I find it somewhat ironic the we place on our money "In God we trust" when in reality western society has effectively given up believing in anything but our money. No vision of where we are headed, nor idea of who we are or why we are here remains. There is only the creation, accumulation and dispersement of money that remains.
The divine $ has given us the technology to kill at a 1000 miles distance by drone or missile. From this technology we have created a market which feeds the money machine and lets anybody, anywhere play the killing game.
We have spent the last century pursuing money throughout the world often in a zero sum game. The "other's" constant losses...as we are very good at the money game...have created myriads of people who have reason to hate America and Americans. Would it not fit our objectives better and serve the peacefull pursuit of our life to address the causes of the potential terrorist threat that this represents rather than eliminating by drone its symptomes.
Your words have touched my heart and soul Stuart. I often think about how we, and the world, would benefit from the energy, money, and emotions that fuel all the fighting, bitterness, and anger could be channeled into such technical, scientific, and medical advances that could truly change the world! If I sound naive forgive me... but it's so obvious... it's all about the money. You nailed it.... I guess money and power. Shame on us. All of us.
In many ways it's always been about power and money. Now, we have the technology to kill at a very long distance on a regular basis....no need for hand to hand combat or even flying over a place to drop a bomb. We are also primates (just finished Mama's Last Hug about primate emotions) and we are primates who have very evolved and potent technology while we remain in many ways that mammal that fell out of a tree or walked out of a cave.
Neanderthals are also the first humans with a demonstrated belief in a caring community - from fossils of people who had broken legs and such that were reset (meaning care in that and recovery) and the burial of the dead in expectation of an afterlife.
Not to mention that - depending on the Homo Sapiens population sampled - we carry anywhere from 5-15% of our DNA is Neanderthal.
This is the central point. Close reading of Darwin indicates that people are at different levels of evolution. This is either a benefit to mankind or, depending on our approach, a challenge.
Stuart, I agree with your assessment. It seems like greed, hate and delusion are the driving forces of humanity today. Back when I was still teaching at University I’d often ask students to do a thought experiment and place themselves back at the end of the 4th Century AD living in Southern Europe.
If you saw the imminent collapse of the Roman Empire what would you have done? Moved? Re-ordered your life? Gone into isolation?
I get this chilling feeling we are (in the Western world) at that point again.
Charlie, I am curious what your students would have chosen to do. Did they contrast life in 4th century southern Europe versus the east part of the Roman Empire, which thrived centuries longer. Thanks.
Richard, The most cogent answer was to 1) sell current assets, 2) reduce the cost of living, 3)re-locate to the outer reaches of the Empire (i.e., the borderlands). In short, get out of Dodge before it blows up.
Yes. The University of San Francisco. But here is the interesting thing. I did the same exercise in Austria and Sweden doing consulting gigs. Same basic pattern but what the Europeans considered to be the 'borderlands' was, shall I say, somewhat different. Some great stories there.
The average Afghan household consists of eight people. If the two trillion spent on Afghanistan (largely military spending) had been parceled out in cash or securities, every Afghan household today would have a 401(k) of at least half a million dollars. We should have been able to buy a little love with that.
They could also do the same with American households. Imagine, people here, there and everywhere living a stress free, enjoyable, full and productive life! Instead we wage wars to expand the wealth of so few and create “myriads of people who have reason to hate America and Americans” as Stuart said. This has also created myriads of Americans hating our government and other Americans. This path we are on can not end well.
Obviously our problems aren’t new ones, but have been around for a while. Just curious, was the letter from James written around the beginning of the fall of Rome? ITT took quite a while for the carcass to die after the Emperors poisoned it — about four hundred years — wasn’t it?
Seems like the debate over the who and when of James has persisted from times past to time present. Be that as it may, the corruptible condition of the soul the author of James writes of transcends time and place - and remains present in my soul. Thus the need for standards, checks and balances.
No one knows what actual civilian deaths are unless tracked by neutral people on the ground. Anything reported by the military is a lie.
Aerial bombardment removed the air crew from the reality of what they were doing. Drones only take it one step farther. Years back there was a movie "The Last Starfighter" in which a teenager who was so good at a video game was used as a fighter pilot by the good aliens against the bad aliens. Isn't that what our video games are doing now? When you include visual face recognition AI into single strike anti-personnel drones, you have the perfect assassination machine. Except it doesn't work so accurately for Black or brown faces (not that it matters to some) but may help eg China against America. The next 25 years will be interesting... all against all.
All that you said and more. How long before dictator Kim, conventional criminals (drug cartels), and other antisocial actors adapt and misuse personal drones as weapons?
Stuart, what you're saying applies to the way that parts of the US are treated by the more prosperous, corporate parts. I live in NM, a beautiful place with mostly clean air and nice people, but the ravages of uranium mining and a coal-powered emmissions plant in the 4-Corners Area has affected poor tribal people, farmers, ranchers, and anyone else living within the huge area where the tailing ponds exist and the wind blows. The Dakotas, Montana, parts of Colorado, etc, etc, have been used as colonies by the big populations on either coast. I sound like some kind of a red neck, but I'm a raging progressive! I just see the way it is. Many people here are poor. We struggle to educate our citizens and provide them with basic services; many POC live here as well as indigenous people, and drug addiction and alcohol abuse are rampant. It's still a great place to live in many ways, and we have some of the best laws in the US as far as individual rights (gay marriage, abortion). I just believe that as part of the US's recreation area, the needs of our citizens, particularly our children, go unnoticed by the rest of the country.
I wouldn't have mistaken you for a redneck. (And I'm in Massachusetts.) You sound progressive to me--wanting to protect New Mexicans from uranium and coal pollution. More power to you!
Patricia Greathouse, you are so right, but you forgot down-winders from Los Alamos and other states. This only proves your point though. The western states have been dumping grounds for urban experimentation for more than a century at this point. I have family that ranched in western New Mexico and grew up in West Texas myself. I know too well the atrocities visit on Indigenous and POC in that area. Thank you for bringing it to light while recognizing this exquisite beauty of the area.
It seems to be a self-perpetuating mechanism; the more they use it, the less it works, the more it needs money...to correct the problem! Time to try something different, perhaps.
In an effort to try to rein in military spending, my late father, an expert on the Soviet economy wrote a handful of op-eds for the NYT explaining why the CIA estimates of Soviet military spending were inflated.
I dunno. I think any of us would rather see our local fire and police departments remain unused, even though we happily pay for them.
What's we have locally but have lost nationally is the wisdom to know when to use these tools of defense. It seems like common sense when you look at a fire department - if the firefighters are just sitting around the fire station, you don't set fires intentionally so you can justify paying them.
Things seem to work differently for the military. Why?
I disagree that we have this wisdom locally with regard to the police. The police are often used, when perhaps a social worker might be able to defuse a situation better, especially in poorer communities and against people of color. If the only tool you have is a hammer (or a gun), everything looks like a nail (or a target).
In Mama's Last Hug the two primate societies closest to us are chimps and bonobos. In chimp society it's usually the males who are fighting and often senior females like Mama help with reconciliation which is important to maintain the group. Bonobos are more peaceful and they are matrilineal. One of the things the author noted about other primate societies and us is that inequality will result in the disruption of the group. For chimps it means lots of sharing of food (they kill monkeys and share the meat for example) and grooming while being able to reconcile many times after a confrontation.
I think we have too many people who don't truly pay attention.
There was an attack ad against Rep. Susie Lee on FB paid for by The Petroleum Institute.
Me and two other people spoke up to try to tell people, but the rest, maybe 12 people at the time just wanted to bash her, making comment about her looks and how she is bought by big corporations.
God is a concept that so many of our leaders hide behind. And, yes, in reality everything is all about money, despite the fact that beyond an annual income of ~$74K in most of the US (more in Boston, NYC, the Bay Area, Seattle, etc.,) additional annual earnings do nothing to increase happiness.
Yes, we need to address the causes of the potential terrorist threat.
No. I'm decades beyond college (I'm assuming that is or was a college class--forgive me if I'm wrong about that). I do read a fair amount of behavioral economics, and I'm interested in what really contributes to well being. And I'm well aware of the law of diminishing returns.
Ironic with all this focus on $s that only about 20% of Americans feel they are living a life of well-being. Money does not buy happiness. My dream is to have the focus on a Well-Being Index rather than GNP. Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, has a wonderful theory of Well-Being. It has five elements: Positive emotions, Positive Relationships, Meaning, Engagement and Accomplishment. He set up the Soldier and Family Fitness program which measures these elements across the U.S. Army. Countries like Great Britain are using a WBI requiring all policies and legislation to show how it will improve the well-being of all citizens. We need to quick the zero sum games and go for making the pie bigger for all.
I'd advocate simply spreading the pie out more equitably among us. No-one needs to be a billionaire. On the other hand, for those who have very little, money does buy happiness and peace of mind--up to about $74k annually in parts of the country that lack super-inflated real estate and other prices.
It is so very sad to me that as a civilization we have come so far, made incrediable inventions and discoveries, but very few are really of benefit to the future of civilization . By that I mean protecting the planet, working with other countries for peace and stability, embracing differences and strengths to better all lives. I guess the human flaw takes over with greed, power and jealousy. Wish things could really be different.
Margaret, I feel you. I had a dream the other night in which the grandparents united to save the planet for their grandchildren. There are plenty of us who feel as you do. What is stopping us?
“The three conservative Democratic lawmakers threatening to kill their party’s drug pricing legislation have raked in roughly $1.6m of campaign cash from donors in the pharmaceutical and health products industries. One of the lawmakers is the House’s single largest recipient of pharmaceutical industry campaign cash this election cycle, and another lawmaker’s immediate past chief of staff is now lobbying for drugmakers.
The threat from Democratic representatives Kurt Schrader (Oregon), Scott Peters (California) and Kathleen Rice (New York) comes just as the pharmaceutical industry’s top lobbying group announced a seven-figure ad campaign to vilify the Democratic legislation, which aims to lower the cost of medicines for Americans now facing the world’s highest prescription drug prices.”
I was betting that was the case, surprised honestly there are not more of them. So many in Congress have lost sight of representing the people and doing what is best for them and the country. They only care about being re-elected for power and greed. They listen to their donors and the lobbyist and have forgotten their duty to the American people. Congress is not in touch with the regular Americans with their free best in the world health care, pensions and all the perks to make contacts and deal for personal profit on the side. We need an overhaul of Congress and we need their sworn oaths and duties of office to actually mean somthing to them and hold them accountable. Not just by election, they can do too much damage, as we are witnessing now not to have some consequences within their term.
Interesting you should take this tack today, Stuart. Money and Soul is the theme this week for Richard Rohr's daily meditations. Here's a link if anyone is interested.
I think you have hit on the 1 thing that has caused division in all societies, money, from the gold of the Roman Empire to today's virtual Bitcoin. Those that have want to make sure they all get their "fair" share.
This post and the brilliant comments it gave rise to are on their own worth the subscription. Thank you to one and all.
I would like to add three points: 1) It seems to me that the disorderly withdrawal was inevitable once Trump negotiated independently of the Afghan Government. It made plain that their army was on its own except possibly for supplies. I am sure that I have read that the army was nothing like as large or as well-trained as the published figure, and the Afghan troops will have probably known this, and so felt safer avoiding conflict. This would suggest moderation in attacking Biden for the 'shambles'. 2) Intelligence when invading a country relies on local contacts; how on earth is it possible to check on their reliability? I wonder therefore if the drone strike was not 'targeted' for the Americans by an infiltrator; if so it was a near perfect propaganda coup, as well as revenge against a collaborator. 3) It is tempting to make drones the target of opposition, though they undoubtedly need regulation, but when one reflects on the damage done by other weaponry, and the impossibility of a foreign force distinguishing between friend (or neutral) and foe, it is difficult to see how hostilities can be pursued without enormous collateral damage. A good start therefore, might be to minimise interventions (I think of the many US interventions in Latin America among others) and leave each country to find its own way to better government. Government systems and markets are cultural phenomena and so interventions from abroad are unlikely to be helpful. I leave the question hanging as to whether NATO should have tackled the Russian intervention in Syria, and how that affects this argument.
Yes indeed, Philip. All one has to do is say "fire bombing of Dresden" to place in stark contrast the use of drones. Or, even more significantly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's super easy to kill civilians, as every military conflict in the history of the world has demonstrated. Trying not to is something new and different.
Forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Consider the firebombing of Tokyo the night of March 9, 1945, in which 18 square miles of the city was burned out and 100,000 people killed. 500 B-29s with incendiaries, bombing from 5,000 feet with no opposition. My old aerobatics instructor was lead pilot for his squadron on the mission. 30 years later he could never be around barbecue, because that was the smell that filled their airplane from below. Actually, 45 Japanese cities were burned out that way, long before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When I was in Japan 18 years later with the Navy, my friend and I stumbled (lost) on the last 500 acres of unrebuilt Kobe-Osaka - it was staring into the abyss to confront it. I was immediately reminded of a painting of the aftereffects of World War III on the cover of a paperback s-f novel. Only 98,000 died in that one.
My father was in Japan for a year after the war as part of the army of occupation. I have photos he took with his Brownie camera of Hiroshima from the air when he did flyovers with a buddy from the Army Air Corps. I was trying to be concise--I could list any number of wars fought by destroying civilian targets. The Third Punic and Macedonian Wars, for instance, when the Romans burned both Carthage and Corinth to the ground, killed most of the men, enslaved most of the women and children, and sowed the fields with salt. Or the sacking of Jerusalem by the so-called Christian marauders of the "First Crusade" during which, the chroniclers described, the streets flowed up to the ankles in blood. The death toll might not be as dramatic as those in WW2, but the effect was the same.
