Comments on: Updated: “A Sudden Exit Driven By An ‘Irrational’ War” (& Vain Talk)

By: Myron Pauli

Myron Pauli — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:14:54 +0000

Another fascinating read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/opinion/29sebestyen.html

Juicy excerpts:

THE highly decorated general sat opposite his commander in chief and explained the problems his army faced fighting in the hills around Kabul …He went on to request extra troops and equipment….

But Mr. Gorbachev dithered, searching for something he could call victory, or at least that other elusive prize for armies in trouble: peace with honor….

“We must say that our people have not GIVEN THEIR LIVES IN VAIN,” Mr. Gorbachev told the Politburo….

By: Robert Glisson

Robert Glisson — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:00:38 +0000

“Cicero’s last words are said to have been, “There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly.” I am probably going to end up ticking off a lot of friends in the near future with my ‘anti-war’ stance. I’ve been a critic since before 2003; but, I’ll be contacted more now for my support in raising troop levels which I won’t give. Is my willingness to go against the flow of opinion, ‘an in vain act,’ because more troops do get sent to the Middle East in spite of my objections; I don’t think so. What about the store clerk, who in being robbed is killed, is that person’s death in vain? Does a person who dies in a traffic or construction accident- die in vain or is it only those who die for their government’s failed policy a death in vain. I think that people use the “In vain” phrase simply as social manipulation to advance agendas. How many lives have to be lost before it was not ‘in vain?’ We saw, we came, we conquered; we left. Anything else is vanity.

By: M. B. Moon

M. B. Moon — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:02:00 +0000

[They did die in vain—in Iraq and in Afghanistan!] Ilana Mercer

Those men were wasted by a country that can ill afford to waste any brave honorable man or woman. In this topsy-turvy world of Keynesian or post-Keynesian or whatever economics:

1. waste is good
2. saving is bad
3. consumption is good
4. investment can be overdone.
5. death is good since it lowers the unemployment rate.
6. destruction is good.
7. good is bad and bad is good.

” Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20

Myron, you are in top form!

By: Myron Pauli

Myron Pauli — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:20:30 +0000

Do “troops” die in vain?? Well, if you die while evacuating 50 of your buddies to safety, you did not die in vain – even if the war was stupid.

But, in a larger sense, one might even ask whether the men who died in our War of Independence “died in vain”? Did they die for a Department of Housing and Urban Development, mediocre school teachers teaching the latest politically correct slop in governmental schools, TSA boob fondling fools, the Internal Revenue Service, the United Nations, trillion dollar deficits, paramilitary SWAT teams conducting no-knock drug raids, the Karzai bank account, No Child Left Behind,…. That is difficult to say. We basically had a LIMITED republican form of government (with some exceptions under Abe and Woodrow) for 150 years until we turned into an unlimited Imperial Democracy by popular consensus of the governing class and the governed under FDR and his successor Fuehrers. I don’t think the men of Saratoga, Valley Forge, and Yorktown fought for Bush-Obama-ocracy.

By: M. B. Moon

M. B. Moon — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:48:03 +0000

Excellent interview. Many good points were made by Mr. Hoh.

“Did – were those deaths do you think in vain?” Melissa Block

How could those deaths be in vain? A soldier who does his duty and gets killed in the process has not died vainly.

[They did die in vain—in Iraq and in Afghanistan!]

Must the US win every pointless war just so its soldiers will not have died pointlessly? Sickening logic.