American Values
I recall posting a while back about the highest ranking office in the US military system to be prosecuted over the many and various American torture and abuse incidents – it was a lieutenant.
That’s what happens when it involves them, it looks like a completely different story if something happens to one of their own.
Nine officers, including up to four generals, should be held accountable for missteps in the aftermath of the friendly fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, a Pentagon investigation will recommend.
Senior defense officials said Friday the Defense Department inspector general will cite a range of errors and inappropriate conduct as the military probed the former football star’s death on the battlefront in 2004, said one defense official.
Tens upon tens of thousands of innocent civilians get killed, millions of Iraqis become insta-homeless, the numbers of the maimed, orphaned, and widowed, are uncountable, Arab prisoners are tortured and killed in US interrogation/detention facilities, DU is spread around an entire region, people are kidnapped and disappeared by American intelligence services as part of their extraordinary rendition program, and we don’t see anything at all like what is coming down the pipes over the accidental killing of an American football player who signed up.
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Unfortunately, friendly fire incidents DO happen. It’s not like you can go back through history and find that George Washington’s troops or any other troops throughout history didn’t ever make a mistake.
But it’s okay when Ward Churchill tells men in uniform to frag their officers or calls the victims of 9/11 little Eichmanns, and the terrorists who fight for fascist theocracy ‘freedom fighters’.
Right is wrong, wrong is right, there’s nothing left to fight or die for, is that correct? Shameful.
Friendly fire incidents were relatively common in both WWI and WWII…but you guys are always long on hot air and short on memory and historical fact.
“But it’s okay when Ward Churchill tells men in uniform to frag their officers or calls the victims of 9/11 little Eichmanns, and the terrorists who fight for fascist theocracy ‘freedom fighters’. Right is wrong, wrong is right, there’s nothing left to fight or die for, is that correct? Shameful.”
Can anybody connect this odd interpolation with Stageleft’s post, or is this poor soul channelling the spirit of Pat Buchanan again?
I am confused, friendly fire incidents do happen – yes. What does that have to do with up to four generals being held accountable when an American football player is killed in a friendly fire incident and a few enlisted men and one lieutenant get held accountable for torture and war crimes, and damned few, if any, people are held accountable for any of the other things I mentioned?
In the first place, a brigadier general in charge of Abu Ghraib lost her star, and was removed from command. If you knew anything about the military, you would know that this is a death knell for her career. Secondly, no one should be held accountable for a friendly fire accident because it is, by its nature an accident. If there was a coverup and/or misstatements regarding the incident, that is an entirely different thing and has always been against the UCMJ. DU has been studied intensly and is not the problem it is made out to be, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s were killed, but by their own government and since the regieme was tossed, by their fellow countrymen in the guise of religious fervor. As to the dissappeared charge, that is the story, but the proof? How silly a post you have put up. Save your anger for those fostering the ideology that killed 2996 Americans and anyone else of that ilk.
“Save your anger for those fostering the ideology that killed 2996 Americans and anyone else of that ilk.”
You mean George Bush and the neo-conservatives that decided it was wise to go galloping into a war in Iraq based on outright lies and cherry-picked intelligence?
Oh, you bet I’ll be doing that.
Lost her star? Ruined her career? Poor Baby! That really is rough. Gosh, I thought someone higher than an LT should have gone to prison for Abu Ghraib. It was torture and war crimes after all – the same thing that many in the former Baathist regime were imprisoned or killed for after the fall of Saddam.
But I guess a knee jerk hatred for all things Muslim can justify anything eh?
I haven’t seen a news article about a general losing her star Aristophanes, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist but the quick web search I did just now didn’t turn one up, got a link?
Secondly, even if a general did lose a star over the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib (where some did die under interrogation – check the archives, I’ve posted about it) how does that compare to up to four generals being named in the friendly fire death of an American football player?
Further still, I think that all friendly fire incidents should be investigated and if somebody was, for example, negligent and someone else died they most certainly should be held responsible – shrugging and saying “war is hell” is not helpful or productive.
Even further down the road, if your 2996 number is the WTC deaths then Afghanistan, which I supported by the way, answered them, if it is the number of US deaths in Iraq, the number is above 3200 and climbing and their deaths live on The Deciders shoulders.
I suppose you can define silly anyway you’d like, and if you call pointing out an obvious double standard silly then feel free to do so, personally, I think you’re dead wrong.
Posts like these make me think of something a man smarter than I, Victor Davis Hanson, once wrote: “Abstract ethics or soapbox lectures demanding superhuman perfection mean little without deeds.”