Excellent examples. We hairless bipeds have an unblemished record for maximizing the awfulness to the utter limits of the available technology at any point in time.
Thank you Philip. I agree 💯. Comments here today have made me wonder if we had the intelligence on the perpetrators of 9/11 and the ability to take one or more out by drone, should we have?
“Targeted”. I have wondered the Same thing, Philip B., American military remarked on the plethora of tips they received. That makes me wonder if the tipsters were setting up a worker for the west for revenge and used our drone to do it. Let’s just hope I have an over-active imagination.
Now that our government has called the strikes "a tragic mistake," we can either accept that we as a country have instigated something dark, or run away from responsibility, pretend its a one-off, and blame Biden.
We're going to see a lot of independents shoot the messenger, I'm afraid. Our culture does not like stories that diverge from our self-image of heroes.
And this is round two, we as a country have also blamed Biden for not controlling the inevitable panic at the end of the war.
Absurd and disappointing, but predictable according to US cowboy culture, IMO.
Our normal Sunday morning routine is to make a nice breakfast and watch Velshi on MSNBC. Yesterday morning, there was a guest host, Anand Giridharadas (you may not recognize the name but his familiar black/grey spiked hair is recognizable). Anyway, he had a guest on and they were discussing the drone strike. When he asked the guest if Biden should be charged with “war crimes”, my husband blew a gasket and we shut off the TV. That is so irresponsible and we don’t need our media, especially the left leaning ones, to make this kind of accusation. Fox can do it all by themselves and they don’t need an assist from us.
I so agree with you. I think Biden is doing a damn good job on so many issues, at a terribly difficult time, and we really don't need for him to be unduly criticized by jerks.
Annette, I hope your husband and the rest of the family have recovered! You did the right thing. Turn it OFF. I did the same thing yesterday with Chuck Todd, who I partially watch maybe once every six weeks or so. (He's no Russert or Brokaw) His opening summary seemed to want to blame everything on the president. I was trying to figure out if he had gone to the dark side when he started asking his guests Tucker Carlson style questions! I hit the magic button on the remote.
I used to record every prime time hour of MSNBC, starting at 9 AM, in case there was a disaster of some kind.
The TV would actually be on in the background for a random few hours every day, until I realized every host was confined to the same talking point list. (Morning "I'm just a dumb country lawyer" Joe is NOT welcome in my house).
After my recent meltdown I am allowed ONE HOUR of news. A choice between O'Donnell, Williams, Maddow, and Wallace in order of preference.
Annette, my point is this: The media -- All of it -- can be as toxic as the events they cover. The doctors tell me that we are killing ourselves with cortisol from stress. Save your husband's life, literally, and keep the TV on the Hallmark channel on Sundays at least! All of us should not have the TV on in the background, or be on Twitter, or anything else on a regular basis -- if at all -- except HCR.
Volunteer, or other political work? YES! It actually relieves anxiety to do something. But media should come with a warning label before each show, or tweet. Really.
I ceased watching Meet the Press after he persisted in trying to put words in the mouth of, I think it was Kamala Harris during one of the presidential candidate debates after she had responded and he didn't get the answer he wanted. There are better things to watch on Sunday morning, if watching TV at all. When he's on MSNBC, I change the channel.
Judith, I don't usually watch NBC on Sundays, and this was another confirmation of why. Good to know that I am not alone. I really miss Tim Russert....
If all you people think the United States doesn't commit war crimes, I guess I won't recommend Nick Turse's "Kill Everything That Moves," a history of US war crimes in Vietnam, that is based on the findings of a special, secret Pentagon unit founded during the war to debunk claims by GIs of having witnessed war crimes - except each one they investigated turned out to be real. It's tough reading, especially if you were there. We Americans need our noses rubbed in our centuries of crimes, maybe we'd finally figure it out.
There isn't a war fought since the Jamestown colonists involved themselves in an ongoing conflict they stumbled into (choosing the "wrong" side) on arrival, where war crimes have not been committed against non-white people. During the Philippine Insurrection (after the Filipinos discovered our intervention in their war of independence against Spain wasn't done to help them become independent), General Jacob Devers applauded his men for turning the island of Panay into a "howling wilderness" by killing 40,000 people living on the island. The Army had to get rid of him for being too honest about reality. I won't go into a list of the crimes committed against Native Americans, but it is pretty obvious most of you haven't read "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee."
Hell, we commit war crimes against white people! Go re-watch "Band of Brothers" and count the number of times one of them shoots an enemy soldier who has surrendered - and how the one who shoots the most becomes one of the leaders (one the others are afraid of). That wasn't just "Hollywood history" by left-wingers. It's in Ambrose's book.
I say the above as a military historian, and a descendant of a family who's been involved in every US war since before there was a US.
TC, I agree with you in that we have definitely committed our share of war crimes. In this one case, however, I think it is unfair to pin this particular incident on President Biden and suggest that he be tried on war crimes charges. He is a good and decent man, and I am sure he is upset that this happened, but all it takes to spin up the right wing nuts is something like this.
I wasn't saying Biden should be. But the guys who were actively involved in that decision making (which he obviously wasn't) should be looked at.
My point was I just got a strong feeling from what was posted that the Standard American Aversion to Being Called Out was in full operation, and thought that balloon needed a bowie knife taken to it.
Like you, I limit myself to a few MSNBC programs: Wallace, Melber, Reid, Hayes, and Maddow are my choices. I leave my TV off on weekends. You have infinitely more stamina than I if you can stomach even a word or two of Todd. For my money, I'll settle with LFAA, a good book, some classical music, and laughing at my two mischievous cats to keep the cortisone levels reasonable!
Impressive choice of hosts Ellen. No argument here. Reid is surprisingly good, and I liked her guests. I just had to give up some of the hosts, to survive.
My two Wonder cats approve of your cortisol mitigation routine completely.
Thanks, Gus, and you are so right. I have severely cut back on my MSNBC watching. I won't listen to Joe Scarborough's rants anymore. I simply tape Lawrence O'Donnell, and play it back in the morning instead. I never turn on Chuck Todd either. We're listening to more music during dinner as well.
I really like that, Annette! Breakfast with Lawrence. Count me in, starting on Tuesday morning. As I write this Rachel is handing off, and the TV is off too.
Hopefully, you have contacted Velshi, or will, by some method! To maybe curtail his guest hosts! On second thought, maybe contacting MSNBC is a better idea!.
He has an excellent, thought-provoking Substack page like this one. As to the "war crimes," while it might have been extreme in the views of many to ask that of Biden, there's a reason why the United States refuses to join the International Criminal Court - too much chance of too many Americans ending up there.
You ought to include "The Sunday Show" with Jonathan Capehart, that follows Velshi. I think Capehart's actually better (I like Ali, "the man for every assignment" - it's a close assessment, just watch both).
Check out jc markatos' much further down starts with 'Peppered throughout.....' It's one I'd like to talk with you about. I also appreciated, Philip B (Edinburgh UK), at the moment, just two down. Naturally, there are others, but these two seemed fresh to me.
This is something I can speak in depth about, at least the first part. I was at USCENTCOM for most of the Obama administration, and I can attest to the general accuracy of what is stated. President Obama did, in fact, greatly enlarge the use of drone strikes, but yes, accompanied that with fairly substantial legal caveats. I would dare to generalize that the entire Obama foreign policy was heavily tied to legal authorities. Yes, such things have a political life to them as well--no one should be naïve about that--but the effort and basis were there. When we killed Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 (perfectly happy to claim such and will never take that back), there was much public debate (I'm sure most, for all of their hand-wringing, have completely forgotten about this now) about the legality of killing him, since he was, famously, an American citizen. It was an important debate, actually, but like most things in our country, forgotten about within 3-4 news cycles.
At the same time, USCENTCOM was behind the physical processes that went into engaging such targets--the procedures of target ID, distance, criteria, approvals etc. I was very familiar with it; a friend of mine was one of those who constructed it. Suffice it to say, if I presented it to anyone not in the military targeting community you would be astounded at how much effort goes into "trying to get it right." Now, I have no idea what has changed since the dawn of the Trump administration--it would seem the allowable civilian casualty estimate (yes, there is such a thing; normally during Obama Admin it was "0") may have changed, but I doubt the procedures did--they've probably improved. So, what happened? As with almost all such things--accidents--I can confidently ascribe it to "human error." Too much desire to even the score after the 13 Soldiers were killed? Bad intel? Really strange coincidences. Any or all, perhaps. Some of the mistakes we made 9-12 years ago were simple things like intervening crests during engagements that allowed a chased, tracked target to be lost and other coincidentally close people to picked up seconds later. It's incredibly complicated stuff sometimes. But it's NOT some ongoing "the evil/derelict military," lest anyone think otherwise. It's a helluva lot more complicated than that.
Heather brings up a good point, and it's one the president SHOULD wrangle with. The injustice of GOP hacks trying to blame him for All Things Afghanistan was, that HE was the one who was against Obama building up the counterinsurgency and supporting operations there 12 years ago...but the counter to that is that he DID want to fight a counterTERROR war there, similar to what we've been doing, and that undoubtedly meant lots of drone strikes--it might have meant MORE than we've done, had he gotten his way. So, this really is his to own and figure out now.
Robert Warm thanks for your hands-on description and explanation. During my government service I had first-hand experience with faulty or incomplete intelligence. I am heartened that presidents Obama and Biden are deeply concerned with the moral management of drones. Some may raise the moral question (see Michael Walzer) about killing the ‘enemy’ with drones. I believe that this may be the least worst way, if there are tight controls on the target selection and the actual operation.
My point was, in 24 yrs of service, I encountered numerous accidents--artillery round landing outside safe, howitzers blowing up, aircraft crashing, and yes, hitting the wrong targets with both drones and aircraft. I can think of one time out of all those (dozens) that it was mechanical error and not human error.
So, Dubya was the first US President to order armed drone strikes. In response to a monstrous criminal act we all remember as if it were yesterday, rather than simply vowing to bring the perpetrators to justice (and then doing so), he declared "war" on terrorism, bombed parts of Afghanistan into dust and initiated a stupid and useless ground intervention in Irag based on fake intelligence, Americans' general ignorance of the world, vengefulness and an enduring habit of callousness towards "others". Soon, the shock and awe that was going to have the Iraqis begging to become our 51st state wore off, and the unpayable bills began to pile up, along with a sizeable number of American bodies. Junior's popularity was dropping well below its 80% post 9/11 peak, so it is not surprising that he was willing to try drones. As we all know, when America is at war, nothing is beyond the pale and getting re-elected is what really matters.
Then Obama, having inherited Dubya's Iraqi morass, and counseled -- no doubt -- by his experienced VP Joe Biden, figured he could keep the lid on the terrorism situation in a largely secret and cost-effective way by increasing the number of anti-terrorist drone strikes by the ever-improving drones. Boom, a Land Cruiser dodging pot-holes in a remote desert blows up. A supposed terrorist and his buddies are vaporized. That's so far away. A week passes. It gets a day or two on the front pages, but there is no further news about the terrorist or his family, friends and community, or about what he was really up to or how we knew about it or what nefarious plan to attack us he was mulling over or why he needed to be executed without a trial or even any formal accusation, at least nothing subjected to public scrutiny. Of course, errors are made, whole families and wedding parties are snuffed out by drones, and there are belated apologies if these events ever make it to the front pages, and our lives go on. Ours.
Needless to say, whatever mistakes Trump's predecessors made, Trump doubled down on them and should be imprisoned.
I must admit to having been very impressed when I first watched a video of a smart bomb flying into the window of an Iraqi ministry in Bagdad, and I find it hard even now to turn away from the videos of drone-fired rockets as they pick off terrorists in their land-cruisers dodging pot-holes in some remote desert. Insatiable curiosity as vice. But this perpetual and largely secret war cannot continue indefinitely. Withdrawal from Afghanistan was the right thing to do, but does not end the Forever war. Perhaps it is time to rethink our position in the world and just stop killing people.
Biden wanted us out of Afghanistan for years. By withdrawing, he pulled the plug on the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us of. The contractors made out, aerospace, weapons manufacturers, etc., they made out. Politicians have friends and friendly lobbyists and the Pols have campaigns to run.... it does seem impossible for the USA to have public financing of elections. I don't wonder why. 'During the 1907 State of the Union Address, President Theodore Roosevelt stated “The need for collecting large campaign funds would vanish if Congress provided an appropriation for the proper and legitimate expenses of each of the great national parties.” Public financing of elections, he believed, would ensure that no particular donor has an outsized influence on the outcome of any election, and would “work a substantial improvement in our system of conducting a campaign.” (NCSL, National Conference of State Legislatures)
Don't kid yourself. Biden pulling out of Afghanistan and Biden pulling the plug on the Military Industrial Complex are not the same thing. He did the first, he did not do the second.
The Slate article cites several defense companies that are realizing enormous contracts/profits going forward that are in no way associated with Afghanistan.
He pulled the plug on almost $300 million a day spent on that endeavor, a smidgeon of the $777,000 billion of the expected defense budget. I kid myself not. That's a gigantic big ticket expense, and time to see what can be done about it.
We need to make it an issue. Isn't Bernie Sanders in this corner -- defense reduction? Watching and out maneuvering China is necessary. It looks as though there are several subscribers here from whom to learn more.
Fern, I was going to post this with my initial response to you, but did not. Until campaign funding is cleaned up the MIC will remain a viable source of influence in our politics and daily lives. Go to the bottom of the chart to change sectors — defense aerospace, defense electronics, defense misc.
