Tag Archives: Iraq

“The End of the American Century”

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The War in 2020 is a terrific read. I’ll bet I’ve read it every 4 or 5 years since it was published in 1991. Wikipedia classifies the novel as “military-adventure.”

“The novel begins in the year 2005, when the South African Defense Force, equipped and trained by Japan, seizes mineral-rich areas of Shaba Province in Zaire. The United States sends the XVIII Airborne Corps along with associated air and naval assets to repel the aggression. The American expeditionary force is defeated due to a combination of technological inferiority (the South Africans’ Japanese equipment has such innovations as onboard battle lasers,) lax security (a squadron of USAF B-2 Spirit bombers is destroyed on the ground by South Africans and local guerillas) and poor intelligence.

The American collapse is so swift that the XVIII Airborne Corps attempts to surrender. When the surrender offer is ignored, the American President orders a nuclear strike on Pretoria, forcing a cease-fire and a South African withdrawal from Zaire. The political cost paid by the United States is very high; post-war epidemics, and economic and political conflict with Japan reduces American power and influence. These events are summarized by a newspaper headline that reads: “THE END OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY”.

Author Ralph Peters tells a great story. If you’re digging Afghanistan and Iraq, you’ll love The War in 2020.

Bring back the draft

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Viet Nam wasn’t going well. We needed more “boots on the ground,” so they re-instituted the draft on December 1, 1969 with a lottery. Low number, you’re on your way to Viet Nam. High number, you’re okay. My number was 213 (out of 365). The draft was frozen at 195 in December of 1970. I dropped out of law school the next day.

In 1968, we had 536,100 troops in Viet Nam (compared to our 140,000 in Iraq). If we had the draft today, the war in Iraq would be over by the Fourth of July.

Scott Adams: Money or Bombs

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“I don’t know how many nukes the United States has pointed toward China, but one would be too many. China isn’t going to attack its biggest customer. And in the unlikely event that some other country attacks China, we’d offer military assistance in a heartbeat. There’s too much money at stake on both sides.”

Scott Adams presents his “Money or Bombs” theory

It probably went something like this…

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Presidential Aide: Mr. President, two airliners have been flown into the World Trade Center Towers.

George W. Bush: Those are the big ones in New York, right?

Aide: Yes sir. We think there might be as many as 3,000 dead.

Bush: Who did it?

Aide: We think they were Saudis.

Bush: Damn, I’ve played golf with those guys.

Aide: No sir. These are probably extremists.

Bush: No shit. What are we gonna do about it?

Vice President Cheney: Mr. President, we have to invade Iraq but we need to invade Afghanistan first to make it look good.

Bush: Do we think that prick Saddam had something to do with it?

Cheney: Sir, we don’t know that he didn’t.

Bush: I’d like to nuke that fucker. Does he have nukes or chemical weapons or something.

CIA Director George Tennent: There’s no evidence of that, Mr. President.

Cheney: Take another look.

Tennent: Yes sir.

Cheney: When we invade, I think I can get my friends at Halliburton to pitch in.

Bush: Cool.

[Fast forward. The Liberation of Irag is not going well]

Bush: Goddamn it Rummy, I thought you said this thing would take a few weeks and we’d be greeted as liberators. Everyone going to Camp David with me and the First Lady, take one step forward… not so fast Rummy!

[Later]

Bush: Karl, we’re in the shit here. What should we do?

Karl Rove: Well, you’re in your final term… just drag the thing out and leave it for the Democrats.

Bush: Can we do that?

Rove: I don’t see why not. We can say things we’re looking good when we left.

Bush: But things look like hell!

Rove: Just wait. They’ll look a lot worse.

Bush: But won’t history show that I screwed the pooch on this?

Rove and Cheney: (Looking at the floor and ceiling respectively)

Cheney: Uh, no sir, Mr. President. All anyone will remember is the Middle East exploded on the Democrats’ watch. Uh, listen guys, I gotta run. I’m going skeet shooting with Scooter.

Update: Just in… a plan for withdrawal.

Tommy Lee Jones, then and now

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We watched In the Valley of Elah last night (rented from iTunes). I was pleasantly surprised to learn it was a murder mystery (sort of). Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon all gave powerful performances.

For me the story was about how war can change the people we send to fight it. And I was reminded of one of Tommy Lee Jones’ earlier movies, Rolling Thunder (1977).

It was a so-so movie starring William Devane but Jones owned every scene he was in. He played Cpl. Johnny Vohden, a soldier who had served under Devane’s character in Viet Nam. Johnny is back, but he’s not “back.”

