call to peace, not war

[Lucky Larry]

It isn't the the criminals, mentally ill, the ex-vets, pregnant mothers, gutter punks, unemployed and homeless people that are the problem friends; they are all just symptoms of a much bigger problem. It is a system that is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results: insanity. Can you imagine a society that would put it's money into it's people instead of death machines and war? Many scoff at such a crazy idea; they say, "why, you can't just give it away; people would waste it." Down with the war/killing department; up with the peace/people department. A call to Peace is a call to compassion. I believe some famous guy said love your enemies, forgive those who do you wrong.

[akhalteke]

Fuckin' good weed?

[akhalteke]

Go overseas and see how those ideals play out.

[billcoe]

It isn't the the criminals, mentally ill, the ex-vets, pregnant mothers, gutter punks, unemployed and homeless people that are the problem friends; they are all just symptoms of a much bigger problem. It is a system that is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results: insanity. Can you imagine a society that would put it's money into it's people instead of death machines and war? Many scoff at such a crazy idea; they say, "why, you can't just give it away; people would waste it." Down with the war/killing department; up with the peace/people department. A call to Peace is a call to compassion. I believe some famous guy said love your enemies, forgive those who do you wrong.

 

WAIT! We got us hope and change don't we? Do we need anything else? NO! Of course, who saw that the "change" of Bush leaving was that our country would actually become even more militaristic and start even MORE shit. Who the hell saw that coming? Not me. We've got military stationed in 130 countries they report. Holy shite!!!!! Who amongst us even knew there were that many in the world to go stick our often unwanted nose into?

 

Actually, I generally agree with ya Larry. I don't think full withdraw and isolationism is the answer. We need to pick and chose our battles and get the very rare important one(s) nailed and fully committed too. The other down side of becoming more militaristic is that we have to pay a lot more to suppress the people we piss off by acting like asswipes. The very worst thing about the whole disaster is that since we CANNOT AFFORD IT now when things are still generally good, WE ARE BORROWING TO DO IT!!! The borrowing is not only unsustainable, pointless, senseless and counterproductive, but our children will be stuck with the bill at a time where thy will have declining resources to pay for it. Such stupidity. Big goverment.

 

Good story/Op Ed in Al's Jizzum this very day on how much MORE militaristic the US has become with our Nobel peace prize winning dude steering the force projection ship (which probably needs to be renamed the USS Neocon). When I was catching shit from this board by saying years earlier that I didn't see any significant difference between Republican and democrat, this is the poster for that thought.

 

Here's the link and the entire story. If you like it send the Emir a personal thank yew: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/06/2012625125236369213.html

 

"New York, NY - "In operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, a failure to recognise, acknowledge and accurately define the operational environment led to a mismatch between forces, capabilities, missions and goals," reads a new draft report by the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

 

In Decade of War: Enduring Lessons from the Past Decade of Operations, the authors admit to failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and lay out a series of lessons for the future, including more effective efforts aimed at winning hearts and minds, integrating regular troops and special operations forces, coordination with other government agencies, coalition operations, partnering with the forces of host-nations and paying greater attention to the use of proxy forces.

 

The report has created a buzz in military circles and has been hailed as offering new insights, but the move away from ruinous large-scale land wars to a new hybrid method of war-fighting, call it "the Obama formula", has been evident for some time. For the past several years, the US has increasingly turned to special operations forces working not only on their own but also training or fighting beside allied militaries (if not outright proxy armies) in hot spots around the world.

 

 

Fault Lines - Robot wars

 

And along with those special ops advisers, trainers and commandos, ever more resources are flowing into the militarisation of spying and intelligence, the use of drone aircraft is proliferating, cyber-warfare is on the rise, as are joint operations between the military and increasingly militarised "civilian" government agencies.

 

The Obama administration has, in fact, doubled down again and again on this new way of war - from Africa to the Greater Middle East to South America - but what looks today like a recipe for easy power projection that will further US interests on the cheap could soon prove to be an unmitigated disaster - one that likely won't be apparent until it's too late.