I'm grateful to the many subscribers on this page who provide insight into any number of things.
Thank you, JC. It is easy to read something greater into a "single" action. Withdrawal from Afghanistan is nowhere near enough to squash the MIC. Nor is it a sign that that is the direction the administration is headed. It's important to note, however, that campaign contributions to Biden from the defense sector were low, at $3,322,048, his smallest industrial contributor sector.
The employment of drones can lead to ‘tragic mistakes’ in which innocent civilians are inadvertently killed. individuals are manipulating these drones in a virtual video game that resembles an impersonal arcade. We should be horrified. However, in real and proxy wars the killing of innocent civilians occur. In this incident, the New York Times swiftly reported the military SNAFU and, soon after, the Pentagon acknowledged it’s error.
During World War II there was a more horrific program to deliberately kill civilians. It was referred to as the ‘Exeter effect.’ When the Germans bombed the British town of Exeter, there was an unusual pattern of heat, air sucked out, and major civilian deaths. Curious scientists studied this deadly combination and determined that it was created by low atmospheric conditions and fire bombs. They refined this information to produce a deadly fire bombing order of battle. In Europe their biggest ‘success,’ was the fire bombing of Dresden, in which up-to-140,000 humans were killed, overwhelmingly innocent civilians.
In Japan Tokyo was fire bombed on various nights. Civilian deaths were in the hundreds of thousands, exceeding the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I can recall no reporting of these mass deliberate civilian killings during or immediately after World War II. Many years later I got to know the navigator of one of the Tokyo fire-bombing runs. He was plagued by what he had participated in and, with others from his squadron, established contact with families of these victims.
CBC did a documentary about the fire bombings of Germany and caught hell from all sides for being unpatriotic. There was nothing in the documentary that anyone with an interest in WWII didn't already know. Winners do not commit war crimes, of course.
As a former history professor I doubt that any of my students were aware of these deliberate fire bombings in Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo and elsewhere, as well as the ‘Exeter effect. There is a problem with an 87-year-old responding to Heather’s Letter at 4:00a.m. without a cup of coffee. I wrote from memory without checking sources. It seems that the ‘official’ figure for deaths from the fire bombing of Dresden is about 25,000. Personally, I believe that it was higher, as many bodies were atomized and record keeping was haphazard.
Pointing out that they were not only war crimes but accomplished nothing useful is considered unpatriotic and unsupporting of th4e aircrews who flew the missions
The horrors of war that the folks at home rarely know about -- thank you Keith and, yet, these killing techniques impossible to forget are an awful memory. I think you went a little soft on the defense officials as almost everything they reported about the strike was wrong weeks after the August 29th attack.
I’m not sure defense officials would ever have admitted their error without the NYTimes report revealing video and timeline and verifying the real identities of those killed.
The firebombing of Dresden was a horror. After that, some pressure was put on Churchill (from FDR, I believe) to reconsider that style of offensive. It was essentially a revenge bombing campaign to get back at the Germans for bombing London for so long. The British officer in charge of the bombing campaign was named Harris, soon to known as "Bomber" Harris. Writer Kurt Vonnegut was a U.S. Army POW during the Dresden bombing. He and fellow POWs survived it by being held prisoner in meat lockers underground. His famous WWII novel ("Slaughterhouse Five") was based on this episode. After the bombing was over, he and the other POWs had to help with the removal of all the charred bodies
One difference being that wars were underway in those horrific events. Now we just bomb whatever we want under the AUMF and call it “over the horizon”.
Thank you for putting this forward! Nobody should be dismissed as "collateral damage"– not the civilians killed, and not the courageous whistleblower Daniel Hale, who was recently given 45 months in prison for speaking up about it. You could argue, as did the judge, that he stole the documents that showed the abuses. But would we be having this conversation today if he hadn't? https://theintercept.com/2021/07/27/daniel-hale-drone-leak-sentencing/
I wrote the following to my US Senator after reading a NY Times article of a similar topic.
"We live in very dangerous times.
NY Times article, 9/18/21, "The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killer Robot." ...."Israeli agents had wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist for years. Then they came up with a way to do it with no operatives present."
High tech and drones will be replacing Pan American flights into World Trade Centers and sniper assassinations of American Presidents like JFK. These terrorist attacks will be perpetrated by nation states like Israel did here to Iran, and by stateless groups like the Proud Boys or ISIS.
We will never have enough security for our critical leaders like our President, Senate and House leaders, military or civilian leaders to prevent what Israel did here, and what our military is doing to Afghanistan civilians by mistake.
When we lose a President or another significant leader by remote AI or drone attack, the US will lash out at other nations as we did after 911. The risk of this becoming a nuclear war in the future only increases with our fear and frustration to deal with such an assault.
Furthermore, our own extremists will be engaging these methods, moving from truck loaded fertilizatizer bombs and AR15s with full combat attire.
The January 6th, 2021 attack on our Capitol is the precursor to where our domestic terrorist politics are going. The combination of Republican politicians who now describe the attack as that of patriots, and now political prisoners when prosecuted, and our decades of 2nd Amendment politics to spread guns indiscriminately among Americans while engaging them in anti government rhetoric, these politics will promote new weapons of domestic terrorism and insurrection.
It's critical that you and other concerned Republicans join other US political and civilian leaders in confronting this new international and domestic threat to our peace and security.
More advanced and plentiful weapons in everyone's hands including the military is not the answer. We must begin with basic human values here at home so we can set the moral example to lead with this abroad. Israel should not be praised nor supported in what they did. Nor can we continue to accept the words of insurrection and violence from people like former general Michael Flynn, former President Donald Trump and others as legal free speech. They are as dangerous to our national security as Iran, Israel and every other nation that resorts to force, violence and death as their means to every end.
We need a world authority - collective security - so that the world may be safeguarded from the unavoidable behavior inherent in the anarchy of sovereign states intent on defending themselves and asserting themselves.
The world is one. Humanity must learn to function as a whole. This will happen. As I see things, if we apply ourselves it can be done well, even though the how is unclear to me. If we don't apply ourselves, unspeakable calamity will bring it about.
This was s driving concern among our founding fathers when they found the Articles of Confederation and Continental Congress not working. Madison and Hamilton were strong proponents in establishing a Federal government that had the strength and authority to control the peace among the states. Madison wanted the Federal government to have veto power over state laws. Of course this would only be good if the Federal government was a protector of the common good of all citizens. If southern states had dominated, they would have vetoed laws giving equal rights and protections to blacks and women.
I watched Richard Engel's documentary of Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires tonight on MSNBC. It was a chilling and scathing exposé of the Afghan war. It is extremely well done and something I would recommend everyone take the time to watch. The cost of war and corruption is brought home. It shook me.
Invading an entire country from which not a single citizen attacked us was the first tip off. That was enough for me to know it was just an exercise in enriching military contractors and stockholders and Pub owned security firms.
Sadly. Only Barbara Lee in our government was not paid off. Everyone else in Congress was thumbs up.
Unredacted Pompeo whistleblower complaint reveals new allegations
A State Department whistleblower accused former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his staff of a litany of misconduct in 2019, according to newly unredacted records obtained by CREW. The alleged misconduct included false or misleading statements to the agency’s legal department, misuse of government resources on personal and political activities potentially prohibited by the Hatch Act, verbal abuse of employees by Mike and Susan Pompeo and directives to staff not to communicate in writing in order to evade transparency laws.
A heavily redacted version of the whistleblower complaint, filed with the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) in 2019, was previously released to American Oversight and reported by McClatchy in July 2020. At that time, the OIG redacted information it claimed was subject to ongoing investigations.
The OIG lifted many of those redactions in the complaint released to CREW, revealing that the whistleblower was a State Department employee who “directly witnessed and/or heard numerous firsthand accounts from those [he or she] supervised of the following behavior by the Secretary of State and his senior (career) staff”:
Just wait until China declares us, yes, the USA, a terrorist state and starts "over the horizon, high tech, high value drone strikes".
Folks walking down the street taking their kids to pre-school in D.C. suddenly vaporized. Kids? Just collateral damage. After all, those US terrorists are dangerous.
200,000 dead, innocent, Afghan villagers over the last 20 years would agree.
Including all of the group of 12 year old boys that were shot up outside their village gathering wood, by a .50 caliber machine gun on a US Helicopter.
We apologized though! So, its all good.
But, wait until the US is targeted as the world's largest terrorist organization and everyone else with drones starts playing with their mouse and their controller to "take them down" right here in the good ole USA.
Mike - You have expressed what I have often wondered and speculated; particularly as we have armed and bombed places around the world. Drone technology continues to advance and is accessible to anyone. Just like nuclear bomb technology, another weapon of war and instrument of destruction has been released.
Yesterday, my adult son said during an in-depth conversation of the world situation, “imagine what the lives of our generation will be 30 years from now”. The 4 years of trumps’s “reign of terror” (as I call it) was just the capstone of American aggression that has been going on for a very long time. Apologies for any one incident rings hollow within the context of a global war machine and so much is out of the control of the masses who end up being sitting ducks.
If you look at all of the wanton killing the USA has done, for no apparent purpose other than profit (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, including the 1948 clearing of Muslims from Israel by the US Army),
well, you can easily conclude there are perhaps many generations of the world's people who would love to get access to a drone.
It is just a matter of time. Heck, anyone can buy a big enough drone to retrofit with some sort of retribution device off of Amazon or Alibaba.
It really is just a matter of time before we, here in the USA, are looking up at a drone either sent from the US government (very possible given Republican behavior right now) or from one of the many families across the world that has lost someone dear, a child one of the many schools we bombed, in the many wars for profit we have promulgated.
Let us not forget. If the Trump is elected again, there will be no more elections. And, anyone who thinks there should be?
Yes, it becomes difficult to distinguish the terrorists from the counter-terrorists when anyone can own a drone. Perhaps there is no useful distinction to be made.
I would only quibble that large, militarily/economically powerful nations don't use drones on each other except, I suppose, for intelligence gathering, otherwise known as spying. This is a good thing, because Chinese drones eliminating US war criminals, or US drones eliminating Chinese re-education camp administrators might well escalate into an Armageddon none of us consciously wants.
Call it "Mutually Assured Destruction" in a time of universal shortsightedness.
On the other hand, we can all stake out our respective turfs, even in the hottest, farthest corners of the as yet vaccine-free world, with drone strikes, over-the-horizon hyper weapons, lasers beamed from satellites, and God-only-knows what else. Y'know, my dog pees on your car's tire, yours pees on mine.
That is without a doubt one of the scariest things anyone has written here since I have been a subscriber. And I can't argue with it. Maybe our species senses this is coming. It has certainly been haunting me since my duck and cover, fallout shelter days as a child. It would explain all of the intense crazy in our society these days.
Hi Gus. You see right through me. Much as I detest our country's ways of conducting foreign policy (too much selfish, thoughtless macho for too many years), what really scares me into existential fear for our species is how slow we have been to understand or respond to global warming, climate change and -- now --climate crisis. The science was done decades ago and was publicly available to the unwashed masses (which is to say, people like me who never got much past trigonometry) as early as 1971, when I read a Barry Commoner article in the New Yorker. Bush Senior had a chance to sign legislation that would have put the climate issue front and center, but didn't. Reagan's anti-government propaganda had already got a grip on the racist Right and markets became God-like and the unions faded into insignificance and here we are, likely past the point of no-return barring a sort of spiritual awakening the world has never seen (with all due respect to Jesus Christ, who would be horrified by all this).
I believed humanity was perfectible, but we're just high-tech dinosaurs at best.
It is necessary to point out that the Pentagon's acknowledgment of the deadly mistake made during the US military's drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan was not accurately reported by the defense officials until the NY Time's investigation challenged the military's assertions. If and when might we have learned the truth about this tragedy had the NY Times not investigated the matter?
'The Pentagon acknowledged on Friday that the last U.S. drone strike before American troops withdrew from Afghanistan was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, after initially saying it had been necessary to prevent an attack on troops.'
'The acknowledgment of the mistake came a week after a New York Times investigation of video evidence challenged assertions by the military that it had struck a vehicle carrying explosives meant for Hamid Karzai International Airport.'
'Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered a review of the military’s inquiry into the drone strike to determine, among other issues, who should be held accountable and “the degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered in the future.”'
'The extraordinary admission provided a horrific punctuation to the chaotic ending of the 20-year war in Afghanistan and will put President Biden and the Pentagon at the center of a growing number of investigations into how the administration and the military carried out Mr. Biden’s order to withdraw from the country.'
'Almost everything senior defense officials asserted in the hours, and then days, and then weeks after the Aug. 29 drone strike turned out to be false. The explosives the military claimed were loaded in the trunk of a white Toyota sedan struck by the drone’s Hellfire missile were probably water bottles, and a secondary explosion in the courtyard in a densely populated Kabul neighborhood where the attack took place was probably a propane or gas tank, officials said.'
'In short, the car posed no threat at all, investigators concluded.'(NY Times) See links at end of the comment.
There were other tragic stories in the headlines last week, which finally began to receive the attention that was called for long ago. Two of them will noted here.
'For decades in U.S. gymnastics, there was one more secret vile contradiction: The doctor who treated thousands of young athletes, supposedly tending to their injuries and ensuring their healthy recovery, was in fact “the most prolific sex criminal in American sports history.”'
'...Abigail Pesta, author of “The Girls: An All-American Town, a Predatory Doctor, and the Untold Story of the Gymnasts Who Brought Him Down,” introduces Larry Nassar. For 30 years or so, Nassar had unfettered access to some of the most promising athletes in the world as he rose from volunteer doctor at a Lansing, Mich., gym to Michigan State University and, ultimately, the USA Gymnastics team.'
