Endless War category archive

Leonard Pitts, Jr.:

People think tyranny will be imposed at the point of a gun. Paranoids look up in search of black helicopters. Meanwhile, the architecture of totalitarianism is put into place all around them, surveillance apparatus so intrusive as to stagger the imagination of Orwell himself.

The point is not that one has nothing to hide. The point is that whatever you have is none of the government’s business absent probable cause and a warrant. The point is that one should never repose unfettered power with the state.

We should know this, yet we fall for the same seductive con every time: We are afraid, but the state says it can make us safe. And all it will take is the surrender of a few small freedoms.

Read the rest.

Worth a think.

In related news.

Shaun Mullen is buoyed by President Obama’s recent speech, in which he promised to try to do something about endless war. A nugget:

This is because the speech articulated fundamental truths about the times in which we live long overdue in the telling, chief among them that our democracy demands that while we must continue to fight terrorism, the perpetual war the 9/11 attacks unleashed must end. And this: History shows that while terrorism continues to be ever present in many guises, it is by no means the greatest threat that America has faced, let alone one that justified abrogation of the liberties and principles that are the bedrock of our society.

Republicans predictably took to the fainting couch en masse, because — let’s face it folks — you either like war or you don’t like it, and the ideologues who have bent the Grand Old Party out of any recognizable shape believe there is no higher calling than shedding American blood on foreign soil no matter how flimsy the reasons for doing so may be.

Follow the link for his full thoughtful analysis. As I write this, the post has three comments which quite thoughtfully pertain to the post.

What the Booman said.

Will Bunch shares his thoughts on Memorial Day and what it memorializes.

Read it.

There are wars of necessity–wars brought to you–and wars of cynicism–wars you take to others, such as the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq.

We have had a few of the former and too many of the latter.

Those who create wars of cynicism are old men who watch from the comfort of their dens as others die.

They call others amongst the beat of the drums and the skirl of the pipes, while they smoke their cigars, drink their champagne, and collect their checks.

First Son has four times been in harm’s way for the folly of those old men, for he enlisted so as to be able to pay his student loans.

Enough already, enough wars for lies.

Read Dick Destiny about the latest ricin scare. He knows whereof he speaks.

A nugget:

Purified ricin has never been accomplished by anyone known to be fiddling with castor seeds during the long years of the war on terror.

And no terror weapon has ever been made with it.

But, really now, facts are not nearly so much fun as fear-mongering if you want to sell papers and website hits or build an overarching surveillance empire.

Addendum, Later That Same Day:

Dick Destiny explains the chemisty.

The evil that men do lives . . . .

William Shakespeare

Via Balloon Juice.

Doghouse Riley takes time out for a Noonan.

A Peggy Noonan, that is.

A nugget therefrom:

A thing is not true just because you are, or pretend to be, serious about it. Especially you.

Via Bartcop.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Tom Engelhart considers the costs of circling the wagons by the overreactionaries:

In the meantime, he (Osama bin Laden–ed.)- and 9/11 as it entered the American psyche – helped facilitate the locking down of this society in ways that should unnerve us all. The resulting United States of Fear has since engaged in two disastrous more-than-trillion dollar wars and a “Global War on Terror” that shows no sign of ending in our lifetime. (See Yemen, Pakistan, and Mali.) It has also funded the supersized growth of a labyrinthine intelligence bureaucracy; that post-9/11 creation, the Department of Homeland Security, and, of course, the Pentagon and the US military, including the special operations forces, an ever-expanding secret military elite cocooned within it.

Given the enemy at hand – not a giant empire, but scattered jihadis and minority insurgencies in distant lands – all of these institutions, which make up the post-9/11 National Security Complex, expanded in ways that would have boggled the minds of previous generations (as would that most un-American of all words, “homeland”). All of this, in turn, happened in a poisonously paranoid atmosphere in Washington, and much of the rest of the country.

Read the whole thing.

PoliticalProf remarks on the irony:

So do you think that American film audiences will realize that Red Dawn is about domestic insurgent groups using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and hit-and-run guerrilla tactics to defeat an alien invader, and thus that the movie is really about why the Iraqi insurgents and the Afghani Taliban were heroes for using IEDs and hit-and-run guerrilla tactics to fight US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? At least from the perspective of ordinary Iraqis and Afghanis?

No, I have no intention of seeing this potboiler. I didn’t watch the first one and want to keep my record unblemished.

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, writing as a private citizen, considers the current situation in Afghanistan and sees parallels between the legacy of General Patraeus and that of another legendary general from a war long gone.

Aside from the strategic implications, the Petraeus myth has inflicted a serious human cost. Since the former general’s flawed strategy was applied in Afghanistan, tens of thousands of American service members have paid for it with their lives, limbs, and emotional well-being.

It’s worth noting that when Gen. William Westmoreland told Congress how well the Vietnam War was going in April 1967, he was hailed as a hero and interrupted by applause 19 times. But years later, when an honest evaluation of his performance was made and the truth was laid bare, his name became a byword for military failure.

Read the rest.