 

The US war in Pakistan is a veritable poster-child for the Obama formula. Beginning as a limited drone assassination campaign backed by limited cross-border commando raids under the Bush administration, US operations in Pakistan have expanded into something close to a full-scale robotic air war, complemented by cross-border helicopter attacks, CIA-funded "kill teams" of Afghan proxy forces, as well as boots-on-the-ground missions by elite special operations forces, including the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

 

Accelerating under Obama

 

The CIA has conducted clandestine intelligence and surveillance missions in Pakistan, too, though its future role may be less important, thanks to Pentagon mission-creep. In April, Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta announced the creation of a new CIA-like espionage agency within the Pentagon named the Defence Clandestine Service (DCS). According to the Washington Post, its aim is to expand "the military's espionage efforts beyond war zones". Pakistan is a probable candidate for future deployment of DCS operatives. Africa is also likely to see an influx of Pentagon spies in the coming years.

 

Interestingly, Decade of War devotes space to decrying the use of proxies by adversaries and suggests that the Pentagon team with State Department diplomats and US spies to break up sponsor/proxy relationships and disrupt financing networks. As the report puts it, the military must "oppose proxies and surrogates through a global campaign that combines direct action and law enforcement with indirect approaches that address the factors that fuel support for terrorism". Proxies are, however, also a linchpin of the Obama administration's formula - most especially when it comes to operations in Africa.

 

"The Obama administration has been ramping up operations south of the border using [drones]."

 

Under President Obama, operations on the continent have accelerated far beyond the limited interventions of the Bush years:

 

Last year’s war in Libya;

A regional drone campaign with missions run out of airports and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles;

A flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional operations; a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, secret prisons, helicopter attacks, and US commando raids;

Amassive influx of cash for counterterrorism operations across East Africa;

A possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned aircraft;

Tens of millions of dollars in arms for allied mercenaries and African troops;

A special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders, operating in Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic (where US Special Forces now have a new base);

And a mission by elite Force Recon Marines from the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 (SPMAGTF-12) to train soldiers from the Uganda People's Defense Force, which supplies the majority of troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia only begins to scratch the surface of Washington’s fast-expanding activities in the region

 

The US is also ramping up missions in its near abroad. Since its founding, the United States has often intervened throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. During the Bush years, with some notable exceptions, Washington’s interest in America's "backyard" took a backseat to wars farther from home. Recently, however, the Obama administration has been ramping up operations south of the border using its new formula. This has meant Pentagon drone missions deep inside Mexico to aid that country's battle against the drug cartels, while CIA agents and civilian operatives from the Department of Defence were dispatched to Mexican military bases to take part in the country's drug war.

 

In 2012, the Pentagon has also ramped up its anti-drug operations in Honduras. US forces have taken part in joint operations with Honduran troops as part of a training mission dubbed Beyond the Horizon 2012; Green Berets have been assisting Honduran Special Operations forces in anti-smuggling operations; and a Drug Enforcement Administration Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team, originally created to disrupt the poppy trade in Afghanistan, has joined forces with Honduras' Tactical Response Team, that country's most elite counternarcotics unit. A glimpse of these operations made the news recently when DEA agents, flying in a US helicopter, were involved in an aerial attack on civilians that killed two men and two pregnant women in the remote Mosquito Coast region.

 

No withdrawal from the Middle East

 

Despite the end of the Iraq and Libyan wars, a coming drawdown of forces in Afghanistan and copious public announcements about its national security pivot toward Asia, Washington is by no means withdrawing from the Greater Middle East. In addition to continuing operations in Afghanistan, the US has consistently been at work training allied troops, building up military bases and brokering weapons sales and arms transfers to despots in the region from Bahrain to Yemen.

 

"[Cyberwar efforts] were begun under the Bush administrtion but significantly accelerated under the current presdent, who became the first American commander-in-chief to order sustained cyberattacks designed to cripple another country's infrastructure."

 

In fact, Yemen, like its neighbour, Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden, has become a laboratory for Obama’s wars. There, the US is carrying out its signature new brand of warfare with "black ops" troops like the SEALs and the Army's Delta Force probably conducting kill/capture missions, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous troops, and robot planes hunt and kill members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, possibly assisted by an even more secret contingent of manned aircraft.