Reading a post like this is like listening to callers on sports radio who know what is best for the team and what the team should do without ever having played a down, put on the skates, stood in the batter’s box, been fouled while driving the basket, or put their life on the line for something bigger than themselves. No deeds, no value.
Semper Fi.
You’ve got the lofty, wounded nobility thing down pretty good, jcrue. Problem is, Stageleft did his time in the forces. Nice try, though.
Yeah, because it takes super human effort to understand that people who torture ought to be punished, no matter who they are or what side they play for.
And SL isn’t the only one that has done the things in your pissy list, meat wrench.
let the childish name-calling begin, thanks for setting the standard, “mikie”.
balbulican, I would love to find out where and with whom the esteemed author of this post served. I played hockey on a Canadian military team at SHAPE in Belgium and would be very happy to find out that he served with old teammates of mine. Maybe then we can begin to compare apples to apples…
If the idea that more officers are potentially gonna be disciplined for the accidental killing of an American football player in a US Army uniform and the subsequent cover ups than were disciplined for the events in the US Abu Ghraib interrogation facility doesn’t both you jcrue just come right out and say so.
Personally I think it has a lot to say about a cultures mindset when that sort of thing is OK, but hey, that’s just one fellas opinion ain’t it?
Why don’t we let a few veterans speak to this jcrue:
What about their deeds? They disagree with you, have they no value?
– are they arm chair quarterbacking?
Oh they do, all what, fifty of them? I think they have very valid points of view, in their case I just happen to disagree with them.
I happen to know the much greater majority do not agree with those whiners – they re-enlisted.
When less than 1% of the total force comes home and speaks out in opposition like your pet vets there, it is obvious they do not represent the larger whole.
We had about 5% disgruntled individuals and shit birds in every unit I served so to see these guys with their new found popularity is to be expected.
Ooh, lookie these guys are against the return to Iraq!!!! We are validated, we are validated!!!!
So what?
Learn some history, there has always been that 1% regardless of the war.
An interesting progression:
[1] They have valid points of view
[2] I disagree with them
[3] They are whiners
Did anyone else just hear a gong?
The Wrong Army
Author Jeff Edwards
This article was written by retired Chief Petty Officer and award winning novelist, Jeff Edwards.
America’s military can win wars. We’ve done it in the past, and I have absolute confidence that we’ll continue to do it in the future. We’ve won fights in which we possessed overwhelming technological superiority (Desert Storm)
as well as conflicts in which we were the technical underdogs (the American Revolution)
We’ve crossed swords with numerically superior foes, and with militaries a fraction of the size of our own. We’ve battled on our own soil (Civil War)
and on the soil of foreign lands(Iwo Jima)
On the sea
Under the sea
And in the skies
We’ve even engaged in a bit of cyber-combat, way out there on the electronic frontier.
At one time or another, we’ve done battle under just about every circumstance imaginable, armed with everything from muskets
to cruise missiles.
And, somehow, we’ve managed to do it all with the wrong Army.
That’s right, America has the wrong Army. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. We have the wrong Army. It’s too small; it’s not deployed properly; it’s inadequately trained, and it doesn’t have the right sort of logistical support. It’s a shambles. I have no idea how those guys even manage to fight.
Now, before my brothers and sisters of the OD green persuasion get their fur up, I have another revelation for you We also have the wrong Navy.
And if you want to get down to brass tacks, we’ve got the wrong Air Force
The wrong Marine Corps
And the wrong Coast Guard
Don’t believe me? Pick up a newspaper or turn on your television.
In the past week, I’ve watched or read at least a dozen commentaries on the strength, size, and deployment of our military forces. All of our uniform services get called on the carpet for different reasons, but our critics unanimously agree that we’re doing pretty much everything wrong
Ramsey Clark–George Clooney–Richard Gere
I think it’s sort of a game. The critics won’t tell you what the game is called, so I’ve taken the liberty of naming it myself. I call it the ‘No Right Answer’ game. It’s easy to play, and it must be a lot of fun because politicos and journalists can’t stop playing it.
I’ll teach you the rules.
No matter how the U.S. military is organized, it’s the wrong force. Actually, that’s the only rule in this game. We don’t really need any other rules, because that one applies in all possible situations. Allow me to demonstrate…
Desert Storm Jet Fighter Pl
If the Air Force’s fighter jets are showing their age, critics will tell us that Air Force leaders are mismanaging their assets, and endangering the safety of their personnel.
