigarettes to burn freshman flesh.

Say what?

Problem solved? This Yale incident foreshadowed and undoubtedly helped foster the ultimate creation of the craven and covert torture program by Bush and cabal, particularly with the ever-Satanic Dick Cheney.

The green-lighting of that more modest degree of torture speaks volumes of a troubling, profoundly unempathetic – sociopathic— macho-mindset within the deepest, most influential halls of America’s supposed intellectual and ruling class elite and mentors of said elite. They enabled and abetted young, already morally-deranged Master Bush, instead of role modeling and enforcing boundaries of basic human decency.

Just another rite of male passage? No wonder our American culture is so violent.

Andy Worthington, a prime advocate for victimized prisoners of Gitmo once reminded his audience during a NYC anti-war forum that in 2007 it was Senator Obama who declared:

“In the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantánamo, we have compromised our most precious values. What could have been a call to a generation has become an excuse for unchecked presidential power.”

President Obama posed as a person of character most convincingly. It got him the White House. Twice.

Obama took no responsibility for his breathtaking, 180-degree reversals of golden promises of anti-Bush reform, pre-election.

The most obvious and necessarily immediate reforms that he failed to act on were the restoration of habeas corpus rights and the prosecution of the perpetrators of the clandestine Bush torture program, of those who had most reprehensibly exploited the post-9/11 fear, outrage and vengeance sensibility of much of the citizenry.

Obama’s policy decisions instead included deadly drone warfare, assassination kill lists, unlimited due-process-less detentions, military tribunals, countless corporate wars and U.S. military (corporate-opportunistic) garrisoning; and the continuation of Gitmo and God only knows what other black sites.

Obama’s posture was of an always rhetorically amiable and faux-reasonable Roman emperor with thumb’s up or down power over life and death. Many of his “subjects” adored him.

“We tortured some folks,” he finally admitted with a shrug at a press conference. As if it was not a colossally serious deal. “Folks”? Now there’s a friendly word.

This is heart-of-darkness territory. Obama chose to become an enabler of violators of human rights and then a violator of them himself. To add to the horror, Obama so readily was enabled by the media in this, the vast majority of Congress, and the vast majority of citizens.

Does the cult of celebrity in America overwhelm basic human decency? It seems so.

Do U.S. leaders as diverse (but all amoral) as Bush, Obama and Trump, along with callous political cronies, military leaders and media, only need to repeat the word “terror” enough times to have so much of America fall into a “do with us, our money, or anyone else whatever depraved, anti-humanity behavior you want” kind of swoon?

“To torture or not to torture” not only a hot news media topic, but fodder for jingoistic and sensationalized movies and TV shows (as the normalization of torture steamrolls on).

Loyalty and admiration for the troops (no matter what war crimes they may be committing) and/or blind trust in a national administrative and military authority should not override human decency. American “exceptionalism” should not override identifying and ending war criminality. It does.

The status quo establishment in America has us locked into perpetual war with untold mass global deaths and maiming and ever-increasing economic hardship for all humanity except for a tiny percentage of transnational elites.

A paradigm shift from a “profits over people” patriarchy to the humanism of partnership and cooperation is the answer, but that would require decisions based on a U.S. leadership, a U.S. media and a U.S. society that seriously honored empathy, justice and the law.

Ours do not.

Scott Peck asserts in his book, People of the Lie, that mental health is “dedication to reality at all costs.” This healthy sense of reality includes an in-touchness with one’s inner reality and a respect for the reality of others. It requires the capacity to fully think and FEEL.

This “feeling capacity” – including and especially EMPATHY — seems most vulnerable to dysfunction in our society and world, among both leaders and followers.

Feelings are profoundly under-valued in our U.S. society, and this feeling dysfunction is at the heart (or lack thereof) of the existing suffering and injustice.

Alice Miller, in her book For Your Own Good, refers to a “poisonous pedagogy” that can infect a society. She explains that that was what made the “good” (as in compliant) German population easy prey for the authoritarianism of Hitler.

Miller emphasizes that the capacity for empathy is not linked to one’s intelligence. She points out that both Hitler and Stalin had enthusiastic, highly intellectual followers.

If one is not able to respond with authentic feelings and thoughtful consideration to real life situations involving oneself or others, one is susceptible to “enthrallment” to the will of a toxic and controlling leader, asserts Miller.

She also contends that unprocessed trauma in one’s childhood, that is, when children are exposed to profound degrees of non-empathy from adult caretakers, will cause a crippling or shutting down of their feeling capacity later in adult life along with the potential of a sudden dismantling of their own will for the will of another. Miller explains that such trauma undoubtedly also happened to the original destructive caretakers during their childhoods in a continuing, generational cycle of dysfunction.

When trauma goes unprocessed by feelings, that is, it stays unfelt and un-grieved, it induces one to over-identify with an aggressor and enter his or her “thrall” later in adulthood. Also, such conditioning can induce one to project one’s negative feelings about oneself onto others as scapegoats. People with a disordered feeling capacity cannot handle and take mature responsibility for whatever guilt, shame, anger, frustration gets triggered within them in the present and must deflect it.

In People of the Lie, Scott Peck discusses the experiments of Dr. Stanley Milgram at Yale in 1961 which revealed how people were so readily intimidated by an authority in a white coat that they willingly would inflict what they thought were disabling electric shocks on strangers without question. Six out of 10 of the tested humans were willing to inflict serious harm on strangers from their own over-conditioning to the will of authority figures.

Peck emphasizes how obedience is the foundation of military discipline. “A follower is never a WHOLE person,” he maintains. Tragically, most people are far more comfortable in the “follower” role, leaving the responsibility and decision-making to those who step forward as leaders. When ruthless, reckless, immature, even sociopathic persons assume leadership positions, especially in an authoritarian system, the results can be tragic.