 

The Middle East has also become the somewhat unlikely poster-region for another emerging facet of the Obama doctrine: cyberwar efforts. The recently revealed "Olympic Games", a program of sophisticated attacks on computers in Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities engineered and unleashed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and Unit 8200, Israel's equivalent of the NSA. As with other facets of the new way of war, these efforts were begun under the Bush administration but significantly accelerated under the current president, who became the first US commander-in-chief to order sustained cyberattacks designed to cripple another country's infrastructure.

 

Even the State Department has, albeit modestly, become involved in cyberwar efforts. In a category-blurring speaking engagement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the recent Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Florida where she talked up her department's eagerness to join in the new American way of war. "We need Special Operations Forces who are as comfortable drinking tea with tribal leaders as raiding a terrorist compound,"' she told the crowd. "We also need diplomats and development experts who are up to the job of being your partners."

From the perspective of one neighbourhood in Herat

 

Across the globe

 

Clinton then took the opportunity to tout her agency's online efforts, aimed at websites used by al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen. When al-Qaeda recruitment messages appeared on the latter, she said, "our team plastered the same sites with altered versions... that showed the toll al-Qaeda attacks have taken on the Yemeni people". She further noted that this information-warfare mission was carried out by experts at State's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications with assistance, not surprisingly, from the military and the US Intelligence Community.

 

Such efforts are exactly the type of integration the Pentagon touts in "Decade of War": "Initially in Iraq and Afghanistan, interagency unity of effort was a resounding failure," says the report. To avoid this in the future, the report calls upon the Pentagon to regularly seed its people into other agencies and also develop policies for "greater inclusion of interagency involvement in planning, training and execution to increase interagency contributions, including expansion of their expeditionary capabilities".

 

Across the globe from Central and South America to Africa, the Middle East to Asia, the Obama administration is working out its formula for a new American way of war. In its pursuit, the Pentagon and its increasingly militarised government partners are drawing on everything from classic precepts of colonial warfare to the latest technologies.

In-depth coverage of the regional political crisis

 

The United States is an imperial power chastened by more than ten years of failed, heavy-footprint wars. It is hobbled by a hollowing-out economy, and inundated with hundreds of thousands of recent veterans - a staggering 45 per cent of the troops who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq - suffering from service-related disabilities who will require ever more expensive care. No wonder the current combination of special ops, drones, spy games, civilian soldiers, cyberwarfare and proxy fighters sounds like a safer, saner brand of war-fighting. At first blush, it may even look like a panacea for the national security ills of the US. In reality, it may be anything but.

 

After years spent fighting light-footprint shadow wars in Pakistan and Yemen, both nations are, as the New York Times recently noted - "arguably less stable and more hostile to the United States than when Mr Obama became president". Not only have the initial test cases yielded failure, but this new way of war holds great potential for unforeseen entanglements and serial blowback. Starting or fanning brushfire wars on several continents could lead to raging wildfires that spread unpredictably and prove difficult, if not impossible, to quench.

 

Decade of War: Enduring Lessons from the Past Decade of Operations asserts that "operations during the first half of the [past] decade were often marked by numerous missteps and challenges, while those in the second half featured successful adaptation to overcome these challenges." Such statements and an implicit certainty that the Pentagon can find the right formula for successful wars suggest that the lessons have actually been less than enduring - and a similar report with similar conclusions may, indeed, be in preparation a decade from now. "

[rob]

I got this high, once

[kevbone]

Thanks Lash.....

[JosephH]

It's pretty straightforward - if you're going to go to war then you better do it with resources enough to kick ass, get the message across, and get the fuck out. There is no scenario where we can 'win' wars while everyone at home is obliviously shopping in a coma. If we're going to fight a war, it shouldn't be business as usual at home - we should all be engaged in one way or another until the day it is over.

 

And we shouldn't be going big and all in when decent HUMINT (if we had any) and a few Predators would be infinitely more effective in getting the job done. It also shouldn't be rocket science that when what the enemy wants is to destroy everything your country stands for the first thing you don't do is flush everything we stand for down the shitter and then throw three trillion dollars down after it. Because when you do that, hey they win, as they have in every way that counts in this case.

