Good riddance to McChrystal. His role in the coverup of the killing of Pat Tillman alone was enough to qualify him for the Pentagon Rogues Gallery of the new Millennium.
Petreaus is better than McChrystal because at least we get to sometimes watch him get overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the BS he shovels on Capitol Hill.
Confucius say: "General who fall face first into chow mein before Congress, often demoted to noodle clean up in Afghanistan."
As said earlier–it's a little like pinball. Who is the next to get bumped. Madame Clinton? Is Gates planning to dump Karzai (a disastrous move if he does). Is the next top command being set aside for an attack on Iran?
Gates as a catspaw, with his own enculage as the finale, makes an interesting ballet.
A bad omen, the Romans would say. Like Bush the elder collapsing, puking, at the feet of the Japanese prime minister. Perhaps he should re-read Cavafy's "The god forsakes Antony" (http://users.hol.gr/~barbanis/cavafy/antony.html), esp.
"… your fortune that fails you now, your works
that have failed, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions, do not mourn in vain."
By far the best American policy in Afghanistan would be to comb the jungles of Borneo and find a Japanese Imperial Army hold-out to surrender to.
The Emperor and the Diet might not accept it at this late date, but then the US could bomb them back into the Stone Age until they do.
E.A., you're hot today, keep it up and thanks
How ,what for,and where did he get all these medals?
There's been a lot of medal inflation since WW II. Some probably are for supervising the chow hall or shining his shoes.
He has a Wikipedia page. The most amusing medals are his 2 Identification Badges, and his Knight Commander of the Polish Empire. His most amazing medal is the French Legion of Honor, wow is all I can say. Only one seems to be 'combat' oriented, The Combat Action Badge, the back story seems to be anyone exposed to IED attack. The most misleading is the Air Assault Badge which seems not to require one having ever participated in an air assault. Interesting is to compare Petraeus with McChrystal, who takes a more minimalist approach to medals.
Nothing epitomizes the banality of evil better than military medals.
He took them off some Generals from South America, various. They weighed him down. Curious that all these Pentagon generals have all these medals despite never have participated in a war, well except for the war with the 43 Cubans, unarmed, in Grenada. All at American taxpayers expense.
"Out of pity and love of humanity, you must be inhuman.”Robespierre
To win hearts and minds of people you must bomb them.
In order to save ,or rebuild,the village you must destroy it first.
The image of Talleyrand sitting on a pile of paving stones and joining the revolution-memorable!
From strictly the point of view of Realpolitik he was probably right about executing the Duc D'Enghien as worse than a crime–a mistake.
But the charges were not trumped up. He did not understand the Corsican. Napoleon shook off assassination attempts on himself easily enough–he may even sometimes have been flattered and took every opportunity to make the grand gesture and be generous.
But to be involved in an assassination attempt that threatened not only himself, but his loved ones or family, as the Duc apparently was, demanded vengeance.
Robespierre got a little carried away perhaps. But he face the same music. Note also he was more interested in cutting off the heads of aristocrats and opponents of the Revolution than in winning hearts and minds.
The hearts and minds of the peasants had long ago been won by the aristocrats–won for any side that was going to guillotine the lot of them, with a few notable exceptions.
Sorry, this is not quite true. Look into the Vendée uprisings.
It's accurate as a rough sketch all right. If you want to talk about the Roman Catholic Church as counter-revolutionary, from the French Revolution to Garibaldi, you are are quite welcome to.
The best argument that can be made along those lines, by the way, is seldom voiced and has nothing to do with France, to wit, that Napoleon was a hundred years too early in Russia and in Spain and Portugal.
Hilariously, it was the British Protestants that most eagerly and advantageously exploited the latter.
The Russian Orthodox Church in Russia being analogous to the Roman Catholic Church in Spain and Portugal, obviously.
Merely by the way, even Stalin, in a conversation with Eisenstein and others, admitted the "progressive role of Christianity".
Importantly though–TO A POINT, and only to a point.
Note also that Stalin was no "atheist".
Odd how there is nothing on Antiwar.com about the BP oil spill. If AL Q had blown up the rig Antiwar would be full of analysis and ecogloom concerning a "terrorist victory" , but because it was corporate malfeasance, an issue which both the "right" and "libertarians" are ideologically incapable of addressing, we get nada.
For a lot of libertarians, Big Business can do no wrong, only Big Government.
This is an antiwar site, and in general, we try to stick on topic here. There is a pro-environment element in libertarianism, but we try not to sellout the antiwar message like the Obamatons did when they condemned poor, voiceless people in the 3rd world to the mass-murder of Bush-Obama in exchange for their bargain-basement Rosemary's Baby healthcare plan. Try to stay on topic. And by the way, the U.S. govt. is the biggest monopoly corporation around, yet too many on the left can't seem to get enough of it.
What "topic" is that exactly?
If an organisation had conspired to cause the spill deliberately rather than just inevitably it would be deemed an "Act Of War" in a heartbeat. Dead coastlines are a clear threat to the "national interest" which has become so synonimous with "national security" in the newspeak that all the other offshore drillings can now be seen to be a far greater threat to "national security" than any number of fizzle bombers or tower tumblers.
