4,000
[Phillip Carter,
Tuesday March 25, 2008 at 6:51am ]
Marking the moment when the 4,000th U.S. servicemember died in Iraq seems both arbitrary and macabre. Military, the 4,000th death there is no more significant than the 3,900th or 4,055th one. And I'm uncomfortable with the "deathwatch" aspect to these kinds of stories -- and the way the media generally focuses coverage on U.S.casualties, rather than everything else going on in Iraq.However, I also believe in shining a light on the human cost of this war (both for us and the Iraqis). And I generally think that soldiers tell their stories the best. This devastating story in the New York Times does both, offering us the words of six soldiers who died in Iraq during the past year. It's a difficult article to read, but a necessary one.
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1. The "deathwatch" is the inevitable feature of a U.S. news cycle that works in hours and days trying to cover an American militia fighting a chaotic multi-sided low intensity conflict/civil war where "campaigns" take weeks and results are measured in months.
2. The U.S. news organs, by and large, understand the players and the game little better than most Americans do, and about as well as most U.S. politicians. So there is little incentive to try and cover stories, say, about Iraq's economy or lack of same. This is caused and exaggerated by what I understand is the most total incapacity for U.S. reporters to get out from under the American military umbrella. The result is a dependence on Iraqi stringers for Iraqi news - or more often no news a all. OTOH, American casualties are reported by MNF-I in the comfort of the Green Zone. So there you have it.
The U.S. public doesn't know about IRaq and for the most part doesn't care: it's just another episode of squalid wog-bashing, the Philippine Insurrection with tac air. The fact that what's getting reported are the combat deaths and not, say, the dollars being spent per day or what they are buying, suggests to me that Americans in general see this war as a kind of "fire-and-murder-news" story, and care about the "human cost" only in the way they care about the freeway accident that killed three during drive time this morning.
Or the Iraqi casualties and refugees.
If some haven't noticed, I have refrained from posting because this whole thing sickens me, and I would rather think about something else than watching bodies be stacked like cordwood.
However, FD caught me short with this last paragraph, for I too began to relegate the Iraq conflict to, "oh that again."
I'm not sure I can take reading those letters, as good, or profound as they may be...this war has sickened me, and I have hung that albatross around Bush and Cheney's neck...let them live with it, the damned, unholy bastards wanted that war they can have it.
Me...me I want to look at the daisys in the field and regain some perspective on life.
I'm sorry FD, but I will not invest any more of myself to the emotional weight that is Iraq. I need to take care of me, now.
And completely ignored by our corporate-owned media in their celebration of the "success" of the "surge" is the role of the cease-fire of the Mahdi Army. This was responsible for a LOT of the decrease in violence for the past year. It was a huge step. And we ignored it. And we proclaimed the drop in violence was mainly due to the so-called surge.
The number of our troops deployed is still at "surge" levels, but the voluntary, self-proclaimed cease-fire appears to be over. All hell is breaking loose.
Ooops. Guess Bushco (of which McCain industries is a wholly-owned subsidiary) got it completely wrong again. Who could have foreseen that? After all, their track record of success is... well, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, right?
I said four years ago that we were only doing enough to "not lose just yet" and that the president's lack-of-plan would lead to defeat. Once again I prayed to be proven wrong. Once again I was not.
Petraeus can suck it.
Peace Entertainment
A young woman recalls, to an assembled group of those concerned, memories of her brother, a Marine, now gone less than a year.
Painful to listen fore in her voice one hears the deep grief of loss – a cry from within a vacuum never to be filled.
My brother was special. We played and laughed. Together. Remember he is so young, like me,
with smooth skin and wide eyes.
Our skin is not like yours. Yours is older and past this war. Ours is taught, smooth and clear in color. Without the wrinkles or spots or translucent lumps that dominate yours. We have no need to cover it with the Olay, Lancôme, and Avon. It is young. It has all the protection it needs. Invincible, it can not be penetrated or pealed. Not burned by fire or removed by steel. Held taught by itself without your help.
And those wide eyes! Can be caught by a piece of the truth. Flattered by the certainty of it all. Sold on the worth that would become mission. His eyes now forever wide open to all that was before him.
Think he wants to buy a truck, finish school. Maybe have a future different. Something that would appeal to those wide open eyes. Other than that over the horizon in a tank or just on foot – cavalry or dismounted as it is like to say.
In a strange place, he is and with people like our Indians; but, he’d know and that didn’t matter. He had the mission that could be achieved after it was accomplished.
Could be achieved, it was accomplished, can be achieved. It is worth the cost.
He has a special number – it lies between zero and what has been added after the notices were signed by hand. It is given to him as a special gift from that which we have built or may be that which we had left behind.
My presentation is complete, she says, and she receives from the group the warm applause normally reserved for a concert given by Barbara Streisand or revival sermon by Billy Graham.
And I wonder what did we really hear.
"Several thoughts:
1. The "deathwatch" is the inevitable feature of a U.S. news cycle that works in hours and days trying to cover an American militia fighting a chaotic multi-sided low intensity conflict/civil war where "campaigns" take weeks and results are measured in months. "
Not that, FDChief - if the five years of war were succeeding, US news would have lots of good stories, generally in the style of 'three years ago this ground was soaked in blood, today [pan camera] children play and people walk the streets smiling, reveling in the new....'.