 

All the resources for healthcare, schools, infrastructure and jobs? Flushed down a hole in the desert and what we see every day on the news is the direct result of our choices.

[KirkW]

Joseph, some times I couldn't agree with you more. Nicely put.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

Lucky Larry, the new flag-bearer with the slogan "can't we all just get along?"

[rob]

not that there's anything wrong with that

[Lucky Larry]

It isn't the the criminals, mentally ill, the ex-vets, pregnant mothers, gutter punks, unemployed and homeless people that are the problem friends; they are all just symptoms of a much bigger problem. It is a system that is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results: insanity. Can you imagine a society that would put it's money into it's people instead of death machines and war? Many scoff at such a crazy idea; they say, "why, you can't just give it away; people would waste it." Down with the war/killing department; up with the peace/people department. A call to Peace is a call to compassion. I believe some famous guy said love your enemies, forgive those who do you wrong.

 

WAIT! We got us hope and change don't we? Do we need anything else? NO! Of course, who saw that the "change" of Bush leaving was that our country would actually become even more militaristic and start even MORE shit. Who the hell saw that coming? Not me. We've got military stationed in 130 countries they report. Holy shite!!!!! Who amongst us even knew there were that many in the world to go stick our often unwanted nose into?

 

Actually, I generally agree with ya Larry. I don't think full withdraw and isolationism is the answer. We need to pick and chose our battles and get the very rare important one(s) nailed and fully committed too. The other down side of becoming more militaristic is that we have to pay a lot more to suppress the people we piss off by acting like asswipes. The very worst thing about the whole disaster is that since we CANNOT AFFORD IT now when things are still generally good, WE ARE BORROWING TO DO IT!!! The borrowing is not only unsustainable, pointless, senseless and counterproductive, but our children will be stuck with the bill at a time where thy will have declining resources to pay for it. Such stupidity. Big goverment.

 

Good story/Op Ed in Al's Jizzum this very day on how much MORE militaristic the US has become with our Nobel peace prize winning dude steering the force projection ship (which probably needs to be renamed the USS Neocon). When I was catching shit from this board by saying years earlier that I didn't see any significant difference between Republican and democrat, this is the poster for that thought.

 

Here's the link and the entire story. If you like it send the Emir a personal thank yew: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/06/2012625125236369213.html

 

"New York, NY - "In operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, a failure to recognise, acknowledge and accurately define the operational environment led to a mismatch between forces, capabilities, missions and goals," reads a new draft report by the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

 

In Decade of War: Enduring Lessons from the Past Decade of Operations, the authors admit to failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and lay out a series of lessons for the future, including more effective efforts aimed at winning hearts and minds, integrating regular troops and special operations forces, coordination with other government agencies, coalition operations, partnering with the forces of host-nations and paying greater attention to the use of proxy forces.

 

The report has created a buzz in military circles and has been hailed as offering new insights, but the move away from ruinous large-scale land wars to a new hybrid method of war-fighting, call it "the Obama formula", has been evident for some time. For the past several years, the US has increasingly turned to special operations forces working not only on their own but also training or fighting beside allied militaries (if not outright proxy armies) in hot spots around the world.

 

 

Fault Lines - Robot wars

 

And along with those special ops advisers, trainers and commandos, ever more resources are flowing into the militarisation of spying and intelligence, the use of drone aircraft is proliferating, cyber-warfare is on the rise, as are joint operations between the military and increasingly militarised "civilian" government agencies.

 

The Obama administration has, in fact, doubled down again and again on this new way of war - from Africa to the Greater Middle East to South America - but what looks today like a recipe for easy power projection that will further US interests on the cheap could soon prove to be an unmitigated disaster - one that likely won't be apparent until it's too late.