He also contends that a lack of conscience in human beings is partly due to “specialization”, a detachment from responsibility. One regards oneself as simply playing a role in a group scenario and thus can easily pass the “moral buck” so-to-speak to another part of the group. Troops shooting foreign civilians with a kind of “video-game aloofness”, for example will rationalize: “We don’t kill the people. Our weapons do. Whoever gave us these weapons and instructions are really responsible for the killing. Not us.”

Another example he cites is of how weapons manufacturers, sellers, lobbyists, etc. feel no personal responsibility for the consequences of violence from the weapons they distribute. The moral decision as to the use of the weapons is not part of their “specialized” roles. (And the financial profits are just too damn juicy to consider otherwise.)

Peck also cites the regressive shutting down of authentic and appropriate feelings in people due to a phenomenon called “psychic numbing.” The mind has the ability to anesthetize itself from feelings in the face of trauma. “The horrible becomes normal,” he writes.

Finally, he explains that groups bond often within a collectively egotistical groupthink by circling the proverbial wagons against a common, demonized enemy. “The other.” Scapegoating occurs when a group collectively projects the “badness” of themselves, too difficult to fathom, onto others.

James Lucas in an article for globalresearch.com back in 2015 declared that the United States has killed approximately 20 million people in 37 countries since the end of World War II.

How many of us can actually begin to feel and process the utter enormity of such a revelation? (One thinks of a quote attributed to the profoundly non-empathetic Joseph Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”)

What say you to 20 million, America? Look what our UNCLE SAM has wrought.

Can we as a nation cultivate a collective capacity for “empathy”? A critical mass of us reached a breakthrough of collective conscience during the Vietnam era (though it took us long enough, admittedly).

Can each of us dedicate ourselves to a “reality at all costs” awareness for our individual as well as collective mental health?

The fast hardening of soft fascism seems to be happening with little conscious struggle among the masses who seem convinced we non-elites can get away with staying passive and will be supported by our corporate-captured politicians and media.

Can we face down and acknowledge the relentless criminality of our government and representatives (who are not really OUR representatives).

If such crimes are not acknowledged, called out and then accounted for they will continue and escalate in number and nature. Even more frightening, more and more and more “good” Americans will succumb to this “normalization” of evil.

Confronting evil is daunting. Confronting mass and institutionalized evil all the more so. Sickening. Spiritually exhausting. It even has been said to biologically weaken one’s thymus gland that supports the body’s immune system.

We must detach from seductive “cronyism” with authoritarians or authoritarian followers and encourage others to do so.

We must explore the details of what is going on in our citizen name, with our tax dollars and especially with our vulnerable, patriotic and earnest young who can become tragically confounded by and induced to perpetrate institutionalized evil policies.

We owe it to ourselves and our world to stay whole and awake as citizens. To speak truth to power. Once again, “a follower is not a whole person” as Scott Peck declared.

“This is why the individual is sacred. For it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”

It has been said there are three types of people in this world. A smallish group of people who make things happen. A larger group of people who watch things happen. (I am thinking, of those “good people who do nothing.”) And finally the third, excessively large and clueless group, exclaiming, “WHAT THE F*CK HAPPENED???”

Let’s try to shrink the second and third groups and expand the first by getting up and exercising those consciences.

#us militarism #us exceptionalism #us imperialism #us foreign policy

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importantballooncrusade · 2 years

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Prisoner gives Guantanamo court first account of CIA abuse

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who went through the brutal U.S. government interrogation program after the 9/11 attacks described it openly for the first time Thursday, saying he was left terrified and hallucinating from techniques that the CIA long sought to keep secret.

Majid Khan, a former resident of the Baltimore suburbs who became an al-Qaida courier, told jurors considering his sentence for war crimes how he was subjected to days of painful abuse in the clandestine CIA facilities known as “black sites,” as interrogators pressed him for information.

It was the first time any of the so-called high value detainees held at the U.S. base in Cuba have been able to testify about what the U.S has euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation” but has been widely condemned as torture.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said.

Khan spoke of being suspended naked from a ceiling beam for long periods, doused repeatedly with ice water to keep him awake for days. He described having his head held under water to the point of near drowning, only to have water poured into his nose and mouth when the interrogators let him up. He was beaten, given forced enemas, sexually assaulted and starved in overseas prisons whose locations were not disclosed.

“I would beg them to stop and swear to them that I didn’t know anything,” he said. “If I had intelligence to give I would have given it already but I didn’t have anything to give.”

Khan, reading from a 39-page statement, spoke on the first day in what is expected to be a two-day sentencing hearing at the U.S. base in Cuba.

A panel of military officers selected by a Pentagon legal official known as a convening authority can sentence Khan to between 25 and 40 years in prison, but he will serve far less because of his extensive cooperation with U.S. authorities.

Under a plea deal, which the jurors were not told about, Khan’s sentence by the jury will be reduced to no more than 11 years by the convening authority, and he will get credit for his time in custody since his February 2012 guilty plea.

That means he should be released early next year, resettled in a third, as yet unknown, country because he can’t return to Pakistan, where he has citizenship.

Some of Khan’s treatment is detailed in a Senate Intelligence Committee report, released in 2014, that accused the CIA of inflicting pain and suffering on al-Qaida prisoners far beyond its legal boundaries and deceiving the nation with narratives of useful interrogations unsubstantiated by its own records.

Khan agreed with that assessment. “The more I cooperated and told them, the more I was tortured,” he said.