If you want explicit "war" angles try these:
Would the US "national guard" be better deployed clefending the national ecosystem by cleaning beaches than defending corrupt Afghan presidents by killing innocents?
Is BP's provision of oil to the war machine granting it effective license to destroy American lives and liklihoods?
Will Cuba, the Caribbean, or Mexico have a legimate grievance against the US when the oil kills their seas and if so how should they pursue it?
If it's true that Obama gave an exemption to BP to be slack in its rulings, yes, there's a relationship to the war, but it's really a typical crony-capitalism act — one that is typical of non-market companies and governments that are the enemy of voluntary markets. And yes, oil spills are a serious case of trespass and destruction. You'll receive no argument from me on that. I just am not sure that the spill really is a war per se. Unless you wish to grant that all governments are at war with their own people by their very nature — which I'm willing to grant you, but I didn't catch a whiff of this in your thread. Again, I think you're stretching.
PS: I'm not a believer in the much used but vapid criminal-protecting slogan of "national security." To me, that means criminal-wrongdoer-in-DC-security and has nothing to do with the populace who are under the heel of Washington. Don't invoke it here. You won't find many who buy it.
A four-star hack is relieved of his command, and another four-star hack replaces him. Big
f–kin’ deal, right? Afghanistan is such a Vietnam-like travesty that it doesn’t matter.
Let’s get the hell out.
When the worst happens, there'll be no fleeing in helos to carriers a couple hundred miles away.
The Pentagon strategy for their wars on civilians is not to win them but to keep them going for the purpose of increased funding. No winning wars makes more sense than winning them, Pentagon thinking. I worked in government and the bureaucrats do things to increase their budgets.
Life in America has become excruiating. We are engaged in two simultaneous miserable military crucifications of innocent civilians. We no longer even have identifiable enemies. Where are the Bathist deadenders or the Al Qaeda? Luckily, we still have the film clip of the Al Qaeda trainees swinging on monkey bars to scare the boobs with every time we need another 100 Billion for “the troops”
If that is not enough, this little turd of a country, Israel, has mesmerized us into wanting to attack Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the whole Muslim World for them.
Our country has been hollowed out economically, structurally, and morally. Greed is served at every level. We drilled a hole into Hell in the Gulf of Mexico and the cries of “Drill, Baby, Drill” persist. We need the jobs even if the jobs consist of poisoning us.
I’ll be just relieved when the whole shit-n-kaboodle runs off the tracks. The pain of watching this self-destruction will at least be over..
we still have the film clip of the Al Qaeda trainees swinging on monkey bars.
This clip was made a long time ago during the soviet ocupation with assistance from the US government,but do not tell this to the american sheeps who seenothing,hear nothing,say nothing.
It is my understanding that Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire most probably for his anti-war views. I can see why this was attempted to be covered up.
Of course, both wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) were waged on ridiculous terms in the first place.
WMDs and a “global war on terror. Really?
Obama failed to nationalise BP and place its resources under coastguard command. That would have been Defending The Nation.
Obama further jeopardised the nation he is sworn to protect by leaving the clean up in the hands of the feckless incompetants who caused it. He even allowed BP to further attack the ecosystem with the financially desirable rather than effectacious or safe dispersant WMD .
It may be hard for the right to see , but thats a spectacular Obama dereliction dwarfing Bush’ s Catrina failings. Perhaps such come naturally to Obama, but you have to wonder if BP’s role in NATO supply lines protects it.
” I just am not sure that the spill really is a war per se.”
Is Afghanistan “a war per se” ?
Do not forget that the US and UK governments were behind the overthrow of Mosedagh government in Iran on behalf of BP.
Is Afghanistan “a war per se”? No. Our mission in Afghanistan was to hunt down Osama Bin Ladin (not that I considered that legitimate). We wanted OBL to be the patsy for whatever it was that happened on 9-11. Well, he wasn’t there, his band of merry men, the Al Qaeda weren’t there so we decided that we need to KILL SOMETHING so the Taliban is it. We are like some punk kid out in the woods with his rifle. He can’t find any deer, bear or squirels so he starts blasting turtles and birds. That is what our military mindset is – that of a frustrated, trigger-happy, juvenile with no sense of just leaving something be. This McChrystal 4 starred asshole certainly exemplified that.
"Petreaus is better than McChrystal because at least we get to sometimes watch him get overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the BS he shovels on Capitol Hill." Ah, but isn't BS exactly what our Wall Street- controlled Congressional whores expect to hear from the Wall Street-controlled Pentagram Brass? The ONLY reason these hearings are held at all is to reinforce the torrent of lies and propaganda that is constantly spewed out in order to make endless, unjustified, immoral and enormously wasteful war palatable to a brainwashed and brain dead American public.
Big
f–kin' deal, right? Afghanistan is such a Vietnam-like travesty that it doesn't matter.
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