Steve Earle, entertaining at Camp Casey:
I think it’s really important for those of us who’ve been talking about this (opposing the war) from when we first went in to Iraq and even before that to remember that the Vietnam War didn’t end because I opposed it, it ended because my father came to oppose it. We have Cindy Sheehan to thank for the beginnings of what I believe is a mainstream movement against this war.
Video, broadband WMV. Other versions available at truthout’s Cindy page.
The Trillion-Dollar War – New York Times
But the biggest long-term costs are disability and health payments for returning troops, which will be incurred even if hostilities were to stop tomorrow. The United States currently pays more than $2 billion in disability claims per year for 159,000 veterans of the 1991 gulf war, even though that conflict lasted only five weeks, with 148 dead and 467 wounded. Even assuming that the 525,000 American troops who have so far served in Iraq and Afghanistan will require treatment only on the same scale as their predecessors from the gulf war, these payments are likely to run at $7 billion a year for the next 45 years.
Of course, anyone paying attention already knows that “assuming that American troops who have so far served in Iraq and Afghanistan will require treatment only on the same scale as their predecessors from the gulf war” is out the window.
George Bush, June 15, 2004 — "Coalition forces, including many brave Afghans, have brought America, Afghanistan and the world its first victory in the war on terror," the president said.
KABUL, Afghanistan August 21, 2005 A massive bomb exploded under a wooden bridge as a convoy of armored Humvees was crossing it Sunday, killing four U.S. soldiers and wounding three others in the deadliest assault on American forces in Afghanistan in nearly two months.
The troops were part of a major offensive against militants who have vowed to subvert legislative elections on Sept. 18 – the next step toward democracy after more than two decades of war and civil strife.
Rebels also stepped up attacks elsewhere, wounding two U.S. Embassy staff in a roadside bombing in the capital and killing a senior pro-government cleric and a colleague in the country’s south.
Though the U.S. military operation has left dozens of suspected rebels dead or captured, a number of American troops also have been killed, including 13 this month. U.S. and Afghan officials have warned violence may worsen ahead of the polls.
The bomb tied to the bottom of the small bridge exploded as the last of three Humvees was slowly crossing it, said Bashir Ahmad Khan, the government chief in Zabul province’s Daychopan district.
“It was an enormous remote-controlled bomb. The American vehicle was tossed into the air and off the bridge. It’s totally destroyed, as is the bridge,” he told The Associated Press.
The three wounded troops were hit by shrapnel from secondary explosions as they tried to pull the four soldiers out of the burning Humvee, the military statement said. The three were evacuated to a nearby base and were in stable condition.
Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, the U.S.-led coalition’s operational commander, said the blast would “strengthen, not weaken, the resolve” of the troops to safeguard the polls.
It was the deadliest attack on American forces since June 28, when 19 service members were killed in eastern Kunar province when a Navy SEAL team was ambushed and a helicopter shot down.
Some 187 U.S. service members have been killed in and around Afghanistan since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2001 – including 64 during a rash of insurgent attacks in the last six months, which have left about 1,000 other people dead as well.
The bloodshed has led the military to rush in an airborne infantry battalion of about 700 troops on standby in Fort Bragg, N.C., boosting the number of American troops in Afghanistan to about 20,000.
I can’t wait to see what victory in Iraq looks like.
UPDATE: An AntiWar.com reader sends a correction to this story:
"Some 187 U.S. service members have been killed in and around Afghanistan
since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2001"WRONG
Try 228 from official US government reports –
http://www.icasualties.org/oef
/ and that’s not correct either. It’s almost certainly several times what the
US government admits. The first casualty in war is the truth.
Bush addresses the nation from Never-Never Land:
President George W. Bush said on Saturday U.S. troops in Iraq were fighting to protect Americans at home from more attacks like those of September 11, 2001, starting a five-day focus on his case for the war amid growing public discontent.
[…]
"Our troops know that they’re fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
"They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war, and they know we will prevail," he said.