He spent about three years in CIA black sites before he was taken to Guantanamo in September 2006. He said he never saw the light of day in the black sites and had no contact with anyone other than guards and interrogators from his capture until his sixth year at the detention center on the base in Cuba.

Khan, 41, has admitted to being a courier for al-Qaida and taking part in the planning of several plots there were never carried out. He pleaded guilty in February 2012 to charges that include conspiracy, murder and providing material support to terrorism in a deal that capped his sentence in exchange for cooperating with authorities in other investigations, including the case against the five men held at Guantanamo who are charged with planning and providing logistical support for the Sept. 11 attack.

A citizen of Pakistan who was born in Saudi Arabia, Khan came to the U.S. with his family in the 1990s and they were granted asylum. He graduated from high school in the Baltimore suburbs and held a technology job in the D.C. area at an office where he could see the smoke billowing from the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

He says he turned to radical ideology following the death earlier that year of his mother, whom he described as the most important person in his life.

Khan apologized for his actions and said he takes full responsibility. He said he now just wants to reunite with his wife and the daughter who was born while he was in captivity. He said he has forgiven his captors, and his torturers.

“I have also tried to make up for the bad things I have done,” he said. “That’s why I pleaded guilty and cooperated with the USA government”

Khan is the first of the high-value detainees, those who went through the interrogation program, to be convicted and sentenced at the military tribunals held on the base.

The five men charged in the Sept. 11 attacks include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, who has portrayed himself as the architect of the plot. That case remains in the pretrial stage and a judge has said it will start no sooner than next year.

The U.S. holds 39 men at the detention center on Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.

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omgstupendousbouquetbasement · 3 years

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US Aims Start to Bali Bombing War Crimes Case at Guantanamo

Three prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center are expected to get their first day in court after being held for 18 years in connection with the deadly 2002 Bali nightclub bombings and other plots in Southeast Asia.

Indonesian prisoner Encep Nurjaman, known as Hambali, and two Malaysians are to be arraigned Monday before a military commission on charges that include murder, conspiracy and terrorism. It is merely the first step in what could be a long legal journey for a case that involves evidence tainted by CIA torture, the same issue that is largely responsible for causing other war crimes cases to languish for years at Guantanamo.

The hearing also comes as the Biden administration says it intends to close the detention center, where the U.S. still holds 39 of the 779 men seized in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and invasion of Afghanistan.

The three men charged in connection with the nightclub bombings were held in secret CIA confinement for three years, followed by 15 more at the isolated U.S. base in Cuba.

The decision to charge them was made by a Pentagon legal official at the end of the Trump administration, complicating the effort to close the detention center, said Brian Bouffard, a lawyer for Mohammed Nazir bin Lep, one of the Malaysian men.

That made it more difficult for the new administration to add any to the list of those who could potentially be transferred out of Guantanamo or even sent home. “It will even be harder after an arraignment,” Bouffard said.

Whether the arraignment would actually take place was not certain. Lawyers have sought to put the case on hold for a number of reasons, including what they have said is insufficient access to interpreters and other resources to mount a defense. The accused were still expected to show up for the hearing.

The Navy judge presiding over the case in the commission, a hybrid of military and civilian law, is expected to consider that question before the charges can be formally presented in a secure courtroom surrounded by coils of razor wire on the base.

Nurjaman was a leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian militant group with ties to al-Qaida. The U.S. government says he recruited militants, including bin Lep and the other Malaysian charged in the case, Mohammed Farik bin Amin, for jihadist operations.

Among the plots that al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah carried out were the October 2002 suicide bombings of Paddy’s Pub and the Sari Club in Bali, Indonesia, and the August 2003 suicide bombing of the J.W. Marriott in Jakarta, Indonesia. The attacks together killed 213 people, including seven Americans, and injured 109 people, including six Americans. Dozens of victims were foreign tourists, mostly Australians.

Prosecutors allege bin Lep and the other Malaysian, Mohammed Farik bin Amin, served as intermediaries in the transfer of money used to fund the group's operations.

All three were captured in Thailand in 2003 and transferred to CIA “black sites,” where they were brutalized and subjected to torture, according to a Senate Intelligence Committee report released in 2014. In 2006, they were moved to Guantanamo.

It's unclear why it's taken so long to charge them before the military commission. Military prosecutors filed charges against the men in June 2017, but the Pentagon legal official who oversees Guantanamo cases rejected the charges for reasons that haven't been publicly disclosed.

The case has many elements that make it complex, including whether statements the men made to authorities can hold up in court because of the abuse they experienced in CIA custody, the fact that people have already been convicted, and in some cases executed, in Indonesia for the attack, and the long time it has taken to even bring charges — much less get to a trial at some point in the future.

Some of these same issues have come up in the case against five Guantanamo prisoners charged for planning and aiding the Sept. 11 attacks. They were arraigned in May 2012 and remain in the pretrial phase, with no trial date yet scheduled.

Bin Amin's lawyer, Christine Funk, predicted a lengthy period of defense investigation that will require extensive travel, once the pandemic is over, to interview witnesses and look for evidence. Still, she said, her client is “anxious and eager to litigate this case and go home.”

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#IFTTT #Blogger

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politicoscope · 3 years

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After 18 Years In Prison 3 Guantanamo Bay Prisoners Get First Day in Court

New Post has been published on https://www.politicoscope.com/after-18-years-in-prison-3-guantanamo-bay-prisoners-get-first-day-in-court/

After 18 Years In Prison 3 Guantanamo Bay Prisoners Get First Day in Court

The hearing also comes as the Joe Biden administration says it intends to close the detention center, where the U.S. still holds 39 of the 779 men seized in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and invasion of Afghanistan.