The thing is that any historical piece would have to lie like Baghdad Bush, or make things far too clear to the American people. Can you imagine the impact of 4- or 5-year old clips of various pundits blithely predicting imminent flowers and rice?
What in the blazes is that mess? Is that a transcript? Very confused.
Maybe. It all depends on perceptions of whether or not Just War principles apply. 350K dead in WW2 were not politicized. But, then, Eric, welcome to my war—Vietnam—where 58K dead are forevermore politicized.
You may be bothered all you like, but the fact is that Afghanistan is commonly viewed as the "good" war, whereas for more and more of the populace, Iraq is viewed as the "bad" war. Casualties in a "bad" war will always be viewed through a political prism and will never be as acceptable as those in a "good" war. If you believe as I do that the so-called Operation Iraqi Freedom (a grotesque term in and of itself) was an unnecessary and fruitless endeavor accompanied by a bodyguard of lies concocted by an inferior president and a host of self-interested henchmen, then, yes, I think one might see where each and every death would be politicized. One death was too many; the thought of four thousand Americans who should be walking the face of the earth today is unbearably sad.
All wars are not created equal. The deaths are the same. The fine young people who are the fallen are the same. But the motives and the execution are not the same.
And to contradict Phil Carter: we NEED the deathwatch, if for no other reason than to constantly remind us of the costs associated with electing inferior people.
Would they be, though?
I can concede that most soldiers' deaths in war are not due to targeted assassinations, so as a matter of odds, the same soldier killed in Iraq may have lived if he was instead deployed to Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Darfur - even if his or her mission had the same degree of risk in either place that it had in Iraq. But I can't concede that our soldiers who've deployed to Iraq over the last 5 years, if President Bush had chosen to maintain the pre-OIF sanctioning and 'containment' of Saddam-led Iraq through his administration, would have been kept out of harm's way. More likely, they would have been sent into harm's way for other missions in the War on Terror, which may or may not have suffered from the same unbearably sad 'bad war' unpopularity inflicted upon OIF. Deployed somewhere other than Iraq, maybe fewer of our soldiers would have died, but maybe the same number, maybe more.
Dunno about the other two, but Darfur, yes, just as futile as Iraq. Darfur isn't the result of Bad People going out one day and deciding to do Bad Things any more than Iraq is about Bad Wogs Can't Rule Themselves. Both places are the result of generations of misgovernment and old colonial fuckups. Fighting for peace and democratic rule in either place - without the superhuman investment in economic development, education and civic virtue not to mention a complete alteration in human nature - is like fucking for virginity.
Publius mentions that the WW2 dead were not politicized and as usual he's right. BUT - not all WW2 dead were created equal. And the guys who died at places like Monte Cassino or the Schnee Eifel WERE remembered as futile sacrifices. My father, 8 today, still cannot speak the name of GEN Mark Clark, the theatrecommander in Italy 1943-45 without a curse. He hates the man for his wasteful sacrifice of GI lives.
So long as the official explanations and apologies for Iraq are seen and can be seen as a tissue of lies this will go on.
Just to clarify that Pop and I are not currently defying biology.
I can concede that most soldiers' deaths in war are not due to targeted assassinations,"
I know I shouldn't respond to tripe like this, but it's just so very enraging to have someone playing mind games like this with soldiers lives.
It's very noble that you can concede this. And yes, they probably would all have died in some other way as part of God's master plan so let's just dry our eyes and move on. After all, they signed on the dotted line, didn't they? From the feel of your writing I am betting you never signed on that dotted line yourself.
In reality, the fact that the Bush gang is so preoccupied with Iran and Afghanistan is just another telling indication of how little they understand the problem. Their real concerns are purely political and selfish, their methods are completely ineffective and misguided.
Terrorism is a problem of people, not places, and in both the places where they've allegedly been fighting terrorism, what they're really doing is practicing it themselves and exacerbating the real problems. It's a just a stupid gang war.
I remember watching this as a GI Joe-loving 10- and 11-year-old and thinking "Man, we gotta be whipping their ass". I just couldn't figure it out. I had no grasp of the political context or the history of the place, no notion that we might be seen, not as the good guys of D-Day and Inchon but as the replacements taking over for the hated French colonial occupiers.
And I wonder what did we really hear.
It is what went thru my head as I listened to a 20ish young woman speak on behalf of her brother who had been blown away by an IED. It was given at one of those events found in a well healed church where even god must dress. She would agree with you judgement of blazes, confused and mess. But in a different context with no transcript.
She would agree with your judgement of blazes, confused and mess. But in a different context with no transcript.
That's an experience we share. Along with the attitude that when our time came, we'd be there, unlike those "worthless hippies and yippies" my father used to rail on about. . . And when the time did come. . .
Oh soooo different from what I'm telling the next generation in my family today (or anybody else of that age who will listen). That might be considered a real milestone. . .
