“If your birthday was just 1 day earlier, your draft number would have been called.” Somebody at USA TODAY deserves a raise for coming up with this. Enter your birthdate and the site tells you your draft number (like you’d forget) and whether or not you would have been called.
The military (and many outside the military) consider Bradley Manning a traitor for leaking classified documents. Let’s imagine we’re in the latter days of World War II and a German soldier leaks thousands of documents related to concentration camps and the atrocities committed there. Is he a traitor? Probably. Did he do the right thing? Depends on who you ask? If the only difference between my hypothetical and the Manning case is whose ox was gored, that’s morally thin ice.
But the Manning leaks could have endangered American lives, goes one argument. No doubt, although I’ve not seen anything to suggest any lives have actaully been lost. Would it matter if some of the leaked documents revealed American actions were costing innocent lives?
I thought the Viet Nam war was a bad idea, primarilly because it could have gotten me killed. Turns out there were plenty of other reasons. Like the the mass murder of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians near the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968, by United States Army soldiers. Most of the victims were women, children, infants, and elderly people. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies were later found to be mutilated and many women were allegedly raped prior to the killings.
Would it be treason to tell the world about My Lai?
“My country, right or wrong!” was a popular slogan for those supporting that war. That did work for me then and it doesn’t work for me now.
Dear Ms Manners:
I was chillin’ at the local oxygen bar today when I needed to show my girlfriend something on my MySpace page. One of the regulars had gone to make wee wee so we just scooted over and used his laptop. When he came back he got all pissy about it and took the laptop away from us. I think this was the rudest behavior EVER! You got my back on this one, girl?
Bruised Feelings
Sorry, BF, but it’s the yellow flag for you and your BFF. You don’t go into someone’s home just because the door is unlocked. Even if you know them. You don’t use their car to run down to the Vietnamese Nail Salon, just because the keys are in it. And you don’t use someone’s computer, without asking their permission.
Would you have been upset if you discovered this gentleman going through your lingerie drawer? I mean, you are friends, right?
Ms. Manners
I was talking with a co-worker about Lara Logan’s (CBS Chief Foreign Correspondent) recent appearance on The Daily Show. She posed the question, “When was the last time you saw a dead American soldier on TV?” She was making the point that media in the U. S. has been MIA on the war in Iraq (except for that victorious march into Baghdad).
My co-worker’s take was: “The only reason to show a dead American soldier would be to turn someone against the war.”
Or maybe that war is news and death is part of the story?
Actually, I didn’t have a response. I can understand that view coming from W or Rumsfeld (back in the day). But how many citizens feel the same? How many would rather not to see the bloody reality of war on their TV screens?
By this logic, we also shouldn’t be seeing the critically wounded at Walter Reed. Or can we translate missing limbs to a “don’t-let-their-sacrifices-be-in-vain” message?
So I’m asking myself why we saw more dead troops during the Viet Nam war, and it came to me. We had lots of reporters on the front lines in that war. But not so many on the mean streets of Baghdad.
In the old days, you could make a career filing reports from the front lines. Sure, you could shot, but you weren’t likely to wind up the star of a YouTube beheading video.
Naw, American journalism took a pass on this war. Better to let the Brits cover this one.
A little gem from “Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story,” the new autobiography of retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the onetime commander of U.S. troops in Iraq.
Following the the killing of the four contractors in Fallujah in 2004, W tried to go all George C. Patton in a video conference with his national security team and generals:
“Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.”
“There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”
Can you imagine being in combat with dick-wad like Bush commanding your unit?
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.
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.
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.
“The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation — regardless of our noble purpose.
We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.”
[Chuck Hagel, Republican senator from Nebraska – washingtonpost.com]
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a documentary film directed by Errol Morris and released in December 2003.
The film depicts the life of Robert Strange McNamara, United States Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, through the use of archival footage, White House recordings, and most prominently, an interview of McNamara at the age of 85. The subject matter spans from McNamara’s work as one of the “Whiz Kids” during World War II and at Ford to his involvement in the Vietnam War as the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson
1. Empathize with your enemy.
2. Rationality will not save us.
3. There’s something beyond one’s self.
4. Maximize efficiency.
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
6. Get the data.
7. Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
10. Never say never.
11. You can’t change human nature.
We have learned none of McNamara’s lessons. A powerful documentary. And, please, you can’t have an opinion about this movie unless you’ve seen it. Happy to discuss with anyone that has.