Category Archives: Military

What Is True Patriotism?

Homeland Security, Military, Nationhood, Propaganda, War

American soldiers are “citizens of the world,” I wrote in “The International Highway to Hell.” “We pay their wages, but their hearts belong in faraway exotic places with which Main Street U.S.A can hardly hope to compete” for affection. This year’s Memorial Day Message” is gentler than that 2005 antiwar.com column, which was not as understanding about the specter of “misplaced loyalties,” where,

soldier after American soldier burbles on about how freeing Iraqis [Libyans, Afghans, etc.] inspires him … Or, if injured, … how eager he is to get back to his “buddies,” those he considers his real family. …

Celebrated on Memorial Day are “the … self-destructive sentiments too many American soldiers express – their willingness to give their lives for Iraqis [Libyans, Afghans, etc.]; their wish to rejoin their battalions as soon as they heal from being carved up in combat.”

But these point to a “profound alienation from all that’s important.”

And what it important? Not to live a contradiction and a lie, the one Jack Kerwick pinpoints in “The Consequences of American Patriotism” :

if morality consists in the observance of universal principles like “human rights,” then one of two things follow.
Either the partiality that we have toward our spouses, our friends, and our families is beyond the moral realm altogether, or it is actually immoral. There is no way to avoid this conclusion. Any morality affirming universal principles requires impartiality. In glaring contrast, the intimate relationships from which we derive our identities — “the little platoons,” as Burke described them — require partiality.
Thus, either patriotism is a moral fiction or our “little platoons” are.

Or perhaps “patriotism” is a devotion to “our little platoons”?

Perturbed I was back in 2005 “by the sight of compatriots who remain vested in a foreign polity.”

And convinced I was—still am—that “healthy patriotism is associated with robust particularism – petty provincialism, if you like – and certainly not with the deracinated globalism exhibited by our GI Joes and Janes.”

Memorial-Day Message (2014)

Foreign Policy, Government, History, Homeland Security, Israel, Liberty, Military

Robert Glisson, a veteran and a longtime reader, was once asked to write an op-ed for Barely A Blog about the “Patriot Guard Riders.” The op-ed, entitled “For The Love of A Brother-In-Arms, And ‘Big Brother’ Be Damned,” was prefaced with this comment: “I do not identify with the military mission, but who can fault the humanity of the effort?”

It is the habit on the Memorial Day weekend to thank uniformed men for their sacrifice. And it is the annual custom on Barely A Blog to extend sympathies to the Americans who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations. I’m sorry they’ve been snookered into living, dying and killing for a lie. But I cannot honor that lie, or those who give their lives for it and take the lives of others in America’s many recreational wars. I mourn for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.

I am sorry for those who’ve enlisted thinking they’d fight for their countrymen and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars and assorted informal attacks. My heart hurts for you, but my worshipping at Moloch’s feet will not make you feel better, deep down.

I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war. I grew up in Israel, so I honor those men who stopped Arab armies from overrunning our homes. In 1973, we came especially close to annihilation.

I can legitimately claim to know of flesh-and-blood heroes who fought so that I could emerge from the bomb shelter (in the wars of 67 and 73) and proceed with my kid life. I always stood in their honor and wept when the sirens wailed once a year. Wherever he is, every Israeli stops on that day and stands still in remembrance. We would have been overrun by Arabs if not for those brave men who defended the homeland, and not some far-away imperial project.

But can we Americans, in 2014, make such a claim? Can we truly claim that someone killed an Iraqi, Afghani, Yemeni or Libyan so that we can … do what? Remind me?

“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can.”

How fast the so-called small government types forget that the military is government. As explained in “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program”:

“When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small. Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.”

“Classical Liberalism And State Schemes” further suggests how the military, as an arm of the state, can become antithetical to the liberty of its own citizens and the world’s citizens:

We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because (supposedly) upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.
“philanthropic” wars are transfer programs—the quintessential big-government projects, if you will. The warfare state, like the welfare state, is thus inimical to the classical liberal creed. Therefore, government’s duties in the classical liberal tradition are negative, not positive; to protect freedoms, not to plan projects. As I’ve written, “In a free society, the ‘vision thing’ is left to private individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people understand that a ‘visionary’ bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander the government (‘great purposes’ in Bush Babble), the poorer and less free the people.”

Waiting To Die On the Government’s Watch

Government, Healthcare, Military, Socialism, Taxation

“Waiting To Die On the Government’s Watch” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Why would a talented, dedicated cardiologist choose to be coffined in a medical gulag, weighed down by incompetents, his wages capped; his rewards incommensurate with his drive and dedication? He wouldn’t. Surprising as this seems to some, the best and brightest do not work for the state. Increasingly, government workers are carefully selected for the color of their complexion, for their sex and sexual or political orientation, not for their competence.

In a policy statement, the VA commissioner for Connecticut, a woman of course, crowed that applicants to her department are screened to ascertain “minimum qualifications.” “Maximum qualifications” are not required in this killer of a system. “Applicants who meet the essential level of preparation,” writes the woman, “are not excluded. The Human Resources Administrator must work to bring as many protected members into the system.” Her words. Once recruited, the needs of these precious, “protected-group members” are jealously guarded.

If “diversity” trumps talent in government hiring; so too is job security a legislated article of faith. In order to set in motion a termination or two—pursuant to public outrage over the scandal in the Phoenix Veterans Affairs facility, where as many as 40 gravely ill veterans died while waiting to be treated—Congress has had to convene to pass “The VA Accountability Bill.” In the unlikely event of a layoff, seniority is given priority over the quality of the worker. A good healthcare provider will be terminated before a tenured provider.

