War! What is it Good For? Absolutely nothing!

"If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory." - Reinhold Niebuhr


"Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight." -- Albert Schweitzer


Iraqi car




Sandstorm in Iraq



IRAQ - American prerogatives. Photographer KAI PFAFFENBACH (REUTERS)

"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence."


American soldier.

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

No one spoke of him again.


You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.

-- Siegfred Sassoon, (1886-1967)

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Fatigue Cripples US Troops

Just reading about our troops in Iraq cripples me with fatigue...I can't imagine what it must be like to be over there.

"The anecdotal evidence on the ground confirms what others - prominent among them General Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State - have been insisting for months now: that the US army is 'about broken'. Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready. Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen."

The "quality" of the soldiers is not what it once was. The military has had to lower its standards because of retention and recruitment problems. The army is admitting men and women that, under normal circumstances, would not qualify to be a soldier and therefore much more likely to collapse from fatigue.

[...]

"The consequence is that we are seeing people who do not have the same coping skills when they get here, and this can be difficult.

'We are also seeing older soldiers coming in - up to 41 years old - and that is causing its own problems. They have difficulty dealing with the physical impact of the war and also interacting with the younger men.'

Valentine says: 'We are not only watering down the quality of the soldiers but the leadership too. The good leaders get out. I've seen it. And right now we are on the down slope.'"

One possible solution is a draft, not something most Americans want to hear.

"America's 'war tsar' has called for the nation's political leaders to consider bringing back the draft to help a military exhausted by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

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The Real Evil-Doers Walk Free

Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil confirmed my belief that the wrong people were punished for the torture that took place at Abu Ghraib. The people punished were set-up to take the fall while the truly guilty people will never face the consequences of their actions.

There is no doubt in my mind that a certain section of our government understood the psychology of the famous “Stanford Prison Experiment” Zimbardo started in 1971. They knew that "powerful situational forces" could make people behave in ways they would not ordinarily. Especially when those people are very young soldiers trained to "fall in" and not question authority.

On top of the training many of these soldiers received, the part of the brain, called the pre-frontal cortex, is not fully developed until a person reaches their early 20s. This section of the brain responsible for "executive functions" allows us to prioritize our thinking, imagine, think in the abstract, plan, anticipate consequences, and control impulses. Combine the aforementioned with the process of group dynamics, which can overwhelm any individual, forcing them to compromise their values, morals and beliefs for the sake of the group...it's a formula guaranteed to produce torture-ready soldiers. How can we expect young men and women to fight against this powerful psychological force when most adults with fully developed brains will succumb?

“The evidence now is strong that the brain does not cease to mature until the early 20s in those relevant parts that govern impulsivity, judgment, planning for the future, foresight of consequences, and other characteristics that make people morally culpable….”

-- Ruben Gur, MD, PhD

It is true that all our soldiers "volunteered" for military service; and while a few signed up only to hurt or kill others, most signed up after being deceived by recruiters or because their parents and school thought that the military would straighten them out, or because this is their chance to become the "GI Joe" they played with just a few short years ago.

The people that should be held fully accountable -- unlike our young soldiers -- have brains that are fully mature, have the life experience to draw from, are highly educated, and lead the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth. There is no excuse for these people because they know exactly what they are doing.

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Child Dies From a Toothache...No Insurance.

In a wealthy country like ours no child should ever die from a toothache. Our government literally throws billions of dollars at Iraq without blinking an eye, and then cannot account for any of it, yet 45 million people in the United States do not have health insurance and cannot afford the most basic health care. I wonder how many people those billions of dollars unaccounted for, much of it in cash, could have covered?

Some poor children have no dental coverage at all. Others travel three hours to find a dentist willing to take Medicaid patients and accept the incumbent paperwork. And some, including Deamonte's brother, get in for a tooth cleaning but have trouble securing an oral surgeon to fix deeper problems.

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