The three men charged in connection with the nightclub bombings were held in secret CIA confinement for three years, followed by 15 more at the isolated U.S. base in Cuba.

Prosecutors allege bin Lep and the other Malaysian, Mohammed Farik bin Amin, served as intermediaries in the transfer of money used to fund the group’s operations.

It’s unclear why it’s taken so long to charge them before the military commission. Military prosecutors filed charges against the men in June 2017, but the Pentagon legal official who oversees Guantanamo cases rejected the charges for reasons that haven’t been publicly disclosed.

Bin Amin’s lawyer, Christine Funk, predicted a lengthy period of defense investigation that will require extensive travel, once the pandemic is over, to interview witnesses and look for evidence. Still, she said, her client is “anxious and eager to litigate this case and go home.”

Reuters

#Guantanamo #Guantanamo Bay #Guantanamo Bay Prisoners #Prisoners

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zohratheexplorer1857-blog · 4 years

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Assignment # 2. HIV/AIDS in Africa created by the CIA?

HIV/AIDS epidemics in Africa was first reported in 1981. There is extensive debate around the origins of the disease. The majority of the scientists agree upon the idea that the virus has originally evolved from the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in the West Central Africa and was transmitted from monkeys to humans through the direct interaction (Conspiracy Theories). Despite the fact that there is a scientific explanation on the origins of the disease, nonetheless, rumors still persist even to date. AIDS origin rumors claim that the aids were created by the CIA to get rid of the unfavorable African and Haitian population as well as homosexuals (Conspiracy Theories).

In the context of the Cold War, this rumor was spread by the Soviet journalists to portray the US in a negative light (Pebody, 2015). In addition to that, the idea was supported by the African government officials in their public announcements. For example, South African President Thabo Mbeki has once blamed the US government for inventing virus in military labs (Conspiracy Theories).

These theories are fueled by the sensibility of distrust of the African Americans towards the US government due to the long history of discrimination, slavery, denial of rights and colonial past. Therefore, the perceptions are difficult to change. Despite the evidences presented to the public, people are less likely to believe the factual information due to their biases associated with complex historical relationship between the US and Africa. According to Nicoli Nattrass, another explanation for the prevalence of beliefs among the minority groups lies in the fact that American army base was indeed the site of testing of the deadly microorganisms on mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts and prostitutes that were majorly composed from the black (Pebody, 2015).

What makes the theory a conspiracy theory is that it embraces false assumptions and explanations with no scientific evidence from the laboratories where allegedly those viruses were manufactured. Nonetheless, they are constantly reinforced by the media and officials which gives credibility and legitimacy to the story. This creates an echo chamber where people believe in something that confirms their own assumptions without necessarily representing the reality.

Conspiracy theories can have harmful consequences on further alleviation of the disease because everyone tends to believe that it is pointless to treat the disease since they may be still affected no matter what measures they are going to take. This prevents people from taking necessary measures to protect themselves from getting infected. Nearly 53 percent of African Americans believe that the cure form aids is hidden from the public. Findings show that men are more prone to the belief and less likely to utilize condoms as a result (Dervarics, 2005).

These conspiracy theories are based on the idea of combating the corrupt elite in favor of minority groups. They are used by the populists to mobilize minority groups for actions and disseminate sensibility of hatred and distrust towards the elites. In other words, they can be used as weapons to control and manipulate certain groups of populations to act in a certain way that meets the needs of the perpetrators of such theories. In the scenario of the spread of AIDS in Africa it was used by the government officials to discredit US hegemony and to gain popular support.

Retrieved from:

Conspiracy Theories. (n.d.). Retrieved from The CIA and AIDS: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1860871_1860876_1861031,00.html

Dervarics, C. (2005, February 1). Conspiracy Beliefs May Be Hindering HIV Prevention Among African Americans. Retrieved from PRB: https://www.prb.org/conspiracybeliefsmaybehinderinghivpreventionamongafricanamericans/

Pebody, R. (2015, January 29). African American people’s AIDS conspiracy beliefs best understood in terms of social anxiety and distrust, not ignorance. Retrieved from Aids Map: http://www.aidsmap.com/news/jan-2015/african-american-peoples-aids-conspiracy-beliefs-best-understood-terms-social-anxiety

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racingtoaredlight · 7 years

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Opening Bell: January 27, 2017

This week, President Donald Trump at a White House reception launched into a story which he claimed was relayed with him by professional golfer and Florida resident Bernhard Langer from Election Day last November. The story was billed by Trump as the reason for his proposed nationwide probe into alleged voter fraud. Deciding to launch a massive investigation based upon hearsay evidence from a German citizen living in the United States is hardly sound, but what makes this even more amazing is that late yesterday Langer claimed that he never told Trump the story at all, but had heard it from someone else and then passed it along to another friend who must have mentioned it to the White House. To say that President Donald Trump’s first week in office has been “interesting,” would be the understatement of the century so far.

Also this week, Trump signed an Executive Order decreeing that the federal government should begin marshaling resources to start the construction of a wall on the United States-Mexico border “within months.” Trump has since early in his campaign pledged to make Mexico pay for the wall and yesterday Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that funding would be collected by assessing a 20% tax on Mexican imports to the United States. These announcements caused Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to cancel a summit meeting with Trump that had been planned to take place soon in Washington. Trump’s border plan also includes a massive hiring increase of Border Patrol officers and customs agents. Within days of this announcement, the chief of the Border Patrol, former FBI careerist Mark A. Morgan, was removed from his position by the acting Commissioner for Customs and Border Protection. Morgan had been in conflict with the Border Patrol’s powerful union. Morgan was on the job for barely six months and was the first chief to come from outside the Border Patrol’s ranks.