 

The US war in Pakistan is a veritable poster-child for the Obama formula. Beginning as a limited drone assassination campaign backed by limited cross-border commando raids under the Bush administration, US operations in Pakistan have expanded into something close to a full-scale robotic air war, complemented by cross-border helicopter attacks, CIA-funded "kill teams" of Afghan proxy forces, as well as boots-on-the-ground missions by elite special operations forces, including the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

 

Accelerating under Obama

 

The CIA has conducted clandestine intelligence and surveillance missions in Pakistan, too, though its future role may be less important, thanks to Pentagon mission-creep. In April, Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta announced the creation of a new CIA-like espionage agency within the Pentagon named the Defence Clandestine Service (DCS). According to the Washington Post, its aim is to expand "the military's espionage efforts beyond war zones". Pakistan is a probable candidate for future deployment of DCS operatives. Africa is also likely to see an influx of Pentagon spies in the coming years.

 

Interestingly, Decade of War devotes space to decrying the use of proxies by adversaries and suggests that the Pentagon team with State Department diplomats and US spies to break up sponsor/proxy relationships and disrupt financing networks. As the report puts it, the military must "oppose proxies and surrogates through a global campaign that combines direct action and law enforcement with indirect approaches that address the factors that fuel support for terrorism". Proxies are, however, also a linchpin of the Obama administration's formula - most especially when it comes to operations in Africa.

 

"The Obama administration has been ramping up operations south of the border using [drones]."

 

Under President Obama, operations on the continent have accelerated far beyond the limited interventions of the Bush years:

 

Last year’s war in Libya;

A regional drone campaign with missions run out of airports and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles;

A flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional operations; a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, secret prisons, helicopter attacks, and US commando raids;

Amassive influx of cash for counterterrorism operations across East Africa;

A possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned aircraft;

Tens of millions of dollars in arms for allied mercenaries and African troops;

A special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders, operating in Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic (where US Special Forces now have a new base);

And a mission by elite Force Recon Marines from the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 (SPMAGTF-12) to train soldiers from the Uganda People's Defense Force, which supplies the majority of troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia only begins to scratch the surface of Washington’s fast-expanding activities in the region

 

The US is also ramping up missions in its near abroad. Since its founding, the United States has often intervened throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. During the Bush years, with some notable exceptions, Washington’s interest in America's "backyard" took a backseat to wars farther from home. Recently, however, the Obama administration has been ramping up operations south of the border using its new formula. This has meant Pentagon drone missions deep inside Mexico to aid that country's battle against the drug cartels, while CIA agents and civilian operatives from the Department of Defence were dispatched to Mexican military bases to take part in the country's drug war.

 

In 2012, the Pentagon has also ramped up its anti-drug operations in Honduras. US forces have taken part in joint operations with Honduran troops as part of a training mission dubbed Beyond the Horizon 2012; Green Berets have been assisting Honduran Special Operations forces in anti-smuggling operations; and a Drug Enforcement Administration Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team, originally created to disrupt the poppy trade in Afghanistan, has joined forces with Honduras' Tactical Response Team, that country's most elite counternarcotics unit. A glimpse of these operations made the news recently when DEA agents, flying in a US helicopter, were involved in an aerial attack on civilians that killed two men and two pregnant women in the remote Mosquito Coast region.

 

No withdrawal from the Middle East

 

Despite the end of the Iraq and Libyan wars, a coming drawdown of forces in Afghanistan and copious public announcements about its national security pivot toward Asia, Washington is by no means withdrawing from the Greater Middle East. In addition to continuing operations in Afghanistan, the US has consistently been at work training allied troops, building up military bases and brokering weapons sales and arms transfers to despots in the region from Bahrain to Yemen.

 

"[Cyberwar efforts] were begun under the Bush administrtion but significantly accelerated under the current presdent, who became the first American commander-in-chief to order sustained cyberattacks designed to cripple another country's infrastructure."

 

In fact, Yemen, like its neighbour, Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden, has become a laboratory for Obama’s wars. There, the US is carrying out its signature new brand of warfare with "black ops" troops like the SEALs and the Army's Delta Force probably conducting kill/capture missions, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous troops, and robot planes hunt and kill members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, possibly assisted by an even more secret contingent of manned aircraft.

