Drumbeats category archive

A continuing production:

Thus, the first 100 US military “advisers” are being sent to Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo and Ghana – the six member-nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that will compose an African army tasked (by the United Nations) to reconquer (invade?) the parts of Mali under the Islamist sway of AQIM, its splinter group MUJAO and the Ansar ed-Dine militia. This African mini-army, of course, is paid for by the West.

Students of the Vietnam War will be the first to note that sending “advisers” was the first step of the subsequent quagmire. And on a definitely un-Pentagonese ironic aside, the US over these past few years did train Malian troops. A lot of them duly deserted.

It’s the martial version of “firings will continue until morale improves.”

Read the rest at Asia Times.

Asia Times looks at civilian losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Viet Nam.

It’s not pretty. It is, indeed, rather an indictment of the heedlessness of America’s shoot-first foreign policy.

It should be required reading for the gunslinging crowd whose preferred solution for any international kerfuffle is to shoot.

A nugget:

No one will ever know just how many Iraqis died in the wake of the US invasion of 2003. In a country with an estimated population of about 25 million at the time, a much-debated survey – the results of which were published in the British medical journal The Lancet – suggested more than 601,000 violent “excess deaths” had occurred by 2006. Another survey indicated that more than 1.2 million Iraqi civilians had died because of the war (and the various internal conflicts that flowed from it) as of 2007. The Associated Press tallied up records of 110,600 deaths by early 2009. An Iraqi family health survey fixed the number at 151,000 violent deaths by June 2006. Official documents made public by Wikileaks counted 109,000 deaths, including 66,081 civilian deaths, between 2004 and 2009. Iraq Body Count has tallied as many as 121,220 documented cases of violent civilian deaths alone.

Then there are those 3.2 million Iraqis who were internally displaced or fled the violence to other lands, only to find uncertainty and deprivation in places like Jordan, Iran, and now war-torn Syria. By 2011, 9% or more of Iraq’s women, as many as 1 million, were widows (a number that skyrocketed in the years after the US invasion). A recent survey found that 800,000 to 1 million Iraqi children had lost one or both parents, a figure that only grows with the continuing violence that the US unleashed but never stamped out.

Follow the link for more and more depressing numbers.

It seems to have become accepted in the Village that Iran is a threat to the United States. Just listen to the beginning of the video below.

I understand that the government of Iran is not friendly to the United states (and vicey versey), but I do have a question:

Just how is Iran a “threat”?*

As near as I can figure, it’s a threat because people say it’s a threat and because they don’t like President Ineedashaveabad’s manners.

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*Loopy theories about “cyberterrorism” are not admitted as legitimate arguments. They are part of the “full employment for security consultants” movement and aren’t taken seriously by persons who know how computers and networks actually work.

“Because we are there” is not by itself sufficient reason to stay.

Never gonna let you go.

In wingnut world, war is a magickal thing (emphasis added):

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) is taking on the White House for not explicitly threatening a “military strike” on Iran, which he called “magic words” that would prevent the country from obtaining military weapons.

Speaking at the United Nations on Tuesday, President Barack Obama said that containment was not an option and the U.S. would “do what we must” to stop Iran.

But during an interview with MSNBC, Giuliani said that the implicit threat of military force did not go far enough.

. . . because the last two invocations to bloody Mars cast a magickal spell unbroken to this day in the fantastickal wingnut world sans history and accordingly sans lessons therefrom.

And, besides, other people have children to spare.

Delaware Dem’s musings are worth a look.

It’s a bipartisan problem.

I will point out, though, that it’s the Republicans who want yet another war.

Excerpt from Robert Greenwald in the interview:

The pundits who welcomed this war, many who welcomed the Iraq war . . . , how many times must they be wrong for us to say, “Stop . . . .”

Back in the 1930s, there was the “Merchants of Death” theory. Indeed, some of the first “Saint” novels were set against the background of that theory.

It is now widely considered to be discredited.

Remember the old children’s laxative commercial which started “Prunes: Is one enough? Are three too many?”

Congress is singing a similar tune about wars. Asia Times reports:

In another resolution apparently designed to prepare for war against Iran, the US House of Representatives, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 401-11 vote, has passed a resolution (HR 568) urging the president to oppose any policy toward Iran “that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.”

With its earlier decision to pass a bill that effectively sought to ban any negotiations between the United States and Iran, a huge bipartisan majority of Congress has essentially told the president that nothing short of war or the threat of war is an acceptable policy. Indeed, the rush to pass this bill appears to have been designed to undermine the ongoing international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.

(snip)

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, noted how “this resolution reads like the same sheet of music that got us into the Iraq war, and could be the precursor for a war with Iran. It’s effectively a thinly-disguised effort to bless war.”

One more time: The old lie. The young die.

Image via Balloon Juice.

Excerpt:

It’s consistent with their belief that every single problem in the world can be solved if we invade . . . .

This notion that we can kill . . . our way to security is fundamentally flawed.

At Asia Times, Gareth Porter examines the United States’s contrarian counter-productive policy regarding Iran. A nugget:

The prospects for agreement (on Iran’s reducing its uranium enrichment efforts–ed.) are not likely to improve before that meeting, however, mainly because of an inflexible US diplomatic posture that reflects President Barack Obama’s need to bow to the demands of Israel and the US Congress on Iran policy.

The US hard line in the Baghdad talks and the failure to set the stage for an early agreement with Iran means that Iran will not only increase but accelerate its accumulation of 20% enriched uranium, which has been the ostensible reason for wanting to get Iran to the negotiating table quickly.

Read the whole thing.

Playing their old, sweet song, because life is meaningless without fresh enemies.

The easier it becomes to kill, the more difficult it is to stop killing.

Via Thoreau.

When General Sherman said, “War is hell,” he didn’t intend it to be used as an excuse for hellish behavior; he meant is as a warning.

Field hears the rhythm of endless war.

John McCain wants to blow up more stuff.

Sign the petition.

Noz asks the question.

I’ll propose one possible answer: When persons feel threatened, they stop thinking. When persons stop thinking, they are more susceptible to con artists and flim-flam men.

Steve Chapman discusses the efforts of the neocons and others who think bombs are always best to drum up another Great and Glorious War. A nugget:

The prevailing wisdom among policymakers,* in short, bears an eerie resemblance to the Iraq consensus of 2002. We and the Israelis allegedly faced an intolerable peril from a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction and a lust for aggression. Fortunately, we were told, it was nothing that -a short, sudden military attack wouldn’t solve.

(snip)

This panic requires a total disregard for everything we have learned during the nuclear age. Since World War II, assorted enemies and rivals have acquired nuclear stockpiles: the Soviet Union, China, Pakistan and North Korea. All of them have learned that they are useless as offensive weapons against other nuclear states and their allies.

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*I don’t think it’s a prevailing wisdom among policymakers, but just among those who monger and hunger for war, but they are a vocal lot with the ear of the press.