Trump’s immigration Executive Orders this week drew swathes of criticism from Democrats, but also from some Republicans who represent districts adjacent to the border. Rep. Will Hurd represents the Texas 23rd District, which stretches from the western suburbs of San Antonio down to the upper Rio Grande Valley and across most of West Texas and the Big Bend to the suburbs of El Paso; a district larger than some states. Hurd has come out against the wall, calling it extraordinarily impractical, and defeated Democratic challenger Pete Gallego last November by promising voters in his majority Hispanic district to stand up to Trump. Another issue which observers have questioned of the Trump administration plan: does he realize the number of ranches and oil and mineral leases that exist near the southern border from Southern California to South Texas? Asserting eminent domain in order to construct a large, obtrusive wall, will not sit well with many land and leaseholders in the four border states.

Yet another Trump Executive Order which is already causing controversy: newly sworn-in CIA Director Mike Pompeo—whose first day in the office was Tuesday—was not consulted or notified ahead of time that President Trump would sign orders tasking the CIA with reopening so-called “black sites” around the world and with resuming the use of interrogation techniques like water boarding. Pompeo only learned of both orders when he saw them reported on in the news. At his Senate confirmation hearings days before his confirmation on Monday, Pompeo stated in no uncertain terms that he was against the use of both black sites and of interrogation techniques not found in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which is significant because the Army’s Field Manual does not allow physical abuse of prisoners. Meanwhile Trump himself declared in an interview with ABC’s David Muir this week that he believes that “torture works,” notably eschewing the term “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the Bush administration.

A document obtained by the Huffington Post this week appeared to indicate that the Trump administration’s goal in Syria will be to use both U.S. military and State Department resources to establish “safe zones” in Syria and its neighboring states. The Obama administration deliberately avoided this and other ideas, such as “no-fly” zones, in order to avoid the potential for a messy confrontation with Russia, which is conducting an independent air campaign in Syria.

In the least bemusing Trump news of the week, he has nominated former hedge fund manager Philip Bilden to be Secretary of the Navy. Bilden was an intelligence officer in the Army Reserve from 1986-1996 and, like Trump’s pick for Army Secretary Vincent Viola, comes from the world of finance. Trump’s pick for Air Force Secretary, former New Mexico Rep. Heather Wilson is an Air Force Academy graduate and well known for her technical expertise in defense administration and acquisition.

Hey, how about a story about questionable political judgment that does not involve Donald Trump? A week ago, I linked a story about a secret trip to Syria by Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. She returned to Washington after seven days and revealed that she had met directly with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Criticism of Gabbard’s trip was bipartisan, though Republicans were more vocal. House leadership across both aisles indicate that they were not forewarned about the trip by Gabbard’s office and no one is entirely certain who paid for it. Gabbard received further criticism when she declared that the American bombing campaign was not helping moderate freedom fighters, but instead was assisting ISIS and other radical terrorist groups. This talking point has been bandied about multiple times by Assad’s government since the air campaign began two years ago.

Steven L. Hall, a former 30 year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Services, writes about the scope of the victory by Russian intelligence services in hacking American political organizations and significantly affecting the 2016 campaign. Hall, who spent much of his career behind the Iron Curtain in Warsaw Pact territory, provides fascinating insight into Russia’s goals and views when it comes to offensive use of intelligence assets.

While in office, former President Barack Obama famously used a Blackberry smartphone which was secured from outside attacks. Just prior to his inauguration, President Donald Trump was forced by the secret service to give up his Android smartphone for a new, highly-secured phone with a brand new phone number which only a handful of people are allowed to have. This story talks about what security steps and methods were probably used by the Secret Service to secure this new phone for Trump.

A long-planned Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conference on climate change and the environment, which was cancelled only days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, is now back on. The conference cancellation caught the attention of former Vice President, and noted climate change communicator, Al Gore who worked with non-government organizations to sponsor the event—reduced from three days to one—and host it at the non-profit Carter Center in Atlanta.

Seven days into the Trump administration, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics does one last deep dive analysis into the results of the 2016 Presidential election. This time it is by the Center’s Rhodes Clark. If you’re into deep statistical analysis, this is your election recap.

Foreign Policy magazine has two stories which looks at those Executive Orders which seek to reduce American involvement in international organizations like the United Nations and its place on the world scene. FP is traditionally interventionist in its leanings—though perhaps less hawkish than individuals like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham—and so you can imagine that FP takes a dim view of Trump’s less-than-internationalist views.

Fifty years ago today, the crew of Apollo 1—astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee—were killed in a fire which broke out inside the pressurized crew capsule during a test run on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. While the capsule itself remains locked away in NASA storage, probably never to see the light of day again, the hatch from the capsule will be displayed by NASA today. The hatch, which in ideal conditions required 90 seconds and a technician with a specialized wrench to open from the outside, was partly blamed for the astronauts’ deaths; had crews been able to open the hatch more quickly, they might have been able to extinguish the fire which fueled toxic fumes in the capsule which killed all three men.

Finally this week, once upon a time Pennsylvania had a thriving lumber industry. Now the state is more closely linked to coal production and steel manufacture, though neither of those industries dominates the state as they once did either. The New York Times has an interesting pictorial retrospective on Pennsylvania’s extinct timber industry.

Welcome to the start of Trump week 2: Electric Boogaloo.

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newstfionline · 7 years

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The Honeymoon of the Generals

By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, April 23, 2017

MOAB sounds more like an incestuous, war-torn biblical kingdom than the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, aka “the mother of all bombs.” Still, give Donald Trump credit. Only the really, really big bombs, whether North Korean nukes or those 21,600 pounds of MOAB, truly get his attention. He wasn’t even involved in the decision to drop the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal for the first time in war, but his generals--“we have the best military people on Earth”--already know the man they work for, and the bigger, flashier, more explosive, and winninger, the better.