 

The Middle East has also become the somewhat unlikely poster-region for another emerging facet of the Obama doctrine: cyberwar efforts. The recently revealed "Olympic Games", a program of sophisticated attacks on computers in Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities engineered and unleashed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and Unit 8200, Israel's equivalent of the NSA. As with other facets of the new way of war, these efforts were begun under the Bush administration but significantly accelerated under the current president, who became the first US commander-in-chief to order sustained cyberattacks designed to cripple another country's infrastructure.

 

Even the State Department has, albeit modestly, become involved in cyberwar efforts. In a category-blurring speaking engagement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the recent Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Florida where she talked up her department's eagerness to join in the new American way of war. "We need Special Operations Forces who are as comfortable drinking tea with tribal leaders as raiding a terrorist compound,"' she told the crowd. "We also need diplomats and development experts who are up to the job of being your partners."

From the perspective of one neighbourhood in Herat

 

Across the globe

 

Clinton then took the opportunity to tout her agency's online efforts, aimed at websites used by al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen. When al-Qaeda recruitment messages appeared on the latter, she said, "our team plastered the same sites with altered versions... that showed the toll al-Qaeda attacks have taken on the Yemeni people". She further noted that this information-warfare mission was carried out by experts at State's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications with assistance, not surprisingly, from the military and the US Intelligence Community.

 

Such efforts are exactly the type of integration the Pentagon touts in "Decade of War": "Initially in Iraq and Afghanistan, interagency unity of effort was a resounding failure," says the report. To avoid this in the future, the report calls upon the Pentagon to regularly seed its people into other agencies and also develop policies for "greater inclusion of interagency involvement in planning, training and execution to increase interagency contributions, including expansion of their expeditionary capabilities".

 

Across the globe from Central and South America to Africa, the Middle East to Asia, the Obama administration is working out its formula for a new American way of war. In its pursuit, the Pentagon and its increasingly militarised government partners are drawing on everything from classic precepts of colonial warfare to the latest technologies.

In-depth coverage of the regional political crisis

 

The United States is an imperial power chastened by more than ten years of failed, heavy-footprint wars. It is hobbled by a hollowing-out economy, and inundated with hundreds of thousands of recent veterans - a staggering 45 per cent of the troops who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq - suffering from service-related disabilities who will require ever more expensive care. No wonder the current combination of special ops, drones, spy games, civilian soldiers, cyberwarfare and proxy fighters sounds like a safer, saner brand of war-fighting. At first blush, it may even look like a panacea for the national security ills of the US. In reality, it may be anything but.

 

After years spent fighting light-footprint shadow wars in Pakistan and Yemen, both nations are, as the New York Times recently noted - "arguably less stable and more hostile to the United States than when Mr Obama became president". Not only have the initial test cases yielded failure, but this new way of war holds great potential for unforeseen entanglements and serial blowback. Starting or fanning brushfire wars on several continents could lead to raging wildfires that spread unpredictably and prove difficult, if not impossible, to quench.

 

Decade of War: Enduring Lessons from the Past Decade of Operations asserts that "operations during the first half of the [past] decade were often marked by numerous missteps and challenges, while those in the second half featured successful adaptation to overcome these challenges." Such statements and an implicit certainty that the Pentagon can find the right formula for successful wars suggest that the lessons have actually been less than enduring - and a similar report with similar conclusions may, indeed, be in preparation a decade from now. "

thank you Bill and all my troll friends,it's good to know some one is out there in cyber space. @ Bill, the link to al Jeeza was informative and scary too! The face of of Death has been removed; it no longer looks like the deformed person or mentally challenged person; in fact, it has no face at all. And therefore; is easily, disposable. Geer's to all. Hail O'bummer. Bill, check out Give them Hell Harry (aka Harry Truman), Opdyke showed it to me, it will blow your mind.

[Lucky Larry]

It's pretty straightforward - if you're going to go to war then you better do it with resources enough to kick ass, get the message across, and get the fuck out. There is no scenario where we can 'win' wars while everyone at home is obliviously shopping in a coma. If we're going to fight a war, it shouldn't be business as usual at home - we should all be engaged in one way or another until the day it is over.

 

And we shouldn't be going big and all in when decent HUMINT (if we had any) and a few Predators would be infinitely more effective in getting the job done. It also shouldn't be rocket science that when what the enemy wants is to destroy everything your country stands for the first thing you don't do is flush everything we stand for down the shitter and then throw three trillion dollars down after it. Because when you do that, hey they win, as they have in every way that counts in this case.