'His violence was relentless and breathtaking in scope. By his accusers’ accounts, Nassar abused Olympians at the 2012 London Games and raped children in his home; he assaulted girls in front of their unknowing parents, his body and a sheet obscuring the view as he penetrated his patients with gloveless hands. At his sentencing hearing, presided over by a judge with a real flair for the pull-quote — “I just signed your death warrant” — more than 150 survivors addressed Nassar directly. Their profoundly moving testimony, made all the more powerful for how long its speakers had been silenced, streamed live online and dominated the news cycle. Nassar, who at the time already had been sentenced to 60 years in federal prison for child pornography convictions, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years more for his battery of sex crimes.' (Washinton Post, August 7, 2019)
'Biles: FBI turned ‘blind eye’ to reports of gymnasts’ abuse'
'Biles told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “enough is enough” as she and three other U.S. gymnasts spoke in stark emotional terms about the lasting toll Nassar’s crimes have taken on their lives. In response, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was “deeply and profoundly sorry” for delays in Nassar’s prosecution and the pain it caused.'
'The four-time Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion — widely considered to be the greatest gymnast of all time — said she “can imagine no place that I would be less comfortable right now than sitting here in front of you.” She declared herself a survivor of sexual abuse.'
“I blame Larry Nassar and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse,” Biles said through tears. In addition to failures of the FBI, she said USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee “knew that I was abused by their official team doctor long before I was ever made aware of their knowledge.” (AP) See the link below.
McKayla Maroney, an Olympian in 2012, also testified, describing in detail how Mr. Nassar repeatedly abused her, even at the London Games, where she won a gold medal. She said she survived a harrowing ordeal when she and Mr. Nassar were at a competition in Tokyo, certain she “was going to die that night because there was no way he was going to let me go.”
“That evening I was naked, completely alone, with him on top of me, molesting me for hours,” she said.
'In 2015, when Ms. Maroney was 19 years old and before she had even told her mother what Mr. Nassar had done, she described her abuse to an F.B.I. agent during a three-hour phone call from the floor of her bedroom. When she finished, Ms. Maroney said the agent asked, “Is that all?” She said she felt crushed by the lack of empathy.
“Not only did the F.B.I. not report my abuse, but when they eventually documented my report 17 months later, they made entirely false claims about what I said,” Ms. Maroney testified. “They chose to lie about what I said and protect a serial child molester rather than protect not only me but countless others.”
'Aly Raisman, an Olympic gold medalist who testified at the hearing, has publicly asked for an independent investigation of the Nassar case. She pressed senators for that on Wednesday, saying that it was hard for her to speak at the hearing, but that she did so to protect others and force change within sports and law enforcement.'
“The F.B.I. made me feel like my abuse didn’t count and that it wasn’t real,” she said.
Ms. Raisman, 27, told the senators that she wondered if she was going to be able to walk out of the hearing room after the proceedings.
After the first time she spoke publicly about her abuse, in 2017, she said, she was so shaken that she couldn’t stand up in the shower and had to sit on the floor of the tub to wash her hair. Since then, she said, there have been times when she was so sick from the trauma that she had to be taken to a hospital by ambulance. .(NYTimes)
And, to end with another attack on the youth of our country, in this case, again, particularly against girls.
'Its own in-depth research shows a significant teen mental-health issue that Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show' (wsj) See link below.
'Comprised of findings from focus groups, online surveys and diary studies in 2019 and 2020, the Instagram research shows for the first time how aware the company is of its product’s impact on the mental health of teenagers. And yet, in public, executives at Facebook, which has owned Instagram since 2012, have consistently downplayed its negative impact on teenagers.
'As recently as March, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, claimed social media was more likely to have positive mental health effects. In May, Adam Mosseri, who is in charge at Instagram, said he had seen research suggesting its effects on teenagers’ mental health was probably “quite small”. (Guardian) See link below.
I don't know how many of you could get to the end of these deeply depressing reports about our failures. The light through this darkness are our free press and the brave gymnasts. Over the weekend I read some truly heartening reports about policies and possibilities that could give us hope for future. Stay tuned fellow subscribers
Links to article's about the military drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan are below:
Fern, like you, I seethe with disgust at the ridiculous line “I am profoundly sorry” stated by both Wray and Austin. As far as the female gymnasts are concerned, not only were they sexually abused by Nassar but they were psychologically raped by the FBI.
Hard for me to accept Austin’s feeble excuse too. Operating a drone that is equipped to kill and maim is ludicrous.This country has been terrorized by the US. We are the terrorists!
The courage and grit of the gymnasts themselves brought this story to light. Of the teens I work with, I'd say about 90% of the girls and up to 50% of the boys have signs of sexual abuse. Many of the girls have been trafficked - enough that the medical intake questions we ask had to be changed to include this. I do not wish to minimize the horrors the US gymnasts went through, but the real epidemic of sexual abuse/trafficking is taking place mainly among poor teen-aged (even preteen) girls and young women in their 20s. I thank the US gymnasts for making this issue public and I thank you for your incredible post.
Steve, Like so much these days, I wasn't surprised to learn what you related because I suspected it, though not to the high degree you indicated. How many of us upon knowing the reality, hold our head in our hands and wonder what we can do? Your thoughts are always helpful.
I think of all the years those young gymnasts suffered. It all over the place...the harm this country is doing to our children. Facebook has to be regulated. I just read about these horrors, just reading this and think a bit of R and R might help me ... music that will get me away.
Very big Gratitude, Christine. I truly connected with Joni Mitchell 3 years ago and love Chelsea Morning, along with others. Just heard it, with moist eyes. You read me. Absorbing material has different effects depending on the subject and my frame of mind. I was suspended in a very bad space. Moving on, with the indelible imprinted. I hope you read Steve Abbott's reply. He deepened and expanded the story.
I communicate often with my niece, a lawyer working with a non profit whose aim is to help victims of child trafficking back to the fold. The statistics are mind blowing. The effects even more so.
There are so many reasons to unite for peace as a solution, not war.
I shudder when I see people playing with radio controlled drones in public parks and when I see ads for drones available to the public. And there has been huge controversy about drones used for photography invading private space with discussions about whether the space near your bedroom windows is a no fly zone. Not to mention the terrifying possibility that Amazon will have a fleet of drones dropping packages on your doorstep. And what else are ICBMs but lethal nuclear drones?
This is not just a military issue - it is a planetary issue.
Ned, I agree 100%. Drones in the wrong hands are an enormous problem. I was in the Technology field for over 30 years. One project I worked on was for a University that was implementing drones on campus. This was to be used for Security purposes. They would send out drones in the various quads, hallways, lecture halls etc. The signal would go back to monitors/ smartphones of the Campus Security. In theory, this would evoke a quicker response to any "situation" that may arise. However the law of physics still works against you, if a situation happens at the opposite end of campus, Security still must get to the problem. It didn't stop there. The Intel would confirm crowd numbers, face recognition +++
Working on this project did make me question how safe are any of us, really.
Most to the point, just because we have the technology, do we have to use it.
Is the use of a military/lethal drone nothing more than our absolution of killing another human being?
Not only all that, but soon we will experience enemy directed drones on our home grounds. What defense is there against a hand held rocket launcher attacking our congressional buildings from a safe distance? And can’t we expect well funded terrorists to unleash an explosive drone on a packed football stadium? Terrible to say but It might serve us right for initiating this style of warfare in other countries as we have already done.
Offering profound condolences? Is that the military or perhaps the nationl equivalent of thoughts and prayers? Drones have allowed us to kill without involving anyone's conscience. I do not wish to see anyone sent off to kill someone else in my name because that is what war is. By killing with drones we absolve ourselves, our country and our soldiers of facing who we kill. We have required larger and larger armies because killing someone face to face is a difficult choice even for someone who is trained for it. Drones have reduced the targeting and killing of the other side to a video game scenario, but in this one your opponent or whichever side gets the strike does not get a new set of lives.
International law needs to take a good hard look at the use of drones. Their use will escalate. Unfortunately the US seems to be proliferating these weapons. Drones themselves will be big nuisance or worse in all our lives. One nuisance use would be to carry advertisements as you sit in a traffic jamb. Drones will multiply and be very difficult to control. They will be an invasion of privacy as they deliver packages and could be used for surveillance of our homes and a way to case the joint and even steal belongings. I personally would like to see the development of a force field bubble over my property that would zap them if they came onto my property. Of course, I would not want the force field to hurt living creatures like birds so this may not be a viable solution. The use of drones in war is going to come back to bite us. And, can you see Texas passing a law saying anyone can operate a drone that can shoot bullets without a permit.
My same thoughts Cathy. Reading this letter, I immediately imagined drones flying over my remote northern Michigan home from who knows where, for what purpose. The gall of us Americans to pick off people as they go about their day, as judge & jury & executioner. Ya, I can see some Texans, and Michiganders, passing that Right to Drone Strike bill, no permit (or purpose?) required. Really scary, whether nefarius or just nuisance.
Despite 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, I think people in the US still feel that wars happen somewhere else, somewhere over the hill and not on our land. Drones will change that. Domestic terrorists will use drones.
“What seems to be different about the August 29 killing of civilians in Afghanistan is that the U.S. government has admitted the killings, taken responsibility for them, called them “a tragic mistake,” and offered “profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed.” In the wake of the strike, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered an inquiry into “the degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered in the future.””
This won’t raise the dead, but displaying a spirit of contrition (and offering reparations) is, IMHO, preferable to a cover up or a “too bad, so sad” attitude.
Contrition is not enough. Killing innocent people and most especially children just can't happen. PERIOD! This is barbaric and needs to be outlawed under international law as are chemical and biological weapons.
The NY Times did an investigation about that drown attack, which caused them to challenge the assertions of defense officials. A week later the Pentagon changed its story.
Jean-Pierre, I think that your deduction is reasonable, given the time between the strike and the Pentagon finally correcting its misrepresentations. Another factor is that the military certainly has equal and, perhaps, more advanced equipment to have surveyed the scene, examine the evidence and arrive at a reasonable conclusion.
I find it somewhat ironic the we place on our money "In God we trust" when in reality western society has effectively given up believing in anything but our money. No vision of where we are headed, nor idea of who we are or why we are here remains. There is only the creation, accumulation and dispersement of money that remains.
The divine $ has given us the technology to kill at a 1000 miles distance by drone or missile. From this technology we have created a market which feeds the money machine and lets anybody, anywhere play the killing game.
We have spent the last century pursuing money throughout the world often in a zero sum game. The "other's" constant losses...as we are very good at the money game...have created myriads of people who have reason to hate America and Americans. Would it not fit our objectives better and serve the peacefull pursuit of our life to address the causes of the potential terrorist threat that this represents rather than eliminating by drone its symptomes.
Your words have touched my heart and soul Stuart. I often think about how we, and the world, would benefit from the energy, money, and emotions that fuel all the fighting, bitterness, and anger could be channeled into such technical, scientific, and medical advances that could truly change the world! If I sound naive forgive me... but it's so obvious... it's all about the money. You nailed it.... I guess money and power. Shame on us. All of us.
In many ways it's always been about power and money. Now, we have the technology to kill at a very long distance on a regular basis....no need for hand to hand combat or even flying over a place to drop a bomb. We are also primates (just finished Mama's Last Hug about primate emotions) and we are primates who have very evolved and potent technology while we remain in many ways that mammal that fell out of a tree or walked out of a cave.
Give us a little credit. We have at least have advanced to the Neanderthal level.
As a descendant of the Neander Valley I would ask that you please not disparage our peoples by saying you have “at least advanced to our level”.
Evidence is that Neandertalers were a peaceful people preyed upon by Homo Sapiens. Perhaps it was forever thus. 🤔
Neanderthals are also the first humans with a demonstrated belief in a caring community - from fossils of people who had broken legs and such that were reset (meaning care in that and recovery) and the burial of the dead in expectation of an afterlife.
Not to mention that - depending on the Homo Sapiens population sampled - we carry anywhere from 5-15% of our DNA is Neanderthal.
All these observations and comments have brightened my day even more. We live in a beautiful or ugly world or both depending on where we are standing.
This is the central point. Close reading of Darwin indicates that people are at different levels of evolution. This is either a benefit to mankind or, depending on our approach, a challenge.
It’s both a benefit and a challenge. That’s how evolution works.
Correct, that's my first point.
But the concluding point is: "This is either a benefit to mankind OR, DEPENDING ON OUR APPROACH, a challenge."
This point is the vast consequences between exclusion (superiority) and inclusion (equality of differences).
Maybe.
Yes, and what a fabulous book...
Stuart, I agree with your assessment. It seems like greed, hate and delusion are the driving forces of humanity today. Back when I was still teaching at University I’d often ask students to do a thought experiment and place themselves back at the end of the 4th Century AD living in Southern Europe.
If you saw the imminent collapse of the Roman Empire what would you have done? Moved? Re-ordered your life? Gone into isolation?
I get this chilling feeling we are (in the Western world) at that point again.
I hit 'like' but your message punched me in the gut, sad....
Charlie, I am curious what your students would have chosen to do. Did they contrast life in 4th century southern Europe versus the east part of the Roman Empire, which thrived centuries longer. Thanks.
Richard, The most cogent answer was to 1) sell current assets, 2) reduce the cost of living, 3)re-locate to the outer reaches of the Empire (i.e., the borderlands). In short, get out of Dodge before it blows up.
So, you were teaching in America, right? My ironic button got pushed when I read their answers!