It was undoubtedly the awesome look of that first MOAB going off in grainy black and white on Fox News, rather than in Afghanistan, that appealed to the president. Just as he was visibly thrilled by all those picturesque Tomahawk cruise missiles, the equivalent of nearly three MOABS, whooshing from the decks of U.S. destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean and heading, like so many fabulous fireworks, toward a Syrian airfield--or was it actually an Iraqi one? “We’ve just fired 59 missiles,” he said, “all of which hit, by the way, unbelievable, from, you know, hundreds of miles away, all of which hit, amazing… It’s so incredible. It’s brilliant. It’s genius. Our technology, our equipment, is better than anybody by a factor of five.”

Call it thrilling. Call it a blast. Call it escalation. Or just call it the age of Trump. (“If you look at what’s happened over the last eight weeks and compare that really to what’s happened over the past eight years, you’ll see there’s a tremendous difference, tremendous difference,” he commented, adding about MOAB, “This was another very, very successful mission.”)

Anyway, here we are and, as so many of his critics have pointed out, the plaudits have been pouring in from all the usual media and political suspects for a president with big enough… well, hands, to make war impressively. In our world, this is what now passes for “presidential.” Consider that praise the media version of so many Tomahawk missiles pointing us toward what the escalation of America’s never-ending wars will mean to Trump’s presidency.

These days, from Syria to Afghanistan, the Koreas to Somalia, Yemen to Iraq, it’s easy enough to see Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump as something new under the sun. (It has a different ring to it when the commander in chief says, “You’re fired!”) That missile strike in Syria was a first (Obama didn’t dare); the MOAB in Afghanistan was a breakthrough; the drone strikes in Yemen soon after he took office were an absolute record! As for those regular Army troops heading for Somalia, that hasn’t happened in 24 years! Civilian casualties in the region: rising impressively!

Call it mission creep on steroids. At the very least, it seems like evidence that the man who, as a presidential candidate, swore he’d “bomb the s--t” out of ISIS and let the U.S. military win again is doing just that. (As he also said on the campaign trail with appropriately placed air punches, “You gotta knock the hell out of them! Boom! Boom! Boom!”)

He’s appointed generals to crucial posts in his administration, lifted restraints on how his commanders in the field can act (hence those soaring civilian casualty figures), let them send more military personnel into Iraq, Syria, and the region generally, taken the constraints off the CIA’s drone assassination campaigns, and dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group somewhat indirectly to the waters off the Koreas (with a strike force of tweets and threats accompanying it).

And there’s obviously more to come: potentially many more troops, even an army of them, for Syria; a possible mini-surge of troops into Afghanistan (that MOAB strike may have been a canny signal from a U.S. commander “seeking to showcase Afghanistan’s myriad threats” to a president paying no attention); a heightened air campaign in Somalia; and that’s just to start what will surely be a far longer list in a presidency in which, whether or not infrastructure is ever successfully rebuilt in America, the infrastructure of the military-industrial complex will continue to expand.

Above all, President Trump did one thing decisively. He empowered a set of generals or retired generals--James “Mad Dog” Mattis as secretary of defense, H.R. McMaster as national security adviser, and John Kelly as secretary of homeland security--men already deeply implicated in America’s failing wars across the Greater Middle East. Not being a details guy himself, he’s then left them to do their damnedest. “What I do is I authorize my military,” he told reporters recently. “We have given them total authorization and that’s what they’re doing and, frankly, that’s why they’ve been so successful lately.”

As the 100-day mark of his presidency approaches, there’s been no serious reassessment of America’s endless wars or how to fight them (no less end them). Instead, there’s been a recommitment to doing more of the familiar, more of what hasn’t worked over the last decade and a half. No one should be surprised by this, given the cast of characters--men who held command posts in those unsuccessful wars and are clearly incapable of thinking about them in other terms than the ones that have been indelibly engrained in the brains of the U.S. military high command since soon after 9/11.

That new ruling reality of our American world should, in turn, offer a hint about the nature of Donald Trump’s presidency. It should be a reminder that as little as he may resemble anyone we’ve ever seen in the White House before, he’s anything but an anomaly of history. Quite the opposite. Like those generals, he’s a logical endpoint to a grim process.

When it comes to war and the U.S. military, none of what’s happened would have been conceivable without the two previous presidencies. None of it would have been possible without Congress’s willingness to pump endless piles of money into the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex in the post-9/11 years; without the building up of the national security state and its 17 (yes, 17!) major intelligence outfits into an unofficial fourth branch of government; without the institutionalization of war as a permanent (yet strangely distant) feature of American life and of wars across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa that evidently can’t be won or lost but only carried on into eternity. None of this would have been possible without the growing militarization of this country, including of police forces increasingly equipped with weaponry off America’s distant battlefields and filled with veterans of those same wars; without a media rife with retired generals and other former commanders narrating and commenting on the acts of their successors and protégés; and without a political class of Washington pundits and politicians taught to revere that military.

In other words, however original Donald Trump may look, he’s the curious culmination of old news and a changing country. Given his bravado and braggadocio, it’s easy to forget the kinds of militarized extremity that preceded him.

