Tag: war

Capt. Fishback’s letter: “This is morally inconsistent with the Constitution”

It appears from this letter, which was printed in today’s Washington post, that at least some of the officer corps would prefer to keep the Geneva Conventions, and the constitution. And this is someone who’s seen the worst our enemies can do.

A Matter of Honor

The following letter was sent to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sept. 16:

Dear Senator McCain:

I am a graduate of West Point currently serving as a Captain in the U.S. Army Infantry. I have served two combat tours with the 82nd Airborne Division, one each in Afghanistan and Iraq. While I served in the Global War on Terror, the actions and statements of my leadership led me to believe that United States policy did not require application of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan or Iraq. Continue reading “Capt. Fishback’s letter: “This is morally inconsistent with the Constitution”” →

What is our major malfunction, numbnuts?

General Joseph P. Hoar, USMC (Retired) would like to point out out that it’s the American Revolution in Iraq, but we’re the redcoats. He’s obviously a wild-eyed emo liberal towelhead-hugger who… oh wait, no. He’s a crewcutted 70-year-old professional hardass covered in combat medals.

Some notable quotes:

…when you think about Iraqi democracy, don’t think about Iowa. Think about Lebanon, you know, and that’s again best case. It’s going to be messy.

…

If you’ll permit me a sea story: In 1966, I – my first time out there, I was an advisor with the Vietnamese marines, and we were up along the DMZ and there was a Vietnamese airborne battalion that got in trouble in a place called the marketplace, which was just north of Con Tien. That battalion had 211 soldiers killed that day, and we went to relieve the pressure and we covered for them. We stayed there the next day and were involved in a pretty good-sized fight. And the bad guys broke off because of the artillery and air – the whole works.

But any number of months from 1966 until the Americans disengaged in that area, if you ever wanted a fight, all you needed to do was go to the marketplace, and you got a fight. And they killed 20 or 30 of our people and we killed a couple hundred of theirs, and then everybody went home again, and then at some unpredicted time in the future we went back up to the marketplace and did it all over again.

…

When you talk about the Middle East, if you don’t talk about Balfour and Sykes-Pico and McMahon and General Mott and Gertrude Bell and that whole crowd of people and what’s been going on out there throughout the 20th Century, you can’t begin to understand the dynamic that exists today. And we are the direct linear descendants of those colonial overlords. And that, in my judgment, is the problem, and we’ve done very little to dispel that belief.

…

I want to leave you with something that I think is really important. I was in the Middle East on a trip of five countries this past winter, and in Saudi Arabia there seemed to me to be agreement that, regardless of what happens in Iraq, these jihadis that are now there – we don’t know how many, or at least I don’t know how many there are – of 15 to 20,000 bad guys, how many of them are hardcore guys that are going to continue to fight? But regardless of what happens, these people are going to be well trained and be out of a job, and they’re going to disperse into the local countries and continue their work.

So I went to JAG and … he says, “Well the Geneva Conventions are a gray area.”

Via srl: An officer of the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army describes violations of the Geneva convention.

o I guess what I’m getting at is the Army officers have overarching responsibility for this. Not privates, not the Sergeant Jones, not Sergeant Smith. The Army officer corps has responsibility for this. And it boggles my mind that there aren’t officers standing up saying, “That’s my fault and here’s why.” That’s basic army leadership. […] [I]f America holds something as the moral standard, it should be unacceptable for us as a people to change that moral standard based on fear. The measure of a person or a people’s character is not what they do when everything is comfortable. It’s what they do in an extremely trying and difficult situation, and if we want to claim that these are our ideals and our values then we need to hold to them no matter how dark the situation.

Missile launch

Missile Launch Trail

Fascinating, frightening missile launch trail I shot tonight outside D’s. When Vandenberg AFB shoots off a big rocket we get these, usually in the early evening. As a child I was terrified of them because I thought it was the beginning of a nuclear war. Now I’m just pissed off because they’re testing a dumb expensive antimissile system.

In any case, it stops everyone in their tracks for a bit to consider the huge thing in the sky we just made.

Missile Launch Trail (zoom)

Tibor Rubin

dberg refers me to an OC Register story (genital/genital or bugmenot to read it) about Garden Grove’s hometown hero, who is a genuinely admirable guy.

tibor
Anyone who picks maggots out of a prison latrine to clean the sores of his friends deserves the Medal of Honor and free beer for life. Especially when he’d already been in a Nazi death camp before he went to another war and got thrown in a prison camp again.

The army’s official site about him is more descriptive of his life in combat and has background on his life and a video of him which has some very affecting testimonials from his fellow inmates.

And now he’s the “Jewish Santa Claus” and gives out candy to the kids in his neighborhood.

Unpopular suggestion

Conservative religious types are saying that the destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast was an angry God’s response to abortion, or homosexuality, or our failure to teach the Ten Commandments in schools.

A lot of countries abort, and tolerate gays, and fail to teach Biblical morality in schools. I haven’t seen a lot of massive natural disasters in Sweden or New Zealand lately, though.

I wonder how many conservative Christians have considered that the Old Testament God of Wrath might be upset at us over the war?

Let’s dare the nation’s pastors to ask that question this Sunday. Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah would.