Yes. The University of San Francisco. But here is the interesting thing. I did the same exercise in Austria and Sweden doing consulting gigs. Same basic pattern but what the Europeans considered to be the 'borderlands' was, shall I say, somewhat different. Some great stories there.
Pura Vida anhyone?
The average Afghan household consists of eight people. If the two trillion spent on Afghanistan (largely military spending) had been parceled out in cash or securities, every Afghan household today would have a 401(k) of at least half a million dollars. We should have been able to buy a little love with that.
They could also do the same with American households. Imagine, people here, there and everywhere living a stress free, enjoyable, full and productive life! Instead we wage wars to expand the wealth of so few and create “myriads of people who have reason to hate America and Americans” as Stuart said. This has also created myriads of Americans hating our government and other Americans. This path we are on can not end well.
Instead all that money went to defense contractors and corruption.
From yesterday’s epistle reading:
James 4
Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from?
Is it not from your passions that make war within your members?
You covet but do not possess.
You kill and envy but you cannot obtain, [so] you fight and wage war.
You do not possess because you do not ask.
You ask but do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
Obviously our problems aren’t new ones, but have been around for a while. Just curious, was the letter from James written around the beginning of the fall of Rome? ITT took quite a while for the carcass to die after the Emperors poisoned it — about four hundred years — wasn’t it?
Seems like the debate over the who and when of James has persisted from times past to time present. Be that as it may, the corruptible condition of the soul the author of James writes of transcends time and place - and remains present in my soul. Thus the need for standards, checks and balances.
No one knows what actual civilian deaths are unless tracked by neutral people on the ground. Anything reported by the military is a lie.
Aerial bombardment removed the air crew from the reality of what they were doing. Drones only take it one step farther. Years back there was a movie "The Last Starfighter" in which a teenager who was so good at a video game was used as a fighter pilot by the good aliens against the bad aliens. Isn't that what our video games are doing now? When you include visual face recognition AI into single strike anti-personnel drones, you have the perfect assassination machine. Except it doesn't work so accurately for Black or brown faces (not that it matters to some) but may help eg China against America. The next 25 years will be interesting... all against all.
All that you said and more. How long before dictator Kim, conventional criminals (drug cartels), and other antisocial actors adapt and misuse personal drones as weapons?
They already do. Drug cartels are in no way conventional criminals. They are ruthless, heavily armed, and have very, very deep pockets.
https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/narcodrones-180974934/
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/06/drug-cartels-using-drones-with-explosives-to-attack-cops-in-us-and-mexico/
Surely this was obvious from the outset.
The only morality among hitech junkies is "If it can be done, it will be done. And to hell with the consequences.
Sheesh!
Exactly, Allen.
Stuart, what you're saying applies to the way that parts of the US are treated by the more prosperous, corporate parts. I live in NM, a beautiful place with mostly clean air and nice people, but the ravages of uranium mining and a coal-powered emmissions plant in the 4-Corners Area has affected poor tribal people, farmers, ranchers, and anyone else living within the huge area where the tailing ponds exist and the wind blows. The Dakotas, Montana, parts of Colorado, etc, etc, have been used as colonies by the big populations on either coast. I sound like some kind of a red neck, but I'm a raging progressive! I just see the way it is. Many people here are poor. We struggle to educate our citizens and provide them with basic services; many POC live here as well as indigenous people, and drug addiction and alcohol abuse are rampant. It's still a great place to live in many ways, and we have some of the best laws in the US as far as individual rights (gay marriage, abortion). I just believe that as part of the US's recreation area, the needs of our citizens, particularly our children, go unnoticed by the rest of the country.
I wouldn't have mistaken you for a redneck. (And I'm in Massachusetts.) You sound progressive to me--wanting to protect New Mexicans from uranium and coal pollution. More power to you!
Patricia Greathouse, you are so right, but you forgot down-winders from Los Alamos and other states. This only proves your point though. The western states have been dumping grounds for urban experimentation for more than a century at this point. I have family that ranched in western New Mexico and grew up in West Texas myself. I know too well the atrocities visit on Indigenous and POC in that area. Thank you for bringing it to light while recognizing this exquisite beauty of the area.
When you have the most-funded military in the world, you have to use it somewhere.
It seems to be a self-perpetuating mechanism; the more they use it, the less it works, the more it needs money...to correct the problem! Time to try something different, perhaps.
In an effort to try to rein in military spending, my late father, an expert on the Soviet economy wrote a handful of op-eds for the NYT explaining why the CIA estimates of Soviet military spending were inflated.
https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/04/opinion/what-defensespending-gap.html?searchResultPosition=5
Sad, but true. What's it for if you're not using ut?
I dunno. I think any of us would rather see our local fire and police departments remain unused, even though we happily pay for them.
What's we have locally but have lost nationally is the wisdom to know when to use these tools of defense. It seems like common sense when you look at a fire department - if the firefighters are just sitting around the fire station, you don't set fires intentionally so you can justify paying them.
Things seem to work differently for the military. Why?
I disagree that we have this wisdom locally with regard to the police. The police are often used, when perhaps a social worker might be able to defuse a situation better, especially in poorer communities and against people of color. If the only tool you have is a hammer (or a gun), everything looks like a nail (or a target).
it
YES! But does man really know how to serve peaceful pursuit, Stuart. I do not have much hope in that department.
Hopefully Woman does!
In Mama's Last Hug the two primate societies closest to us are chimps and bonobos. In chimp society it's usually the males who are fighting and often senior females like Mama help with reconciliation which is important to maintain the group. Bonobos are more peaceful and they are matrilineal. One of the things the author noted about other primate societies and us is that inequality will result in the disruption of the group. For chimps it means lots of sharing of food (they kill monkeys and share the meat for example) and grooming while being able to reconcile many times after a confrontation.
Amen!
I'm with you.
I think we have too many people who don't truly pay attention.
There was an attack ad against Rep. Susie Lee on FB paid for by The Petroleum Institute.
Me and two other people spoke up to try to tell people, but the rest, maybe 12 people at the time just wanted to bash her, making comment about her looks and how she is bought by big corporations.
This is why we can't have nice things.
I just can't give up hope....
Yes. But we must show others.
God is a concept that so many of our leaders hide behind. And, yes, in reality everything is all about money, despite the fact that beyond an annual income of ~$74K in most of the US (more in Boston, NYC, the Bay Area, Seattle, etc.,) additional annual earnings do nothing to increase happiness.
Yes, we need to address the causes of the potential terrorist threat.
Did you by chance take the science of well being class with Laurie Santos?
No. I'm decades beyond college (I'm assuming that is or was a college class--forgive me if I'm wrong about that). I do read a fair amount of behavioral economics, and I'm interested in what really contributes to well being. And I'm well aware of the law of diminishing returns.
David, the Santos “class” mentioned is a free, lauded course offered to all via Coursera.
Thank you Ashley!
It's a great free course. But if you prefer podcasts Dr. Laurie Santos has one entitled The Happiness Lab. It has tons of info you might enjoy.
Take care!
More power to Laurie Santos!
Ironic with all this focus on $s that only about 20% of Americans feel they are living a life of well-being. Money does not buy happiness. My dream is to have the focus on a Well-Being Index rather than GNP. Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, has a wonderful theory of Well-Being. It has five elements: Positive emotions, Positive Relationships, Meaning, Engagement and Accomplishment. He set up the Soldier and Family Fitness program which measures these elements across the U.S. Army. Countries like Great Britain are using a WBI requiring all policies and legislation to show how it will improve the well-being of all citizens. We need to quick the zero sum games and go for making the pie bigger for all.
I'd advocate simply spreading the pie out more equitably among us. No-one needs to be a billionaire. On the other hand, for those who have very little, money does buy happiness and peace of mind--up to about $74k annually in parts of the country that lack super-inflated real estate and other prices.
It is so very sad to me that as a civilization we have come so far, made incrediable inventions and discoveries, but very few are really of benefit to the future of civilization . By that I mean protecting the planet, working with other countries for peace and stability, embracing differences and strengths to better all lives. I guess the human flaw takes over with greed, power and jealousy. Wish things could really be different.
Margaret, I feel you. I had a dream the other night in which the grandparents united to save the planet for their grandchildren. There are plenty of us who feel as you do. What is stopping us?
Perhaps thee inability to make our dreams really?
Yup.
Money conquers all. 😩
From The Guardian.
“The three conservative Democratic lawmakers threatening to kill their party’s drug pricing legislation have raked in roughly $1.6m of campaign cash from donors in the pharmaceutical and health products industries. One of the lawmakers is the House’s single largest recipient of pharmaceutical industry campaign cash this election cycle, and another lawmaker’s immediate past chief of staff is now lobbying for drugmakers.
The threat from Democratic representatives Kurt Schrader (Oregon), Scott Peters (California) and Kathleen Rice (New York) comes just as the pharmaceutical industry’s top lobbying group announced a seven-figure ad campaign to vilify the Democratic legislation, which aims to lower the cost of medicines for Americans now facing the world’s highest prescription drug prices.”
I was betting that was the case, surprised honestly there are not more of them. So many in Congress have lost sight of representing the people and doing what is best for them and the country. They only care about being re-elected for power and greed. They listen to their donors and the lobbyist and have forgotten their duty to the American people. Congress is not in touch with the regular Americans with their free best in the world health care, pensions and all the perks to make contacts and deal for personal profit on the side. We need an overhaul of Congress and we need their sworn oaths and duties of office to actually mean somthing to them and hold them accountable. Not just by election, they can do too much damage, as we are witnessing now not to have some consequences within their term.
I've sent a message to Scott Peters, effectively a DINO based on my experiences with him here in San Diego during his terms on the SD City Council.
Democrats don’t need Republicans l not when they have their fellow Democrats .😩
:’-(
Interesting you should take this tack today, Stuart. Money and Soul is the theme this week for Richard Rohr's daily meditations. Here's a link if anyone is interested.
https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/?&utm_source=cm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dm&utm_content=footer
The great spiritual question facing America is How can we make more money out f each other.
I try and tell people that we are just consumers or commodities everyday. They just laugh.
You wax philosophic this morning, Stuart. Good morning to you! (I liked it by the way).
Good Mornin' to you too Alexander.
I think you have hit on the 1 thing that has caused division in all societies, money, from the gold of the Roman Empire to today's virtual Bitcoin. Those that have want to make sure they all get their "fair" share.
This post and the brilliant comments it gave rise to are on their own worth the subscription. Thank you to one and all.
I would like to add three points: 1) It seems to me that the disorderly withdrawal was inevitable once Trump negotiated independently of the Afghan Government. It made plain that their army was on its own except possibly for supplies. I am sure that I have read that the army was nothing like as large or as well-trained as the published figure, and the Afghan troops will have probably known this, and so felt safer avoiding conflict. This would suggest moderation in attacking Biden for the 'shambles'. 2) Intelligence when invading a country relies on local contacts; how on earth is it possible to check on their reliability? I wonder therefore if the drone strike was not 'targeted' for the Americans by an infiltrator; if so it was a near perfect propaganda coup, as well as revenge against a collaborator. 3) It is tempting to make drones the target of opposition, though they undoubtedly need regulation, but when one reflects on the damage done by other weaponry, and the impossibility of a foreign force distinguishing between friend (or neutral) and foe, it is difficult to see how hostilities can be pursued without enormous collateral damage. A good start therefore, might be to minimise interventions (I think of the many US interventions in Latin America among others) and leave each country to find its own way to better government. Government systems and markets are cultural phenomena and so interventions from abroad are unlikely to be helpful. I leave the question hanging as to whether NATO should have tackled the Russian intervention in Syria, and how that affects this argument.
Yes indeed, Philip. All one has to do is say "fire bombing of Dresden" to place in stark contrast the use of drones. Or, even more significantly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's super easy to kill civilians, as every military conflict in the history of the world has demonstrated. Trying not to is something new and different.
Or Sherman's March to the Sea, or Col. Robert Gould Shaw's burning of my hometown.
Civilians always pay the price for the pleasure of warriors.
Forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Consider the firebombing of Tokyo the night of March 9, 1945, in which 18 square miles of the city was burned out and 100,000 people killed. 500 B-29s with incendiaries, bombing from 5,000 feet with no opposition. My old aerobatics instructor was lead pilot for his squadron on the mission. 30 years later he could never be around barbecue, because that was the smell that filled their airplane from below. Actually, 45 Japanese cities were burned out that way, long before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When I was in Japan 18 years later with the Navy, my friend and I stumbled (lost) on the last 500 acres of unrebuilt Kobe-Osaka - it was staring into the abyss to confront it. I was immediately reminded of a painting of the aftereffects of World War III on the cover of a paperback s-f novel. Only 98,000 died in that one.
My father was in Japan for a year after the war as part of the army of occupation. I have photos he took with his Brownie camera of Hiroshima from the air when he did flyovers with a buddy from the Army Air Corps. I was trying to be concise--I could list any number of wars fought by destroying civilian targets. The Third Punic and Macedonian Wars, for instance, when the Romans burned both Carthage and Corinth to the ground, killed most of the men, enslaved most of the women and children, and sowed the fields with salt. Or the sacking of Jerusalem by the so-called Christian marauders of the "First Crusade" during which, the chroniclers described, the streets flowed up to the ankles in blood. The death toll might not be as dramatic as those in WW2, but the effect was the same.
Excellent examples. We hairless bipeds have an unblemished record for maximizing the awfulness to the utter limits of the available technology at any point in time.
This is humanity’s M.O.
Thank you Philip. I agree 💯. Comments here today have made me wonder if we had the intelligence on the perpetrators of 9/11 and the ability to take one or more out by drone, should we have?