After all, it wasn’t Donald Trump who had the hubris, in the wake of 9/11, to declare a “Global War on Terror” against 60 countries (the “swamp” of that moment). It wasn’t Donald Trump who manufactured false intelligence on the weapons of mass destruction Iraq’s Saddam Hussein supposedly possessed or produced bogus claims about that autocrat’s connections to al-Qaeda, and then used both to lead the United States into a war on and occupation of that country. It wasn’t Donald Trump who invaded Iraq (whether he was for or against that invasion at the time). It wasn’t Donald Trump who donned a flight suit and landed on an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego to personally declare that hostilities were at an end in Iraq just as they were truly beginning, and to do so under an inane “Mission Accomplished” banner prepared by the White House.

It wasn’t Donald Trump who ordered the CIA to kidnap terror suspects (including totally innocent individuals) off the streets of global cities as well as from the backlands of the planet and transport them to foreign prisons or CIA “black sites” where they could be tortured. It wasn’t Donald Trump who caused one terror suspect to experience the sensation of drowning 83 times in a single month (even if he was inspired by such reports to claim that he would bring torture back as president).

It wasn’t Donald Trump who spent eight years in the Oval Office presiding over a global “kill list,” running “Terror Tuesday” meetings, and personally helping choose individuals around the world for the CIA to assassinate using what, in essence, was the president’s own private drone force, while being praised (or criticized) for his “caution.”

It wasn’t Donald Trump who presided over the creation of a secret military of 70,000 elite troops cossetted inside the larger military, special-ops personnel who, in recent years, have been dispatched on missions to a large majority of the countries on the planet without the knowledge, no less the consent, of the American people. Nor was it Donald Trump who managed to lift the Pentagon budget to $600 billion and the overall national security budget to something like a trillion dollars or more, even as America’s civilian infrastructure aged and buckled.

It wasn’t Donald Trump who lost an estimated $60 billion to fraud and waste in the American “reconstruction” of Iraq and Afghanistan, or who decided to build highways to nowhere and a gas station in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan. It wasn’t Donald Trump who sent in the warrior corporations to squander more in that single country than was spent on the post-World War II Marshall Plan to put all of Western Europe back on its feet. Nor did he instruct the U.S. military to dump at least $25 billion into rebuilding, retraining, and rearming an Iraqi army that would collapse in 2014 in the face of a relatively small number of ISIS militants, or at least $65 billion into an Afghan army that would turn out to be filled with ghost soldiers.

In its history, the United States has engaged in quite a remarkable range of wars and conflicts. Nonetheless, in the last 15 years, forever war has been institutionalized as a feature of everyday life in Washington, which, in turn, has been transformed into a permanent war capital. When Donald Trump won the presidency and inherited those wars and that capital, there was, in a sense, no one left in the remarkably bankrupt political universe of Washington but those generals.

Here’s the problem, though. America’s forever wars have now been pursued by these generals and others like them for more than 15 years across a vast swath of the planet--from Pakistan to Libya (and ever deeper into Africa)--and the chaos of failing states, growing conflicts, and spreading terror movements has been the result. There’s no reason to believe that further military action will, a decade and a half later, produce more positive results.

#mo abudu #Trump administration #US generals #US military #US wars #military intervention

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una-henry · 7 years

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Trumpdates, so far & in no particular order

-Plans to begin building 'The Wall' using American tax payers money.-Plans to eliminate funding for National Endowment of the Arts & National Endowment of Humanities as well as privatise the Corporation of Public Broadcasting.-Put a hiring freeze on federal (non-military) jobs & job opportunities.-Is beginning construction of Dakota Access & Keystone XL pipelines & blatantly ignored a reporter's question regarding water protectors who continue to fiercely oppose the project, while police violence is escalates at Standing Rock.-Is escalating the war on the media, as well as charging journalists arrested while covering the inauguration & protests with felonies.-Said "torture works" & has begun revisiting limits on interrogation techniques, including waterboarding & lifting the ban on black sites (secret prisons operated by the CIA.)-Is blocking visas & immigration from 7 Muslim majority countries,as well as cutting the funding for sanctuary cities that provide even basic care for 'illegal' immigrants-Signed order blocking foreign aid or federal funding for international NGO's that provide or "promote" abortions in any way, including even providing info or pamphlets to patients on abortion (even when perfectly legal & available in their country or region.) Which will cause many clinics to shut down, resulting in less healthcare access & a rise in death & maternal death rates worldwide.-Proposed a National Day of Patriotism.-Is speeding up Environmental reviews for 'priority infrastructure'.-Still obsessed with 'voter fraud' without any known justification.-Demanded the Environmental Protection Agency remove their Climate Change page from their website (also: Trumps nominated head for the EPA has spent much of his career suing the EPA), has frozen grants & contracts for the EPA & gagged researchers with both the EPA & the US Dep. of Agriculture.-Previously said he was against executive actions & is now using it to break or change previously settled laws.-Was found to have not written the inauguration speech that he claimed to have written.-Had an ethics lawsuit filed against him accusing him of violating the constitution. -Encouraged Israeli settlements in Palestinian claimed territory (Trump appointed Israeli ambassador has helped fundraise these & similar settlements.)-Drone strikes in Yemen, aircraft bombing missions in Iraq & Syria.-Defied anti-nepotism laws to hire son in law & still refuses to release tax statements.-Has made multiple jokes & comments encouraging the US military to 'steal oil' as well as this comment about longtime EXXON CEO Rex Tillerman/now Secretary of State, "Again, he’s led this charmed life. He goes into a country, takes the oil, goes into another country. It’s tough dealing with these politicians, right? He’s going to be so incredible, and I’m very proud of him."-Changed the Whitehouse's website, adding fierce support for law enforcement and gun owners' rights to defend themselves, erasing the White House's policy page on climate change and any directives involving former president Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act.-Has appointed more white males to his cabinet than any President since Reagan, also almost all are veeery right wing billionaires.-His Secretary of Education choice, right wing billionaire philanthropist (in keeping with the rest) has compared her own work in education reform to a "biblical battleground where she wants to ‘advance God’s Kingdom.'” Trump's previous choice, Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, is "the largest Christian University in the nation & teaches creationism alongside evolution.” makes it pretty clear that public education is gonna veer pretty far to the right, most of whose records are overtly racist, actively homophobic in word & policy, are religious extremists, pro life, privatisation proponents, often with very little to no experience in the fields of their new appointments.-Pulled out of TPP (not so bad)-Seems to have threatened potentially putting Chicago under martial law (something needs to be done to help Chicago, but, i dunno....)-According to the Economist Intelligence Unit's rankings of global democracy, the US just went from being a "full democracy" to a "flawed democracy".-Trump as President, continues to lift the veil on the true face of the White Patriarchal Colonial system sparking record breaking world wide resistance & that is what he's really here for (i hope.) **A couple of other things to remember: his previous pledge to enact FADA, a bill that "aims to prevent the federal government from taking action against a person "on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that: (1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage". Oh, and he's also an anti vaxxer in case you forgot. Plus, i've still probably missed some things from his first Few Days.