So, when Devane asks him to go down to Mexico to avenge Devane’s murdered family, Tommy Lee gets up, walks into his bedroom, picks up a little gym bag  and walks out the door. See the movie.

In In the Valley of Elah, Jones’ son, who is serving in Iraq, is that same burned out soldier with the thousand-yard stare.

TLJ was great in No Country for Old Men, but I thought his performance in Valley of Elah was even better.

“Hillary’s Last Stand”

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Writing in the March 20th issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi explores “The tragic self-martyrdom of a groundbreaking politician.”

“The Clintons always represented the notion that the old Democratic Party of unions and LBJ liberals was a thing of the past and that the way forward involved making nice with big business and the military. Her husband passed NAFTA, deregulated Wall Street, rammed through welfare “reform,” bombed Kosovo, chided Sister Soulja, opened the Lincoln bedroom to any foreign nation with spare cash and won two elections.

Winning convinced both of them that they were saviors of everything right and decent in the world. They’d discovered the winning formula, and we were welcome to kiss their asses for finding it. And so what if the formula involved selling out the unions on a series of draconian and insane trade deals, or cozying up to one of the most regressive employers in the world in Wal-Mart, or hiring an evil lobbyist stooge like Mark Penn to be your chief campaign strategist, or voting to give George Bush the authority to launch an illegal invasion of Iraq?”

Matt Taibbi is far and away my favorite political reporter (right after Kay Henderson!) and I buy a copy of Rolling Stone just for his pieces.

His latest leaves the reader with the impression that Hillary is kaput. I’m not so sure. He calls her “one of the most awesomely complex and fascinating public figures in the history of our country.”  But not in a good way.

I couldn’t find the article online but will update this post if I do.

Josh Brolin to play W in Oliver Stone movie

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Oliver Stone’s next move is “Bush,” a film focusing on the life and presidency of George W. Bush. Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men) will portray W. In an interview in Variety, Stone says he wants to present a “true portrait of the the man.”

“How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world? It’s like Frank Capra territory on one hand, but I’ll also cover the demons in his private life, his bouts with his dad and his conversion to Christianity, which explains a lot of where he is coming from. It includes his belief that God personally chose him to be president of the United States, and his coming into his own with the stunning, preemptive attack on Iraq. It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors.”

I think Oliver Stone is capable of making a good (or great?) movie. I loved Platoon and Wall Street. JFK, not so much. But it sounds like they’re trying to get this movie in theaters by November and that makes me a little suspicious. Why not wait until the guys is out of office?

PS: Bet W loves the choice of Josh Brolin (“Damn! It’s like lookin’ in a mirruh!”)

Scott Adams: Apology to Iraqi people

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“Whatever you think about the reasons for invading (Iraq), everyone seems to agree that we botched the occupation, and the results have been a disaster for the Iraqi civilian population. I feel like I owe them an apology for letting my idiot government screw them so thoroughly.

Your first reaction might be to explain all the rationalizations, and how war is messy, and it was really Saddam’s fault, and blah, blah, blah. But apologies don’t work that way. I could be wrong, but I think the Iraqi people who were minding their own business would like to hear an apology.

But how? My idiot government won’t apologize on my behalf. And if I fire them and get a new idiot government, they won’t do it either, until fifty years are past. That seems too late.

So here’s my public apology to the Iraqi civilians who did nothing to deserve their current situation: I’m sorry I trusted my idiot government to handle things correctly. I should have been watching more closely. To be honest, I never once thought to even ask if there was a post-war plan. That was clearly a mistake on my part. For that, I am sorry.”

Full post at Dilbert.Blog

“I’m sorry for the way things are in China, I’m sorry things ain’t what they used to be.” — John Denver

Band of Bloggers: War Through A Soldiers Eyes

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Watched a really interesting program on the History Channel last night about military bloggers (milbloggers) in Irag:

“For the first time in history, modern technology is enabling viewers to experience war as it really is… directly from the battlefield. An ever growing band of military bloggers are using the internet, video cameras and cell phones to deliver honest, powerful and uncensored content. Band of Bloggers will be the site that will collect this raw and riveting “soldier generated content.”

Remember the early day of the war when network reporters (and anchors) were “embedded” with our troops, reporting from “the front lines?” Well, a lot of those reporters have got the fuck out of Dodge or been forced to do their reports from the basement of the Baghdad Hilton.

Questions of objectivity aside, you can’t get much more “front line” than these men and women. Some of them have even rigged cameras to their helmets to record video.

If Vietnam was our first televised war, Iraq is our first blogged war. If you’re a blogger or read blogs, you’ll want to watch Band of Bloggers.