If the Air Force attempts to procure new fighter jets, they are shopping for toys and that money could be spent better elsewhere.
Are you getting the hang of the game yet? It’s easy; keeping old planes is the wrong answer, but getting new planes is also the wrong answer. There is no right answer, not ever.
Isn’t that fun?It works everywhere.
When the Army is small, it’s TOO small. Then we start to hear phrases like ‘over-extended’ or ’spread too thin,’ and the integrity of our national defense is called into question.
When the Army is large, it’s TOO large, and it’s an unnecessary drain on our economy. Terms like ‘dead weight,’ and ‘dead wood’ get thrown around.
I know what you’re thinking. We could build a medium-sized Army, and everyone would be happy Think again!!! A medium-sized Army is too small to deal with large-scale conflicts, and too large to keep military spending properly muzzled. The nay sayers will attack any middle of the road solution anyway, on the grounds that it lacks a coherent strategy.
SO SMALL IS WRONG
LARGE IS WRONG
AND MEDIUM SIZE IS WRONG
Now you’re starting to understand the game. Is this fun, or what? No branch of the military is exempt
When the Navy builds aircraft carriers, we are told that we really need small, fast multipurpose ships.
When the Navy builds small, fast multi-mission ships (AKA the Arleigh Burke class), we’re told that blue water ships are poorly suited for littoral combat, and we really need brown water combat ships.
The Navy’s answer, the Littoral Combat, isn’t even off the drawing boards yet, and the critics are already calling it pork barrel politics and questioning the need.
The fun never stops when we play the ‘No Right Answer’ game. If we centralize our military infrastructure, the experts tell us that we are vulnerable to attack. We’re inviting another Pearl Harbor.
If we decentralize our infrastructure, we’re sloppy and overbuilt, and the BRAC experts break out the calculators and start dismantling what they call our excess physical capacity.
If we leave our infrastructure unchanged, we are accused of becoming stagnant in a dynamic world environment.
Even the lessons of history are not sacrosanct. When we learn from the mistakes we made in past wars, we are accused of failing to adapt to emerging realities. When we shift our eyes toward the future, the critics quickly tell us that we’ve forgotten our history and we are therefore doomed to repeat it.
If we somehow manage to assimilate both past lessons and emerging threats, we’re informed that we lack focus.
Where does it come from: This default assumption that we are doing the wrong thing, no matter what we happen to be doing? How did our military wind up in a zero-sum game?
We can prevail on the field of battle, but we can’t win a war of words where the overriding assumption is that we are always in the wrong.
I can’t think of a single point in history where our forces were of the correct size, the correct composition, correctly deployed, and appropriately trained all at the same time.
Pick a war, any war. (For that matter, pick any period of peace.) Then dig up as many official and unofficial historical documents, reports, reconstruction’s, and commentaries as you can. For every unbiased account you uncover, you’ll find three commentaries by revisionist historians who cannot wait to tell you how badly the U.S. military bungled things.
evisionist Histo
To hear them tell it we could take lessons in organization and leadership from the Keystone Kops.
We really only have one defense against this sort of mudslinging. Success. When we fight, we win, and that’s got to count for something. When asked to comment on Operation Desert Storm, the U.S. Army’s Lieutenant General Tom Kelly reportedly said, “Iraq went from the fourth-largest army in the world, to the second-largest army in Iraq in 100 hours.â€
In my opinion, it’s hard to argue with that kind of success, but critics weren’t fazed by it. Because no matter how well we fought, we did it with the wrong Army.
I’d like to close with an invitation to those journalists, analysts, experts and politicians who sit up at night dreaming up new ways to criticize our armed forces.
The next time you see a man or woman in uniform, stop for ten seconds and reflect upon how much you owe that person, and his or her fellow Sailors, Marines, Soldiers, and Airmen.
Then say, “Thank you.â€
I’m betting you won’t even have to explain the reason. Our Service members are not blind or stupid.
They know what they’re risking. They know what they’re sacrificing. They’ve weighed their wants, their needs, and their personal safety against the needs of their nation, and made the decision to serve. They know that they deserve our gratitude, even if they rarely receive it
Two words — that’s all I ask.
“Thank you.â€
If that’s too hard, if you can’t bring yourself to acknowledge the dedication, sincerity and sacrifice of your defenders, then I have a backup plan for you:
Put on a uniform and show us how to do it right
Author Jeff Edwards
“a gong”?
Taking the debate to a new level. OK, I’ll bite, lemme get my kids’ lunch pail and we’ll continue the discussion by the merry-go-round.