#resistence #trump

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michaelmullen · 7 years

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Accomplishments of Pres. Obama

His tenure was not perfect. I have my complaints. I'm sure this will receive it's share of nasty commentary. But I saw this list and had to relay it.

-Pres. Obama appointed the most diverse Cabinet in history -Obama appointed a record number of female and minority judges to the federal courts -When Pres. Obama took office in 2009 the US economy was in free fall, falling off a cliff in one of the hugest economic collapses in history Granted, there are parts of the country that have still not felt the recovery, BUT -Unemployment rose to %10 in the wake of the financial crisis and would likely have gotten much worse if Pres. Obama had not intervened the way he did -As he leaves office Unemployment is now at %4.7 -Economists have been saying we are in in a period of "full employment". -the US has had 82 consecutive months of private sector job growth, the longest streak ever recorded -When Pres. Obama took office the federal deficit was about %10 percent of GDP, at the end of his time in office it is %3.2 of GDP -under the Obama Administration, banks now have to go through periodic "stress tests" to be sure they aren't a threat to the economy in case they fail due to their own risky practices... -the Volker Rule was adopted, which means banks can no longer use their (your) own money to make risky bets -During Pres. Obama's presidency the high school graduation rates reached %83 (highest ever) -the Federal prison population declined for the first time in decades -during the Obama Administration, homelessness among US veterans dropped by half. I know VA employees that have worked hard to help that happen and are very proud of it -during Obama's presidency, 16 countries relinquished all of their stores of highly enriched uranium, removing completely the chance of theft or misuse from those countries -thanks to Pres. Obama, credit card companies are no longer allowed to raise interest rates without notifying the card holder -gays can no longer be fired simply for being gay -US dependence on foreign oil has been vastly reduced -Navy Seals killed Bin Laden -despite the ongoing tragedy in Syria, and in the middle of that civil war, Obama got the Syrian regime to give up their huge stockpiles of chemical weapons, certified destroyed by international observers -Banned torture by US personnel in all circumstances: Exec. Order 13491 -a US Embassy opened in Cuba for the first time in (50?) years, and the process of normalization commenced. Some of the last vestiges of the Cold War are on their way out. -Pres. Obama lifted the ban on stem cell research (the ban was short sighted, ignorant, based on faulty science) -Obama increased the money for mental health for veterans in the VA (about damn time) by millions of dollars -the Obama Administration voluntarily released the lists of people who had visited the White House. First president ever to do that. -Obama changed his mind about same sex marriage (politicians never do that, especially toward politically risky things) and finally gay couples are getting all the same legal options as straight couples. -the FDA started regulating tobacco for the first time ever (so the ciggy companies now are required to tell us what they put in their cigarettes) -after 911 the W Administration created a registry that tracked Muslim men. That registry was scrapped by the Obama Administration due to concerns that the next administration might continue and expand it's use -the Obama Administration cracked down on shady for-profit colleges that profited hugely from the student loan system but did not deliver the education promised. Y'know, Trump U. The Obama Administration shut down the accreditor that allowed those shady institutions to pass themselves off as real institutions of higher learning, when in fact they were not -tens of billions of dollars that used to go to banks for them to write student loans now goes out as Pell Grants so people can afford to go to college and don't have to set themselves up with a lifetime of debt to do so -the US put a rover on Mars -Pres. Obama banned solitary confinement for juveniles serving time in federal prison -our secret overseas prisons were shut down (CIA Black Sites) -Pres. Obama removed the gag order that kept the return of US war dead secret, and the US government now pays the travel expenses for the families of fallen soldiers so they can be there when their loved one's remains come back to the US -the Don't Ask Don't Tell ban was repealed, the ban on transgender soldiers was lifted. -all combat positions were opened to women in the US military -Pres. Obama saved the US auto industry. GM was reorganized and paid back it's bailout debt. US automakers are once again the largest most profitable car companies in the world, and millions of American jobs were saved. -Obama extended the solvency of Medicare by decades by getting healthcare costs under control

-right, and by the way, you can't be denied health insurance due to a pre-existing condition -you can't be charged more than a man for health insurance just because you are a woman -and your health insurance can't put a life time cap on what you are allowed to need because of your healthcare -20 million Americans have health insurance now that did not have it due to the ACA -the number of uninsured dropped down to single digits (less than 9 million) -more than %90 of the country has health insurance now

The above was largely paraphrased from Rachel Maddow

https://www.facebook.com/notes/accomplishments-of-president-barack-obama/111-accomplishments-of-president-barack-obama/377659576289/

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