Meanwhile, back in Realitysville…..
As disturbing as those reports were, what Kulick had to say about the conduct of the war was even more troubling. He told his family that the Iraqi police "were corrupt and inept and there was no way they could ever train them to the degree where they could keep order." And when his unit went out after insurgents, far too many innocent iraqis were killed in the crossfire. And, Kulick reported home, "the more hate that created." When the Americans left an area, the insurgents came back the next day.
Eventually, when Kulick saw Iraqi citizens kneeling in the street in prayer, his interpreter would tell him they were praying for the Americans to leave. "They would rather live with evil they knew rather than live with us," Kulick said in his emails. "We were killing them as much as the insurgents were."
Bush: "Now we must finish the task that our troops have given their lives for and honour their sacrifice by completing their mission," he said.
What was their mission again? That part was missing from the speech, as usual. Maybe Cindy Sheehan can ask him after he tells her what the "noble cause" was that Casey Sheehan and John Kulick died for.
The Cunning Realist, commenting on a Belgravia Dispatch post (both well worth reading for thoughtful analysis from a conservative perspective) on the shameful Rumsfeld and Myers performance at a recent press conference, writes:
This just floors me. Does it remind anyone else of invading Iraq ostensibly to disarm the country, then not securing the major weapons caches?
As Greg writes, “These guys should be going to bed every night with such figures [Iraqi troop strengths and capabilities] firmly implanted in their head.” That they have to “get back to us” several years into an occupation leads to a completely logical and appropriate question: Just what the hell is going on?
And here’s a more depressing question: If thousands of our troops have been killed and permanently maimed in order to allow Iraqis time to train and ultimately defend themselves, but our most senior civilian and military leaders have to “get back to us” about how much progress has been made in that regard, what does that say about the importance of our troops’ sacrifice to those leaders?
No "noble cause" rhetoric can drown out those questions.
I don’t get it. William Anderson, posting on the Lew Rockwell.com blog, seems to have decided that it’s necessary to state that “While I agree with Cindy Sheehan’s antiwar stance, I also say that she does not speak for me.”
Doesn’t speak for you about what, Bill? Isn’t opposition to the war Cindy Sheehan’s one and only message?
Even after my repeated attempts to keep the focus of my protest on the war, the Drudge Report and others continue to try to make the issue about me. But I am not the issue. The issue is a disastrous war that’s killing our sons and daughters and making our country less secure. They attack me because they can no longer defend this war.
I’ve come to Crawford to bring to the president’s doorstep the harsh realities of a war he’s been trying so hard to avoid. But no matter what they say or how many shotguns they fire or how many crosses they destroy, they’re not going to stop me from speaking out about a war that needlessly killed my son….Cindy Sheehan, 8/18/05
What’s more, we need to build the antiwar demonstrations being held Sept. 24-26: what’s needed is a massive mobilization that includes not only the usual suspects but also antiwar conservatives, military folks and their families, libertarians, and just plain ordinary people who don’t necessarily want to sign on to a whole laundry list of leftist causes. Tell the ideologues to leave their hobby horses at home: it’s time to get serious about ending this war before it escalates beyond the power of anyone to rein it in.
But this next bit is too much. Anderson continues, “However, I do not see Sheehan as a heroine. I have read too many of her comments and seen quotes from her speeches and the like, and have come to conclude that she is using her son’s death for purposes that ultimately will help expand the Leviathan State even more. She may be anti-war, but she is no libertarian.”
By those standards, I think it’s a legitimate question to ask Anderson why, when he wrote an article titled “Some of My Heroes”this woman was one of them:
Marianne Jennings on war:
Reticence in acknowledging a Republican victory for world order, peace and human rights in [sic] understandable. Dove Nancy Pelosi grouses about cost, a new defense to being absolutely wrong. Sen. Evan Bayh (D. Ind) did admit the error of Democrats’ ways on the war, but that such was a "one-time mistake." A one-time mistake is a vice president misspelling "potato" as "potatoe."