Layoffs are as scarce as hen’s teeth. A man has to commit mass murder before he is sacked. I wager that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan—the Jihadi who committed fratricide at Fort Hood—is still on the government’s payroll. Courtesy of The Immigration and Naturalization Service, the 9/11 assassins retained valid student visas, long after their demise. For his part, Hasan worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he terrified the patients entrusted to his care. By necessity, a private hospital (to the extent that such a thing still exists in post-Obamacare America) would have done its utmost to fire problematic personnel for fear of litigation.

It is becoming crystal clear that the rot pervades the “1,700 hospitals, clinics and other facilities” operated by the command-and-control federal government. “A common language of bureaucratic corruption” is how The Daily Beast described the routine exchanges between VA staff in several states, so far, in the course of conspiring to lie to the auditing VA inspector general, to “forge appointment records,” and to secrete away lists of soldiers who believed they were waiting for care, but were in fact waiting to die. …

… Read the complete column. “Waiting To Die On the Government’s Watch” is now on WND.

‘Keeping Track Of Which Countries The US Has Wrecked’

Healthcare, Iraq, Military, Republicans, War

On the radio, Friday, in the car, I heard Sean Hannity say that each Iraqi should have been made to pay America (which Hannity equates with the American government), in compensation for the blood our warriors shed in liberating those Iraqi ingrates.

Where does one start? How does a person’s worldview evolve to reflect the exact opposite of reality? Propaganda. You propagandize yourself as much as you propagandize others.

Mr. Hannity was suggesting a source of funds to compensate veterans for the indignities afflicted on them by Veterans Affairs Department.

Have Republicans not heard about privatization? Presumably, Mr. Hannity’s “patriotic” listeners find a suggestion of stealing from a poor people whose lives the US has destroyed way sexier than, say, privatizing that pit of perverse incentives that is the VA. It’s a socialized system much like Obama Care.

I suppose that, as Fred Reed says, “The world is full of countries, and it’s hard to keep track of which ones you’ve wrecked.”

And wreck Iraq we did. The truth is that, “More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain’s leading polling groups.” (See Reuters as well as “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey.”)

If personal stories are what you hanker after, here is the most excellent Arwa Damon’s report straight from the mouths of some sad, sad Iraqis:

Ten years on, one can easily look around Baghdad and see a veneer of normalcy. But nothing about Iraq or what it has been through is normal. The cloak of sorrow that hangs over the capital is more suffocating than ever, even if violence is slightly down.
“We’re not living,” one Iraqi colleague told me. “We’re just surviving.”
I think the ones who are good left, and only the bad people stayed here.
It’s as if the violence created a façade. People were so focused on staying alive they didn’t fully notice the corruption, suspicion and tribalism that had seeped into society and government. Now that attacks are down — and fewer Iraqis are killed every day — all that and more has risen to the surface.
Basma al-Khateeb and her two daughters, 22-year-old Sama and 14-year-old Zeina, are among the remnants of Baghdad’s elite — a family that could have left but chose to stay. Basma is an IT professional and well-known activist.
We’ve known Basma and her family for years — she is a regular guest on CNN — and have always marveled at their courage and determination, a love for country that trumped their desire to escape.
But even Basma is uttering what for her was unimaginable. “I lost hope six to seven months ago,” she said. “You don’t feel it’s home any more.”
She paused, crushed by the weight of her own words. “Did I really say that?”
“Now the fear is different,” she explained. “You don’t know who is in the next car. They look at you as if you are different, your clothes, or even your gestures, your body language is different. We’re not comfortable being around the streets.”
“I think the people changed,” her daughter Sama added. “I think the ones who are good left, and only the bad people stayed here.”
It’s such an emotional, mentally complex notion that the family struggles to clearly define it — to be an alien in your own country.
“It’s a different culture, it’s a tribal culture. Before, there was no kind of culture that was dominant.”
Now there is. The streets feel hostile, and people continue to be wary of each other.
For the young, there is no room to mentally expand. For a professional like Sama, it’s either adopt the “principles” of corruption or find yourself unemployed.
“I had hope in the beginning and then I lost it,” she says. “It was like climbing the stairs and then there’s no end to it. You have to go down the stairs again. And that is depressing and very disappointing.
“This is no place for us. Because if I stay here, I have to be corrupt also, to live, to survive.”
In another time and place, Sama might have pursued her passion for the arts. She plays the piano beautifully. It’s a dream she plans to pursue far from her homeland.
As for Zeina, who has known nothing but war, she too wants to leave. Her first memory is of violence. Her defining moment of the last 10 years was a church bombing in 2010 in which her best friend was killed.
For their mother, this is the only home she has known. “I don’t want to have another home.”
But Basma wants something better for her daughters.
“In a certain time, at a certain point, it’s best for them to leave,” she says. “For study or work … for them to find out about themselves (and) be strong. They will not be strong here.”
Tragically, so many Iraqis I know echo those same sentiments. For the vast majority of them, the defining moments of the last 10 years are not of Saddam Hussein’s trial and execution, the drafting of the constitution or dipping their fingers in purple ink in the first elections.
It is the moment they last saw their loved one, gave them that last hug or kiss goodbye — not knowing it would turn out to be such a precious moment — before they were inexplicably, harshly torn away.