“Targeted”. I have wondered the Same thing, Philip B., American military remarked on the plethora of tips they received. That makes me wonder if the tipsters were setting up a worker for the west for revenge and used our drone to do it. Let’s just hope I have an over-active imagination.
Brilliant yourself, Philip. All 3 points . Thanks for your perspective!
I agree with your first point. Not so sure about your second. I think your third point is valid.
Now that our government has called the strikes "a tragic mistake," we can either accept that we as a country have instigated something dark, or run away from responsibility, pretend its a one-off, and blame Biden.
We're going to see a lot of independents shoot the messenger, I'm afraid. Our culture does not like stories that diverge from our self-image of heroes.
And this is round two, we as a country have also blamed Biden for not controlling the inevitable panic at the end of the war.
Absurd and disappointing, but predictable according to US cowboy culture, IMO.
Our normal Sunday morning routine is to make a nice breakfast and watch Velshi on MSNBC. Yesterday morning, there was a guest host, Anand Giridharadas (you may not recognize the name but his familiar black/grey spiked hair is recognizable). Anyway, he had a guest on and they were discussing the drone strike. When he asked the guest if Biden should be charged with “war crimes”, my husband blew a gasket and we shut off the TV. That is so irresponsible and we don’t need our media, especially the left leaning ones, to make this kind of accusation. Fox can do it all by themselves and they don’t need an assist from us.
I so agree with you. I think Biden is doing a damn good job on so many issues, at a terribly difficult time, and we really don't need for him to be unduly criticized by jerks.
He gets enough from the GOP, for crying out loud!
Annette, I hope your husband and the rest of the family have recovered! You did the right thing. Turn it OFF. I did the same thing yesterday with Chuck Todd, who I partially watch maybe once every six weeks or so. (He's no Russert or Brokaw) His opening summary seemed to want to blame everything on the president. I was trying to figure out if he had gone to the dark side when he started asking his guests Tucker Carlson style questions! I hit the magic button on the remote.
I used to record every prime time hour of MSNBC, starting at 9 AM, in case there was a disaster of some kind.
The TV would actually be on in the background for a random few hours every day, until I realized every host was confined to the same talking point list. (Morning "I'm just a dumb country lawyer" Joe is NOT welcome in my house).
After my recent meltdown I am allowed ONE HOUR of news. A choice between O'Donnell, Williams, Maddow, and Wallace in order of preference.
Annette, my point is this: The media -- All of it -- can be as toxic as the events they cover. The doctors tell me that we are killing ourselves with cortisol from stress. Save your husband's life, literally, and keep the TV on the Hallmark channel on Sundays at least! All of us should not have the TV on in the background, or be on Twitter, or anything else on a regular basis -- if at all -- except HCR.
Volunteer, or other political work? YES! It actually relieves anxiety to do something. But media should come with a warning label before each show, or tweet. Really.
There's a reason why a "chucktodd" is an internationally-recognized unit of measure of political stupidity.
Yeah, I'm standing in line to never see him again. Good to know, TC.
I ceased watching Meet the Press after he persisted in trying to put words in the mouth of, I think it was Kamala Harris during one of the presidential candidate debates after she had responded and he didn't get the answer he wanted. There are better things to watch on Sunday morning, if watching TV at all. When he's on MSNBC, I change the channel.
Judith, I don't usually watch NBC on Sundays, and this was another confirmation of why. Good to know that I am not alone. I really miss Tim Russert....
If all you people think the United States doesn't commit war crimes, I guess I won't recommend Nick Turse's "Kill Everything That Moves," a history of US war crimes in Vietnam, that is based on the findings of a special, secret Pentagon unit founded during the war to debunk claims by GIs of having witnessed war crimes - except each one they investigated turned out to be real. It's tough reading, especially if you were there. We Americans need our noses rubbed in our centuries of crimes, maybe we'd finally figure it out.
There isn't a war fought since the Jamestown colonists involved themselves in an ongoing conflict they stumbled into (choosing the "wrong" side) on arrival, where war crimes have not been committed against non-white people. During the Philippine Insurrection (after the Filipinos discovered our intervention in their war of independence against Spain wasn't done to help them become independent), General Jacob Devers applauded his men for turning the island of Panay into a "howling wilderness" by killing 40,000 people living on the island. The Army had to get rid of him for being too honest about reality. I won't go into a list of the crimes committed against Native Americans, but it is pretty obvious most of you haven't read "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee."
Hell, we commit war crimes against white people! Go re-watch "Band of Brothers" and count the number of times one of them shoots an enemy soldier who has surrendered - and how the one who shoots the most becomes one of the leaders (one the others are afraid of). That wasn't just "Hollywood history" by left-wingers. It's in Ambrose's book.
I say the above as a military historian, and a descendant of a family who's been involved in every US war since before there was a US.
Now we'll have to kill you for exploding the American mythology....
TC, I agree with you in that we have definitely committed our share of war crimes. In this one case, however, I think it is unfair to pin this particular incident on President Biden and suggest that he be tried on war crimes charges. He is a good and decent man, and I am sure he is upset that this happened, but all it takes to spin up the right wing nuts is something like this.
Blame Biden seems to be more than a GOP trend right now. I'm not happy.
I wasn't saying Biden should be. But the guys who were actively involved in that decision making (which he obviously wasn't) should be looked at.
My point was I just got a strong feeling from what was posted that the Standard American Aversion to Being Called Out was in full operation, and thought that balloon needed a bowie knife taken to it.
Like you, I limit myself to a few MSNBC programs: Wallace, Melber, Reid, Hayes, and Maddow are my choices. I leave my TV off on weekends. You have infinitely more stamina than I if you can stomach even a word or two of Todd. For my money, I'll settle with LFAA, a good book, some classical music, and laughing at my two mischievous cats to keep the cortisone levels reasonable!
Impressive choice of hosts Ellen. No argument here. Reid is surprisingly good, and I liked her guests. I just had to give up some of the hosts, to survive.
My two Wonder cats approve of your cortisol mitigation routine completely.
Thanks, Gus, and you are so right. I have severely cut back on my MSNBC watching. I won't listen to Joe Scarborough's rants anymore. I simply tape Lawrence O'Donnell, and play it back in the morning instead. I never turn on Chuck Todd either. We're listening to more music during dinner as well.
I really like that, Annette! Breakfast with Lawrence. Count me in, starting on Tuesday morning. As I write this Rachel is handing off, and the TV is off too.
Thanks!
Hopefully, you have contacted Velshi, or will, by some method! To maybe curtail his guest hosts! On second thought, maybe contacting MSNBC is a better idea!.
contact msnbctvinfo@nbcuni.com. Also, msnbc.digital.editors@nbcuni.com
Thank You! I just sent off an e-mail!!!
Or maybe Anand Giridharadas himself.
He has an excellent, thought-provoking Substack page like this one. As to the "war crimes," while it might have been extreme in the views of many to ask that of Biden, there's a reason why the United States refuses to join the International Criminal Court - too much chance of too many Americans ending up there.
You ought to include "The Sunday Show" with Jonathan Capehart, that follows Velshi. I think Capehart's actually better (I like Ali, "the man for every assignment" - it's a close assessment, just watch both).
US Cowboy Culture. Apt description
Emphasis on 'boy'.
Check out jc markatos' much further down starts with 'Peppered throughout.....' It's one I'd like to talk with you about. I also appreciated, Philip B (Edinburgh UK), at the moment, just two down. Naturally, there are others, but these two seemed fresh to me.
The ultimate cowboy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6WD7B_I_9c
Yup, exactly....
This is something I can speak in depth about, at least the first part. I was at USCENTCOM for most of the Obama administration, and I can attest to the general accuracy of what is stated. President Obama did, in fact, greatly enlarge the use of drone strikes, but yes, accompanied that with fairly substantial legal caveats. I would dare to generalize that the entire Obama foreign policy was heavily tied to legal authorities. Yes, such things have a political life to them as well--no one should be naïve about that--but the effort and basis were there. When we killed Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 (perfectly happy to claim such and will never take that back), there was much public debate (I'm sure most, for all of their hand-wringing, have completely forgotten about this now) about the legality of killing him, since he was, famously, an American citizen. It was an important debate, actually, but like most things in our country, forgotten about within 3-4 news cycles.
At the same time, USCENTCOM was behind the physical processes that went into engaging such targets--the procedures of target ID, distance, criteria, approvals etc. I was very familiar with it; a friend of mine was one of those who constructed it. Suffice it to say, if I presented it to anyone not in the military targeting community you would be astounded at how much effort goes into "trying to get it right." Now, I have no idea what has changed since the dawn of the Trump administration--it would seem the allowable civilian casualty estimate (yes, there is such a thing; normally during Obama Admin it was "0") may have changed, but I doubt the procedures did--they've probably improved. So, what happened? As with almost all such things--accidents--I can confidently ascribe it to "human error." Too much desire to even the score after the 13 Soldiers were killed? Bad intel? Really strange coincidences. Any or all, perhaps. Some of the mistakes we made 9-12 years ago were simple things like intervening crests during engagements that allowed a chased, tracked target to be lost and other coincidentally close people to picked up seconds later. It's incredibly complicated stuff sometimes. But it's NOT some ongoing "the evil/derelict military," lest anyone think otherwise. It's a helluva lot more complicated than that.
Heather brings up a good point, and it's one the president SHOULD wrangle with. The injustice of GOP hacks trying to blame him for All Things Afghanistan was, that HE was the one who was against Obama building up the counterinsurgency and supporting operations there 12 years ago...but the counter to that is that he DID want to fight a counterTERROR war there, similar to what we've been doing, and that undoubtedly meant lots of drone strikes--it might have meant MORE than we've done, had he gotten his way. So, this really is his to own and figure out now.
We shall see...
Thank you. I appreciate reading comments from people who were “there,” so to speak.
Robert Warm thanks for your hands-on description and explanation. During my government service I had first-hand experience with faulty or incomplete intelligence. I am heartened that presidents Obama and Biden are deeply concerned with the moral management of drones. Some may raise the moral question (see Michael Walzer) about killing the ‘enemy’ with drones. I believe that this may be the least worst way, if there are tight controls on the target selection and the actual operation.
Are we striving for "the least worst way"?
Thank you for your "I was there" insights and your description of those events. The last paragraph is really a very good question to be posing.
You lost me at: "As with almost all such things--accidents--I can confidently ascribe it to 'human error.'"
Thank you for your Service toour country.
My point was, in 24 yrs of service, I encountered numerous accidents--artillery round landing outside safe, howitzers blowing up, aircraft crashing, and yes, hitting the wrong targets with both drones and aircraft. I can think of one time out of all those (dozens) that it was mechanical error and not human error.
I hold the brave servicemen harmless and thank them for their valor.
It is the pols who I hold responsible for their "mistakes".
Wow Robert--good to have you in the conversation loop! Thank you for this!!
So, Dubya was the first US President to order armed drone strikes. In response to a monstrous criminal act we all remember as if it were yesterday, rather than simply vowing to bring the perpetrators to justice (and then doing so), he declared "war" on terrorism, bombed parts of Afghanistan into dust and initiated a stupid and useless ground intervention in Irag based on fake intelligence, Americans' general ignorance of the world, vengefulness and an enduring habit of callousness towards "others". Soon, the shock and awe that was going to have the Iraqis begging to become our 51st state wore off, and the unpayable bills began to pile up, along with a sizeable number of American bodies. Junior's popularity was dropping well below its 80% post 9/11 peak, so it is not surprising that he was willing to try drones. As we all know, when America is at war, nothing is beyond the pale and getting re-elected is what really matters.
Then Obama, having inherited Dubya's Iraqi morass, and counseled -- no doubt -- by his experienced VP Joe Biden, figured he could keep the lid on the terrorism situation in a largely secret and cost-effective way by increasing the number of anti-terrorist drone strikes by the ever-improving drones. Boom, a Land Cruiser dodging pot-holes in a remote desert blows up. A supposed terrorist and his buddies are vaporized. That's so far away. A week passes. It gets a day or two on the front pages, but there is no further news about the terrorist or his family, friends and community, or about what he was really up to or how we knew about it or what nefarious plan to attack us he was mulling over or why he needed to be executed without a trial or even any formal accusation, at least nothing subjected to public scrutiny. Of course, errors are made, whole families and wedding parties are snuffed out by drones, and there are belated apologies if these events ever make it to the front pages, and our lives go on. Ours.
Needless to say, whatever mistakes Trump's predecessors made, Trump doubled down on them and should be imprisoned.
I must admit to having been very impressed when I first watched a video of a smart bomb flying into the window of an Iraqi ministry in Bagdad, and I find it hard even now to turn away from the videos of drone-fired rockets as they pick off terrorists in their land-cruisers dodging pot-holes in some remote desert. Insatiable curiosity as vice. But this perpetual and largely secret war cannot continue indefinitely. Withdrawal from Afghanistan was the right thing to do, but does not end the Forever war. Perhaps it is time to rethink our position in the world and just stop killing people.
Biden wanted us out of Afghanistan for years. By withdrawing, he pulled the plug on the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us of. The contractors made out, aerospace, weapons manufacturers, etc., they made out. Politicians have friends and friendly lobbyists and the Pols have campaigns to run.... it does seem impossible for the USA to have public financing of elections. I don't wonder why. 'During the 1907 State of the Union Address, President Theodore Roosevelt stated “The need for collecting large campaign funds would vanish if Congress provided an appropriation for the proper and legitimate expenses of each of the great national parties.” Public financing of elections, he believed, would ensure that no particular donor has an outsized influence on the outcome of any election, and would “work a substantial improvement in our system of conducting a campaign.” (NCSL, National Conference of State Legislatures)
Don't kid yourself. Biden pulling out of Afghanistan and Biden pulling the plug on the Military Industrial Complex are not the same thing. He did the first, he did not do the second.