Sheltering tyrants through misguided diplomacy, ignoring intelligence warnings about WMD, and missing plutonium directly beneath the feet of the U.N. inspectors are not one-time mistakes.
These folks grapple with mounds of truth via a dogged pattern of its disregard along political lines. Those of us who stood firm on the war because of terrorist threats and a pressing need for liberation now stare in disbelief as everyone from Hollywood starlets to the New York Times hands us the old Cochran. There is a collective liberal, "What? So?" as we point to their gargantuan errors.
Their dismissive stance allows them to advance new bogus theories. Christine Onomatopoeia (whatever her name is –CNN’s chief correspondent in the Middle East) suggested that the "orgy" of looting in Iraq was the result of deposed Hussein order. Tyrants do have a way with cattle prods, dismemberment, and people.
Implicit in the notion of mistake is misunderstanding of fact. Liberals did not make a mistake; they acted in deliberate defiance of truth. Apologies cannot compensate for obstructionist behaviors that aided and abetted a despot. Liberals’ continued Cochranesque residence in denial land means they go on to give aid and comfort to Castro and other favored troglodytes, taking along their national security experts: Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, and the Dixie Chicks.
Marianne Jennings on the Abu Ghraib torture atrocities:
This past week we learned that renegade U.S. soldiers taunted some of the Iraqi radicals taken prisoner and, like all morons, snapped Kodak moments of themselves engaged in cruel acts. The liberals, the U.N., and terrorists with CNN all demanded an apology. Can the trial lawyers be far from the Iraqi prison? When the Rev. Jesse Jackson rolls in, reparations will flow.
Consumed with guilt, Mr. Bush, the leader of the free world, groveled before Jordan and even tried to woo Al-Jazeerah TV. He promised investigations and discipline and took Rummy to the woodshed. If he’d released photos of that . . .Beautiful!
The hyperbole surrounding these isolated acts is comical.
I hope that despite being one of Bill Anderson’s heroes, Marianne Jennings doesn’t “speak for him.” Anderson writes, “I’m just stating my own opinion, and many of you know that to me, being against the Iraq war does not a libertarian make. It is only one part of the equation.”
Puzzlingly, being a vocal cheerleader for the War Party, an apologist for torture and practically a parody of statist Republican Bush worship doesn’t disqualify Marianne Jennings from being William Anderson’s heroine. And, since when did Anderson’s candidates for hero status have to be libertarian?
Marianne Jennings, “I have grown accustomed to minority status as a conservative in a world bursting at the seams with liberals, socialists, Marxists, and an occasional libertarian. Academic libertarians are not principled. They miss the 60s, Woodstock,and being high. Libertarians are their carpool to legalized drugs.”
Apparently they don’t even have to know what a libertarian is, much less have any respect for one.
Whatever, Bill. I think you’re being just a bit inconsistent.
I think Michael sums up what Cindy Sheehan is doing for the antiwar movement well: As Cindy Sheehan is reminding us, we don’t especially need policy debate right now. What we need, very badly need, are stories: and story is just what the theater of Camp Casey is giving us. The right-wing talking point—that Cindy Sheehan doesn’t really want to engage in dialogue with George Bush, that her demand for the dialogue he won’t give her (and wouldn’t, even if he were improbably to meet with her) is a sort of playacting—is accurate, but beside the point. The relations of power are difficult to conceptualize, and can be even for people trained to do that sort of thing. There is nothing difficult, on the other hand, about the mother of a dead soldier standing ignored at the end of the man’s driveway who sent her son to be killed, waiting stoically in the Texas sun for an answer she knows will never come. Nor is there anything about it that doesn’t speak volumes of truth to the ugly situation in which we find our country, five years on in the Rove/Cheney regime.
Here’s an absolute jewel (scroll to page 74 of the .pdf):
There’s a beautifully understated exasperation to those last two sentences that does my heart good. Too bad (a) it took the Pentagon to say it, and (b) the commander-in-chief will never read it.
Via Justin Logan.