One thing I'll say here is that, when one thinks about it, 4K over five years is a drop in the bucket in comparison to other conflicts. I saw tons of body bags in Vietnam—where 4K was much less than one year—but that pales in comparison to WW2. The difference of course is in "Just War" and in outcomes.
The truly interesting thing about Iraq is that, given reality as we've seen it, 4K is enough to kind of stay under the radar of the American people, which thus allows political leaders freedom to continue doing whatever the hell they want.
Sad commentary on the American people, IMO.
Whenever some tight ass from the MEU three shop came over to our shipboard JIC, to talk about milestones for some such operation/canine equestrian extravaganza, we would answer back with the word mill stones as a substitute....great fun with inflexible types...not that you'd get to use it much in Portugal...just saying
Yea, 4,000 isn't so much in the great sceme of things as far as wars and the fate of nations go. But 4,000 for a strategic disaster that never had a chance in the first place, that is there never was any rational "strategy" at all, is a high price to pay.
Add to that of course all the colateral damage to the country in terms of lost honor, prestige, moral standing, legitimacy, not to mention $$$$ and it comes out to a strategic disaster worse that Vietnam imo. This leaving aside the subject of what it has done to our military as a social entity/organization . . .
Vietnam, and I know you and Fasteddiez may not agree with me, did make a certain amount of strategic sense and classified as a limited war with limited objectives was coherent from a strategic theory perspective. That the North Vietnamese were not going to throw in the towel no matter what of course should have entered into the equation, but who in DC was aware of that in 1965-66?
As to my absence, I was very much disappointed by that incident back in December and the way PC dealt with it/ignorred it. Still you guys are a very interesting bunch, so I didn't so much go away as remain silent. Perhaps it's time for me to speak out again.
Actually, Seydlitz, I do agree with you, which is why I've not placed Vietnam into the same box with Iraq. Same rationale with Afghanistan, although we've managed to totally screw the pooch there. Afghanistan may there be most analogous to Vietnam. Entry on legitimate grounds, coherent rationale for doing so, with grievously flawed execution, militarily and politically. My gripe with Vietnam isn't really the fact that we attempted to do it, but more with the inepitude of our approach and our inability to extricate ourselves once it was clear the patient had died. I see this in Afghanistan now. And, of course in Iraq, which does not meet any Just War criteria, we're fiddle-fucking around and thus incurring needless casualities.
Comparison of casualties in various wars: x percentage of those killed in Vietnam and Afghanistan could be termed as legitimate, if that's the right word. OTOH, zero, nada, zip point squat of casualities in Iraq are legitimate.
Lesson learned: Once you're there—for whatever reason—do what you have to do, do it intelligently and get out rapidly. Minimize casualties by taking as much time to plan exit strategies as you do planning entry.
Another lesson learned: We tend not to have very smart people at high levels in our government and military. Oh, yes, lots of 'em are "intelligent," but far too many negate their intelligence with ideology, emotion, political scheming, preconceived notions as well as outright malfeasance and/or nonfeasance. Case in point: Nixon and Kissinger taking four years to sell the South Vietnamese down the river, thus costing tons of lives. And you military guys serve under the same sorts of people, only you call 'em generals. Don't believe it? Then why is it that in 2008, many of your generals are still searching the plains of Iraq for the GSFG?
Incidentally, I've already forgotten whatever "that incident back in December" was, if I even knew about it. My advice to you is don't take this internet blog shit all that seriously. Keep on postin', my man.
Very nice post. Well, that's what keeps me hanging around. Respectfully agree.
As for December, for me it was a natural reflex . . . kinda "counting the flags" type ole spook reflex . . .
Following pointmen, as if on auto pilot, is to be discouraged. A relatively distant, accordionated technique with attendant agressive flankers is mandated as the earthly undulations will allow. As "El Aurens" said in David Lean's epic "It is written," (pointing to his forehead) "Here."
If the Meanies who face you seek to collapse your frontage; ensure that you give them a target as filled with air...or relative nothingness. as is possible.
Perhaps they will wait, and ponder their next possibility, "El Cid and his Lancers," Ah yes,....That's the ticket.
On this site and others, many a time and oft, at this Rialto they have rated me, and virtually spat on my Fascist Feldgrau gabardine. But I strive but to give them but air as a target, and wouldn't you know it, most of the initiating fire has been AIR...heated air to be sure. What does that cause but an over pressure?
My favorite Air gun, however is Anton Chigurh;s captive bolt pistol.....Swift, Silent, Deadly. And as to his Buster Brown Do' which seems to be a mystery? Sheeeeiiiiittt, I sported me a haircut like that in Texas in the seventies, Houston to be sure, but I was stylin'.
Spot on, as always. Too often folks see piss poor execution and think that indicates a lack of validity of the conflict itself. Somewhere along the line, the guys and gals we put in charge of things in the US seem to forget that their parents or school teachers once told them, "If you are going to do something, then do it right." Or, maybe, they came from upbringings where this simple lesson was never offered.
Losing didn't means our original motives in RVN were wrong. It simply meant we lost. Conversely, we were wrong to invade Iraq, and we compound that error by the almost religious "beliefs" of GWB and Co that all we need to do is apply a bit more destruction to make it ultimately become "right".
Al