The Slate article cites several defense companies that are realizing enormous contracts/profits going forward that are in no way associated with Afghanistan.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/afghanistan-defense-contractors-military-industrial-complex.html
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/military-industrial-complex-biden-administration
He pulled the plug on almost $300 million a day spent on that endeavor, a smidgeon of the $777,000 billion of the expected defense budget. I kid myself not. That's a gigantic big ticket expense, and time to see what can be done about it.
I agree, its time to do something about the MIC.
We need to make it an issue. Isn't Bernie Sanders in this corner -- defense reduction? Watching and out maneuvering China is necessary. It looks as though there are several subscribers here from whom to learn more.
Fern, I was going to post this with my initial response to you, but did not. Until campaign funding is cleaned up the MIC will remain a viable source of influence in our politics and daily lives. Go to the bottom of the chart to change sectors — defense aerospace, defense electronics, defense misc.
I'm grateful to the many subscribers on this page who provide insight into any number of things.
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.php?ind=D
Totally agree. I think Biden's actions are the first move in this chess game.
Thanks for that important distinction, Daria!
Thank you, JC. It is easy to read something greater into a "single" action. Withdrawal from Afghanistan is nowhere near enough to squash the MIC. Nor is it a sign that that is the direction the administration is headed. It's important to note, however, that campaign contributions to Biden from the defense sector were low, at $3,322,048, his smallest industrial contributor sector.
https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/joe-biden/industries?id=N00001669
Now THAT is info to share!
Morale is crucial and seeing this little-known piece of reality
means a lot. Thanks for reminding us of the Open Secrets project!
Well said Fern.
"As we all know, when America is at war, nothing is beyond the pale and getting re-elected is what really matters." — David Herrick
"...getting re-elected is what really matters."
Right. I believe the two principal political parties in the U.S. follow only two rules: 1) Get the power; and 2) Hold onto it.
At all costs.
"The business of America IS war."
Calvin Coolidge
The employment of drones can lead to ‘tragic mistakes’ in which innocent civilians are inadvertently killed. individuals are manipulating these drones in a virtual video game that resembles an impersonal arcade. We should be horrified. However, in real and proxy wars the killing of innocent civilians occur. In this incident, the New York Times swiftly reported the military SNAFU and, soon after, the Pentagon acknowledged it’s error.
During World War II there was a more horrific program to deliberately kill civilians. It was referred to as the ‘Exeter effect.’ When the Germans bombed the British town of Exeter, there was an unusual pattern of heat, air sucked out, and major civilian deaths. Curious scientists studied this deadly combination and determined that it was created by low atmospheric conditions and fire bombs. They refined this information to produce a deadly fire bombing order of battle. In Europe their biggest ‘success,’ was the fire bombing of Dresden, in which up-to-140,000 humans were killed, overwhelmingly innocent civilians.
In Japan Tokyo was fire bombed on various nights. Civilian deaths were in the hundreds of thousands, exceeding the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I can recall no reporting of these mass deliberate civilian killings during or immediately after World War II. Many years later I got to know the navigator of one of the Tokyo fire-bombing runs. He was plagued by what he had participated in and, with others from his squadron, established contact with families of these victims.
CBC did a documentary about the fire bombings of Germany and caught hell from all sides for being unpatriotic. There was nothing in the documentary that anyone with an interest in WWII didn't already know. Winners do not commit war crimes, of course.
As a former history professor I doubt that any of my students were aware of these deliberate fire bombings in Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo and elsewhere, as well as the ‘Exeter effect. There is a problem with an 87-year-old responding to Heather’s Letter at 4:00a.m. without a cup of coffee. I wrote from memory without checking sources. It seems that the ‘official’ figure for deaths from the fire bombing of Dresden is about 25,000. Personally, I believe that it was higher, as many bodies were atomized and record keeping was haphazard.
fire bombings being patriotic now?
Pointing out that they were not only war crimes but accomplished nothing useful is considered unpatriotic and unsupporting of th4e aircrews who flew the missions
The horrors of war that the folks at home rarely know about -- thank you Keith and, yet, these killing techniques impossible to forget are an awful memory. I think you went a little soft on the defense officials as almost everything they reported about the strike was wrong weeks after the August 29th attack.
I’m not sure defense officials would ever have admitted their error without the NYTimes report revealing video and timeline and verifying the real identities of those killed.
The firebombing of Dresden was a horror. After that, some pressure was put on Churchill (from FDR, I believe) to reconsider that style of offensive. It was essentially a revenge bombing campaign to get back at the Germans for bombing London for so long. The British officer in charge of the bombing campaign was named Harris, soon to known as "Bomber" Harris. Writer Kurt Vonnegut was a U.S. Army POW during the Dresden bombing. He and fellow POWs survived it by being held prisoner in meat lockers underground. His famous WWII novel ("Slaughterhouse Five") was based on this episode. After the bombing was over, he and the other POWs had to help with the removal of all the charred bodies
One difference being that wars were underway in those horrific events. Now we just bomb whatever we want under the AUMF and call it “over the horizon”.
Thank you for shedding light on this.
Thank you for putting this forward! Nobody should be dismissed as "collateral damage"– not the civilians killed, and not the courageous whistleblower Daniel Hale, who was recently given 45 months in prison for speaking up about it. You could argue, as did the judge, that he stole the documents that showed the abuses. But would we be having this conversation today if he hadn't? https://theintercept.com/2021/07/27/daniel-hale-drone-leak-sentencing/
Thank you for posting the link.
I think "collateral damage" should refer to buildings, not human civilians.
Just DO NOT “do the right thing” if you are in government service.
Very bad idea.
I wrote the following to my US Senator after reading a NY Times article of a similar topic.
"We live in very dangerous times.
NY Times article, 9/18/21, "The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killer Robot." ...."Israeli agents had wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist for years. Then they came up with a way to do it with no operatives present."
High tech and drones will be replacing Pan American flights into World Trade Centers and sniper assassinations of American Presidents like JFK. These terrorist attacks will be perpetrated by nation states like Israel did here to Iran, and by stateless groups like the Proud Boys or ISIS.
We will never have enough security for our critical leaders like our President, Senate and House leaders, military or civilian leaders to prevent what Israel did here, and what our military is doing to Afghanistan civilians by mistake.
When we lose a President or another significant leader by remote AI or drone attack, the US will lash out at other nations as we did after 911. The risk of this becoming a nuclear war in the future only increases with our fear and frustration to deal with such an assault.
Furthermore, our own extremists will be engaging these methods, moving from truck loaded fertilizatizer bombs and AR15s with full combat attire.
The January 6th, 2021 attack on our Capitol is the precursor to where our domestic terrorist politics are going. The combination of Republican politicians who now describe the attack as that of patriots, and now political prisoners when prosecuted, and our decades of 2nd Amendment politics to spread guns indiscriminately among Americans while engaging them in anti government rhetoric, these politics will promote new weapons of domestic terrorism and insurrection.
It's critical that you and other concerned Republicans join other US political and civilian leaders in confronting this new international and domestic threat to our peace and security.
More advanced and plentiful weapons in everyone's hands including the military is not the answer. We must begin with basic human values here at home so we can set the moral example to lead with this abroad. Israel should not be praised nor supported in what they did. Nor can we continue to accept the words of insurrection and violence from people like former general Michael Flynn, former President Donald Trump and others as legal free speech. They are as dangerous to our national security as Iran, Israel and every other nation that resorts to force, violence and death as their means to every end.
Thank you for your attention."
We need a world authority - collective security - so that the world may be safeguarded from the unavoidable behavior inherent in the anarchy of sovereign states intent on defending themselves and asserting themselves.
The world is one. Humanity must learn to function as a whole. This will happen. As I see things, if we apply ourselves it can be done well, even though the how is unclear to me. If we don't apply ourselves, unspeakable calamity will bring it about.
This was s driving concern among our founding fathers when they found the Articles of Confederation and Continental Congress not working. Madison and Hamilton were strong proponents in establishing a Federal government that had the strength and authority to control the peace among the states. Madison wanted the Federal government to have veto power over state laws. Of course this would only be good if the Federal government was a protector of the common good of all citizens. If southern states had dominated, they would have vetoed laws giving equal rights and protections to blacks and women.
Very well written indeed.
I watched Richard Engel's documentary of Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires tonight on MSNBC. It was a chilling and scathing exposé of the Afghan war. It is extremely well done and something I would recommend everyone take the time to watch. The cost of war and corruption is brought home. It shook me.
Invading an entire country from which not a single citizen attacked us was the first tip off. That was enough for me to know it was just an exercise in enriching military contractors and stockholders and Pub owned security firms.
Sadly. Only Barbara Lee in our government was not paid off. Everyone else in Congress was thumbs up.
Unredacted Pompeo whistleblower complaint reveals new allegations
A State Department whistleblower accused former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his staff of a litany of misconduct in 2019, according to newly unredacted records obtained by CREW. The alleged misconduct included false or misleading statements to the agency’s legal department, misuse of government resources on personal and political activities potentially prohibited by the Hatch Act, verbal abuse of employees by Mike and Susan Pompeo and directives to staff not to communicate in writing in order to evade transparency laws.
A heavily redacted version of the whistleblower complaint, filed with the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) in 2019, was previously released to American Oversight and reported by McClatchy in July 2020. At that time, the OIG redacted information it claimed was subject to ongoing investigations.
The OIG lifted many of those redactions in the complaint released to CREW, revealing that the whistleblower was a State Department employee who “directly witnessed and/or heard numerous firsthand accounts from those [he or she] supervised of the following behavior by the Secretary of State and his senior (career) staff”:
more: https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/unredacted-pompeo-whistleblower-complaint-reveals-new-allegations/
Just wait until China declares us, yes, the USA, a terrorist state and starts "over the horizon, high tech, high value drone strikes".
Folks walking down the street taking their kids to pre-school in D.C. suddenly vaporized. Kids? Just collateral damage. After all, those US terrorists are dangerous.
200,000 dead, innocent, Afghan villagers over the last 20 years would agree.
Including all of the group of 12 year old boys that were shot up outside their village gathering wood, by a .50 caliber machine gun on a US Helicopter.
We apologized though! So, its all good.
But, wait until the US is targeted as the world's largest terrorist organization and everyone else with drones starts playing with their mouse and their controller to "take them down" right here in the good ole USA.
It won't be pretty but it will be fitting.
Mike - You have expressed what I have often wondered and speculated; particularly as we have armed and bombed places around the world. Drone technology continues to advance and is accessible to anyone. Just like nuclear bomb technology, another weapon of war and instrument of destruction has been released.
Yesterday, my adult son said during an in-depth conversation of the world situation, “imagine what the lives of our generation will be 30 years from now”. The 4 years of trumps’s “reign of terror” (as I call it) was just the capstone of American aggression that has been going on for a very long time. Apologies for any one incident rings hollow within the context of a global war machine and so much is out of the control of the masses who end up being sitting ducks.
If you look at all of the wanton killing the USA has done, for no apparent purpose other than profit (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, including the 1948 clearing of Muslims from Israel by the US Army),
well, you can easily conclude there are perhaps many generations of the world's people who would love to get access to a drone.
It is just a matter of time. Heck, anyone can buy a big enough drone to retrofit with some sort of retribution device off of Amazon or Alibaba.
It really is just a matter of time before we, here in the USA, are looking up at a drone either sent from the US government (very possible given Republican behavior right now) or from one of the many families across the world that has lost someone dear, a child one of the many schools we bombed, in the many wars for profit we have promulgated.
Let us not forget. If the Trump is elected again, there will be no more elections. And, anyone who thinks there should be?
Watch out for drones.
Yes, it becomes difficult to distinguish the terrorists from the counter-terrorists when anyone can own a drone. Perhaps there is no useful distinction to be made.
Sadly you’re son is right to be concerned about his future. And climate change will be the fire under the pressure cooker of military intervention.
Nice comment, Mike S.
I would only quibble that large, militarily/economically powerful nations don't use drones on each other except, I suppose, for intelligence gathering, otherwise known as spying. This is a good thing, because Chinese drones eliminating US war criminals, or US drones eliminating Chinese re-education camp administrators might well escalate into an Armageddon none of us consciously wants.
Call it "Mutually Assured Destruction" in a time of universal shortsightedness.
On the other hand, we can all stake out our respective turfs, even in the hottest, farthest corners of the as yet vaccine-free world, with drone strikes, over-the-horizon hyper weapons, lasers beamed from satellites, and God-only-knows what else. Y'know, my dog pees on your car's tire, yours pees on mine.
We are a species determined to become extinct.
No doubt about the extinction capability.
That is without a doubt one of the scariest things anyone has written here since I have been a subscriber. And I can't argue with it. Maybe our species senses this is coming. It has certainly been haunting me since my duck and cover, fallout shelter days as a child. It would explain all of the intense crazy in our society these days.
Hi Gus. You see right through me. Much as I detest our country's ways of conducting foreign policy (too much selfish, thoughtless macho for too many years), what really scares me into existential fear for our species is how slow we have been to understand or respond to global warming, climate change and -- now --climate crisis. The science was done decades ago and was publicly available to the unwashed masses (which is to say, people like me who never got much past trigonometry) as early as 1971, when I read a Barry Commoner article in the New Yorker. Bush Senior had a chance to sign legislation that would have put the climate issue front and center, but didn't. Reagan's anti-government propaganda had already got a grip on the racist Right and markets became God-like and the unions faded into insignificance and here we are, likely past the point of no-return barring a sort of spiritual awakening the world has never seen (with all due respect to Jesus Christ, who would be horrified by all this).