 

All the resources for healthcare, schools, infrastructure and jobs? Flushed down a hole in the desert and what we see every day on the news is the direct result of our choices.

 

Thanks Joe; I actually agree with you. It's funny because I started to think you were a "just say no" kind'a person.

[JosephH]

Thanks Joe; I actually agree with you. It's funny because I started to think you were a "just say no" kind'a person.

Me? Jeebus H. Christ, are you serious! I'm not the "just say no person". Fuck, I'm the farthest from it you'll ever see. I'm also not:

 

 

a "just make up plausible-sounding shite with fairy dust I pulled out my arse as I go along" kind'a person

 

a "if I finally step up and push hard on this parked Abrahm M1-A2SEP and yell at it long enough, why this time I'll for sure be able to turn it right around" kind'a person

 

a "if we get some new blood, cuddle up in a man-circle, and stroke each other while wishing long, hard and fast enough the dream will finally come true and end our sixteen year hellish nightmare because - gosh darn it - we are all such righteous and angry people [ who have been so horribly, horribly wronged goddamn it!!! (and why, oh why, doesn't the world cry out at the obvious injustice of our persecution???!!!) ]" kind'a person

 

 

But rather more of:

 

 

a "what is the objective reality we're dealing with" kind'a person

 

a "what's it [really] going to take" kind'a person

 

a "yeah, sure, but after actually bothering to look into the cold, hard facts, just how plausible is this shite we're talking about" kind'a person

 

a "Dude, I know man, I know and I'm with you a 110% and got you, but if you're going to keep on doing that then you may want to try and get a grip on those hallucinations" kind'a person

 

 

WTF man, I'm Irish and from Chicago - we're a pragmatic, call-it-like-we-see-it lot and don't stand for a bunch of ceremony or bullshit unless there's a green river of hard liquor flowing. We also don't whine relentlessly or gnash our teeth until they're all ground down just because it feels so damn good. No fucking way and, just like putting up FAs, it's all about sizing shit up for real, putting it all on the line, being prepared to bust a move, getting shit done, and then simply moving on once it's over or ain't never gonna happen. Hell, from where I sit I'm about the only "just say yes" person in the friggin' room - and that solely by virtue of having at least an ever-so-slight grip on reality and enough common sense to assess the [real-world] plausibility and potential of the various possibilities, outcomes, and costs. And I'm the bad guy? Right on! Fine by me then.

 

And hey, I know life is hard and we all want that pause that refreshes, but where I'm from, just because a person has too much on the line to live in a make-believe world where everything should, must, and will go their way, sail on the Jolly Roger, or go flying about with Peter Pan doesn't make them a "just say no" kind'a person - it makes them a "just a profoundly different point of view" kind'a person.

 

[ Beaconius 4:20: Let us pray oh lord for strength and endurance as we exit this, the sixteenth dark and pestilent purgatory of our touristavian holocaust. And let each man rise again knowing once more that, though thy will has been wrought on us yet again, we still romp and still stomp like never before and smite at the dragons thou hast loosed upon us from on high. Amen brother. ]

[Lucky Larry]

nice work Joe

[akhalteke]

It's pretty straightforward - if you're going to go to war then you better do it with resources enough to kick ass, get the message across, and get the fuck out. There is no scenario where we can 'win' wars while everyone at home is obliviously shopping in a coma. If we're going to fight a war, it shouldn't be business as usual at home - we should all be engaged in one way or another until the day it is over.

 

And we shouldn't be going big and all in when decent HUMINT (if we had any) and a few Predators would be infinitely more effective in getting the job done. It also shouldn't be rocket science that when what the enemy wants is to destroy everything your country stands for the first thing you don't do is flush everything we stand for down the shitter and then throw three trillion dollars down after it. Because when you do that, hey they win, as they have in every way that counts in this case.

 

All the resources for healthcare, schools, infrastructure and jobs? Flushed down a hole in the desert and what we see every day on the news is the direct result of our choices.

 

Holy shit. Right on the money.