I believed humanity was perfectible, but we're just high-tech dinosaurs at best.
It is necessary to point out that the Pentagon's acknowledgment of the deadly mistake made during the US military's drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan was not accurately reported by the defense officials until the NY Time's investigation challenged the military's assertions. If and when might we have learned the truth about this tragedy had the NY Times not investigated the matter?
'The Pentagon acknowledged on Friday that the last U.S. drone strike before American troops withdrew from Afghanistan was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, after initially saying it had been necessary to prevent an attack on troops.'
'The acknowledgment of the mistake came a week after a New York Times investigation of video evidence challenged assertions by the military that it had struck a vehicle carrying explosives meant for Hamid Karzai International Airport.'
'Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered a review of the military’s inquiry into the drone strike to determine, among other issues, who should be held accountable and “the degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered in the future.”'
'The extraordinary admission provided a horrific punctuation to the chaotic ending of the 20-year war in Afghanistan and will put President Biden and the Pentagon at the center of a growing number of investigations into how the administration and the military carried out Mr. Biden’s order to withdraw from the country.'
'Almost everything senior defense officials asserted in the hours, and then days, and then weeks after the Aug. 29 drone strike turned out to be false. The explosives the military claimed were loaded in the trunk of a white Toyota sedan struck by the drone’s Hellfire missile were probably water bottles, and a secondary explosion in the courtyard in a densely populated Kabul neighborhood where the attack took place was probably a propane or gas tank, officials said.'
'In short, the car posed no threat at all, investigators concluded.'(NY Times) See links at end of the comment.
There were other tragic stories in the headlines last week, which finally began to receive the attention that was called for long ago. Two of them will noted here.
'For decades in U.S. gymnastics, there was one more secret vile contradiction: The doctor who treated thousands of young athletes, supposedly tending to their injuries and ensuring their healthy recovery, was in fact “the most prolific sex criminal in American sports history.”'
'...Abigail Pesta, author of “The Girls: An All-American Town, a Predatory Doctor, and the Untold Story of the Gymnasts Who Brought Him Down,” introduces Larry Nassar. For 30 years or so, Nassar had unfettered access to some of the most promising athletes in the world as he rose from volunteer doctor at a Lansing, Mich., gym to Michigan State University and, ultimately, the USA Gymnastics team.'
'His violence was relentless and breathtaking in scope. By his accusers’ accounts, Nassar abused Olympians at the 2012 London Games and raped children in his home; he assaulted girls in front of their unknowing parents, his body and a sheet obscuring the view as he penetrated his patients with gloveless hands. At his sentencing hearing, presided over by a judge with a real flair for the pull-quote — “I just signed your death warrant” — more than 150 survivors addressed Nassar directly. Their profoundly moving testimony, made all the more powerful for how long its speakers had been silenced, streamed live online and dominated the news cycle. Nassar, who at the time already had been sentenced to 60 years in federal prison for child pornography convictions, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years more for his battery of sex crimes.' (Washinton Post, August 7, 2019)
'Biles: FBI turned ‘blind eye’ to reports of gymnasts’ abuse'
'Biles told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “enough is enough” as she and three other U.S. gymnasts spoke in stark emotional terms about the lasting toll Nassar’s crimes have taken on their lives. In response, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was “deeply and profoundly sorry” for delays in Nassar’s prosecution and the pain it caused.'
'The four-time Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion — widely considered to be the greatest gymnast of all time — said she “can imagine no place that I would be less comfortable right now than sitting here in front of you.” She declared herself a survivor of sexual abuse.'
“I blame Larry Nassar and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse,” Biles said through tears. In addition to failures of the FBI, she said USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee “knew that I was abused by their official team doctor long before I was ever made aware of their knowledge.” (AP) See the link below.
https://apnews.com/article/simone-biles-gymnastics-sexual-abuse-larry-nassar-cb63ffbfd09d9d4ffe21561aa63d3ca5
McKayla Maroney, an Olympian in 2012, also testified, describing in detail how Mr. Nassar repeatedly abused her, even at the London Games, where she won a gold medal. She said she survived a harrowing ordeal when she and Mr. Nassar were at a competition in Tokyo, certain she “was going to die that night because there was no way he was going to let me go.”
“That evening I was naked, completely alone, with him on top of me, molesting me for hours,” she said.
'In 2015, when Ms. Maroney was 19 years old and before she had even told her mother what Mr. Nassar had done, she described her abuse to an F.B.I. agent during a three-hour phone call from the floor of her bedroom. When she finished, Ms. Maroney said the agent asked, “Is that all?” She said she felt crushed by the lack of empathy.
“Not only did the F.B.I. not report my abuse, but when they eventually documented my report 17 months later, they made entirely false claims about what I said,” Ms. Maroney testified. “They chose to lie about what I said and protect a serial child molester rather than protect not only me but countless others.”
'Aly Raisman, an Olympic gold medalist who testified at the hearing, has publicly asked for an independent investigation of the Nassar case. She pressed senators for that on Wednesday, saying that it was hard for her to speak at the hearing, but that she did so to protect others and force change within sports and law enforcement.'
“The F.B.I. made me feel like my abuse didn’t count and that it wasn’t real,” she said.
Ms. Raisman, 27, told the senators that she wondered if she was going to be able to walk out of the hearing room after the proceedings.
After the first time she spoke publicly about her abuse, in 2017, she said, she was so shaken that she couldn’t stand up in the shower and had to sit on the floor of the tub to wash her hair. Since then, she said, there have been times when she was so sick from the trauma that she had to be taken to a hospital by ambulance. .(NYTimes)
And, to end with another attack on the youth of our country, in this case, again, particularly against girls.
'Its own in-depth research shows a significant teen mental-health issue that Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show' (wsj) See link below.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739
'Comprised of findings from focus groups, online surveys and diary studies in 2019 and 2020, the Instagram research shows for the first time how aware the company is of its product’s impact on the mental health of teenagers. And yet, in public, executives at Facebook, which has owned Instagram since 2012, have consistently downplayed its negative impact on teenagers.
'As recently as March, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, claimed social media was more likely to have positive mental health effects. In May, Adam Mosseri, who is in charge at Instagram, said he had seen research suggesting its effects on teenagers’ mental health was probably “quite small”. (Guardian) See link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/14/facebook-aware-instagram-harmful-effect-teenage-girls-leak-reveals
I don't know how many of you could get to the end of these deeply depressing reports about our failures. The light through this darkness are our free press and the brave gymnasts. Over the weekend I read some truly heartening reports about policies and possibilities that could give us hope for future. Stay tuned fellow subscribers
Links to article's about the military drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan are below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-drone-strike-afghanistan.html?searchResultPosition=2
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/world/asia/afghanistan-drone-attack-ISIS.html?searchResultPosition=3
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-drone-strike-afghanistan.html?searchResultPosition=2
Fern, like you, I seethe with disgust at the ridiculous line “I am profoundly sorry” stated by both Wray and Austin. As far as the female gymnasts are concerned, not only were they sexually abused by Nassar but they were psychologically raped by the FBI.
Hard for me to accept Austin’s feeble excuse too. Operating a drone that is equipped to kill and maim is ludicrous.This country has been terrorized by the US. We are the terrorists!
The courage and grit of the gymnasts themselves brought this story to light. Of the teens I work with, I'd say about 90% of the girls and up to 50% of the boys have signs of sexual abuse. Many of the girls have been trafficked - enough that the medical intake questions we ask had to be changed to include this. I do not wish to minimize the horrors the US gymnasts went through, but the real epidemic of sexual abuse/trafficking is taking place mainly among poor teen-aged (even preteen) girls and young women in their 20s. I thank the US gymnasts for making this issue public and I thank you for your incredible post.
The gymnasts themselves made this point when one of them said, if this can happen to us, imagine what’s happening to other girls who aren’t famous.
Steve, Like so much these days, I wasn't surprised to learn what you related because I suspected it, though not to the high degree you indicated. How many of us upon knowing the reality, hold our head in our hands and wonder what we can do? Your thoughts are always helpful.
I think of all the years those young gymnasts suffered. It all over the place...the harm this country is doing to our children. Facebook has to be regulated. I just read about these horrors, just reading this and think a bit of R and R might help me ... music that will get me away.
My friend, Fern. Take a “Chelsea Morning” day. You deserve it. Always helps me to replenish the reserves with what nature preserves.
Love!
https://youtu.be/WrB5xmqeJ5U
Lovely, thanks Christine.
Very big Gratitude, Christine. I truly connected with Joni Mitchell 3 years ago and love Chelsea Morning, along with others. Just heard it, with moist eyes. You read me. Absorbing material has different effects depending on the subject and my frame of mind. I was suspended in a very bad space. Moving on, with the indelible imprinted. I hope you read Steve Abbott's reply. He deepened and expanded the story.
I did, Fern.
I communicate often with my niece, a lawyer working with a non profit whose aim is to help victims of child trafficking back to the fold. The statistics are mind blowing. The effects even more so.
There are so many reasons to unite for peace as a solution, not war.
"We are the terrorists!"
And look in the mirror, The Enemy is Us.
As Marianne Williamson wondered recently, "Surely, this is our rock bottom?"
I shudder when I see people playing with radio controlled drones in public parks and when I see ads for drones available to the public. And there has been huge controversy about drones used for photography invading private space with discussions about whether the space near your bedroom windows is a no fly zone. Not to mention the terrifying possibility that Amazon will have a fleet of drones dropping packages on your doorstep. And what else are ICBMs but lethal nuclear drones?
This is not just a military issue - it is a planetary issue.
Ned, I agree 100%. Drones in the wrong hands are an enormous problem. I was in the Technology field for over 30 years. One project I worked on was for a University that was implementing drones on campus. This was to be used for Security purposes. They would send out drones in the various quads, hallways, lecture halls etc. The signal would go back to monitors/ smartphones of the Campus Security. In theory, this would evoke a quicker response to any "situation" that may arise. However the law of physics still works against you, if a situation happens at the opposite end of campus, Security still must get to the problem. It didn't stop there. The Intel would confirm crowd numbers, face recognition +++
Working on this project did make me question how safe are any of us, really.
Most to the point, just because we have the technology, do we have to use it.
Is the use of a military/lethal drone nothing more than our absolution of killing another human being?
Not only all that, but soon we will experience enemy directed drones on our home grounds. What defense is there against a hand held rocket launcher attacking our congressional buildings from a safe distance? And can’t we expect well funded terrorists to unleash an explosive drone on a packed football stadium? Terrible to say but It might serve us right for initiating this style of warfare in other countries as we have already done.
Offering profound condolences? Is that the military or perhaps the nationl equivalent of thoughts and prayers? Drones have allowed us to kill without involving anyone's conscience. I do not wish to see anyone sent off to kill someone else in my name because that is what war is. By killing with drones we absolve ourselves, our country and our soldiers of facing who we kill. We have required larger and larger armies because killing someone face to face is a difficult choice even for someone who is trained for it. Drones have reduced the targeting and killing of the other side to a video game scenario, but in this one your opponent or whichever side gets the strike does not get a new set of lives.
Similar comments were made when airplanes were first used in combat.
Everytime we have "advanced " warfare to make it less personal this will be said. It does not make it any less true.
I don't disagree.
International law needs to take a good hard look at the use of drones. Their use will escalate. Unfortunately the US seems to be proliferating these weapons. Drones themselves will be big nuisance or worse in all our lives. One nuisance use would be to carry advertisements as you sit in a traffic jamb. Drones will multiply and be very difficult to control. They will be an invasion of privacy as they deliver packages and could be used for surveillance of our homes and a way to case the joint and even steal belongings. I personally would like to see the development of a force field bubble over my property that would zap them if they came onto my property. Of course, I would not want the force field to hurt living creatures like birds so this may not be a viable solution. The use of drones in war is going to come back to bite us. And, can you see Texas passing a law saying anyone can operate a drone that can shoot bullets without a permit.
My same thoughts Cathy. Reading this letter, I immediately imagined drones flying over my remote northern Michigan home from who knows where, for what purpose. The gall of us Americans to pick off people as they go about their day, as judge & jury & executioner. Ya, I can see some Texans, and Michiganders, passing that Right to Drone Strike bill, no permit (or purpose?) required. Really scary, whether nefarius or just nuisance.
Despite 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, I think people in the US still feel that wars happen somewhere else, somewhere over the hill and not on our land. Drones will change that. Domestic terrorists will use drones.
“What seems to be different about the August 29 killing of civilians in Afghanistan is that the U.S. government has admitted the killings, taken responsibility for them, called them “a tragic mistake,” and offered “profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed.” In the wake of the strike, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered an inquiry into “the degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered in the future.””
This won’t raise the dead, but displaying a spirit of contrition (and offering reparations) is, IMHO, preferable to a cover up or a “too bad, so sad” attitude.
Contrition is not enough. Killing innocent people and most especially children just can't happen. PERIOD! This is barbaric and needs to be outlawed under international law as are chemical and biological weapons.
Of course contrition isn’t enough. Nothing is - after the fact.
The NY Times did an investigation about that drown attack, which caused them to challenge the assertions of defense officials. A week later the Pentagon changed its story.
edit: '...that drone attack, ...'
So, a cover up - until outed by the NYT. Damn.
Jean-Pierre, I think that your deduction is reasonable, given the time between the strike and the Pentagon finally correcting its misrepresentations. Another factor is that the military certainly has equal and, perhaps, more advanced equipment to have surveyed the scene, examine the evidence and arrive at a reasonable conclusion.
:’-(