Text here. I’m glad he said he’s sorry – I figured everyone was sorry, maybe some people didn’t figure that but, having seen the apology, they now do. He even gestured in the direction of a reason for risking so many civilian lives: “protect the Afghan people [...] brighter future [...],” which is appreciated, though vague, and not his job. His job is to carry out policy, and, under his direction, a terrible operational mistake was made. We all make mistakes, rarely with missiles.
But while mistakes were obviously made in executing policy, policy is deliberate. The killing was accidental, risking the killings was a decision made towards a purpose, and I would like to hear someone who made this decision explain what, precisely, this purpose is. It needs to be more precise than promises of a “brighter future” or “gaining the momentum” or “defeating terror” or “fighting them over there so blah blah blah” or any of the other gauzy reasons which have been offered for bombing people over the last decade or so, because, if the people in charge of strategy actually believe any of that, we are so fucked. Again: what, precisely, are we hoping to accomplish?
February 27, 2010 at 12:21 pm
The American Empire has reached a catatonic state. It cannot begin to do anything, and it cannot stop doing anything. Best to get used to it, I suppose.
February 27, 2010 at 3:48 pm
The purpose? We can’t withdraw from Iraq unless we distract the press corps from its Big Shiny by blowing shit up in some other place. Like when we invaded Grenada because a Marine barracks in Lebanon was blown up.
It’s like taking candy from a retarded baby. (Hi Sarah!!!!!)
February 27, 2010 at 5:00 pm
The US Military Industrial Complex is a malignant tumor. Its only purpose is to find a suitable target, then invade and consume its host. Rinse and repeat. Its mindless in its execution – terror is both the rationale for and the result of its use.
It’s not for nothing that the “War on Terror” has no readily defined enemies or precise measures of success that might possibly lead to anyone declaring “victory.” We get the “freedom” we demand, and evidently we’re just not too damn demanding these days.
February 27, 2010 at 9:02 pm
February 27, 2010 at 9:15 pm
February 28, 2010 at 7:32 am
Ironic that Eisenhower first coined the term miltary industrial complex (which he himself was no doubt complicit in creating, but at least had the morality to feel some remorse for) and warned of its dangers in 1960, and within 10 years it was already being unleashed at home to put down citizen protests concerning its use.
Perhaps none of that should be surprising, but the fact that the baby boom generation, who fought it so vehemently at the time, would come to embrace it so totally as they grew older and turned into their parents definitely should.
Goes to show, the true malignancy affects us most right here at home, attacking the neural circuits first. And yeah, I’m a boomer too (sigh)!
February 28, 2010 at 8:54 am
Boomers suffered the sin of moral arrogance. We felt superior to our elders, telling ourselves we were more enlightened. A few of us were, I suppose, and they probably led the rest of us through the positive social movements of the 60s.
The test of Boomers was the 80s election. Too many of us didn’t bother to vote, I think. First string Boomer born in the second 1/2 of the ’40s, were 30 and over, and created yuppie-ism.
And… oh well.
February 28, 2010 at 8:59 am
From the article, Behind the Boomer Bullshit, that you linked to:
“So, I’m a bit angry this week even though I love my parents and even though I actually do have respect for my elders despite the hypocrisy of this rant. I know that no harm was meant, but can I at least appeal to the Boomers to shut the fuck up? At least get the fuck out of the way, how about?”
He sounds exactly like us in the 60s/70s. Some things never change. If it’s any consolation to him, we’re dying off diligently and dutifully.
February 27, 2010 at 6:34 pm
The following was written at the conservative Idiots Are Mostly Us forum where I hang out dispensing unwelcome insight and wisdom. We were discussing our invasion of Iraq, but it fits this situation too, just not so snugly:
It’s an interesting rationale:
If we go in and incite a spate of deaths, some directly, some indirectly, it might be better than if we let y’all kill each other instead.
In doing so, we’ll also directly cause the deaths of several thousands of our soldiers, effectively ruin or at least grossly mar the quality of life of tens of thousands of seriously injured USA soldiers, and we will expend an enormous amount of largely irretrievable wealth in the process. Not the wealth of financial instruments, but the physical wealth of intricately fabricated material and the energy to use that raw material.
Because if we go over there and stir things up so that hundreds of thousands of people die, are maimed, or flee in exile, some of them as a direct result of our actions, some of them indirectly, the consequent results might — *might* — be better if we hadn’t invaded your nation.
February 27, 2010 at 6:36 pm
my father wrote an op-ed for either the NY Times or The Nation in 83ish when we accidently shot down an Iranian civilian airline killing 300 or so folks.
at the time, i reagan took “full responsibility” for this terrible error. it occurred after a US gunboat had been attacked in the gulf, and the captains of the various gunboats had been put on high alert. the details are worth reexploring, but the upshot of my dad’s essay was this: if you put a missile laden gunboat under civilian airspace during a time of high tension, and even by mistake you shoot down a civilian aircraft what you are doing is committing murder. taking responsibility for that is tantamount to admitting to committing murder, and thus our man ronnie was copping to that crime whether he knew it or not.
every time we kill a bunch of civilians when we have PURELY BY CHOICE decided to go into an area where we know the people we are fighting hide amongst civilians…it ain’t a mistake. it’s a feature.
we are in afghanistan doing various things. one of those things is murdering civilians. to apologize for such a thing is ionesco-level absurd. the rigth thing to do woudl be to say to the afghanis “look guys, we are going to murder a whole bunch of you but maybe the final result will be in your favor. expect a few dead cousins.”
put that way, it seems like maybe most afghanis wouldn’t take that deal, much as they hate the taliban.
February 27, 2010 at 6:52 pm
what if jesus had been president on sept 11 instead of bush. he would have forgiven the terrorists and not gone to war and then the rest of the world would prolly still like us and even most of the terrorists would be like forget about it.
its sad if u think about it b/c we can look back and see the wisdom of his teaching now and what we should have done but still so many ppl just reject it. love ur enemies. how many more times does jesus have to be proven right for ppl to listen.
February 27, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Jesus would be impeached me for being soft on terror.
February 27, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Why is my avatar the only one that isn’t sad?
February 28, 2010 at 5:19 am
doofus looks happy.
February 27, 2010 at 8:34 pm
avatar check
February 27, 2010 at 9:34 pm
[...] Gen. McChrystal is sad about civilian casualties, well, there’s only one way to avoid civilian casualties: DON’T FIGHT A FUCKING LAND [...]
February 27, 2010 at 10:14 pm
You know, I’m still waiting for an apology. I haven’t heard Obama bin Laden apologixe for his actions which resulted in the greatest man-caused disater(sp) that this country has ever known…
That Maj. Gen McCrystal *(sp) [his rank is prob. wrong too] apologized to the Afgan people is nice, the Afgan people like it or not, are still at war with the rest of the world. We might not be SOVIET (read COMMUNIST) but we are still in their territory firing weapons and trying to find somebody (instead of trying to spead the truth of communism to their wonderfoul country…)
Editorez, you miss the mark here. This isn’t about ‘some innocent third-world country’ this is about a country that has a history, noy thru the US fault; of distrusting the great powers of the world. Used to be, (when they were reading newspapers back in the eighties) the Big Bad Communists were the enema.
Now we, with our Big Bad President (who upscaled the war far past the last BIG BAD PRESIDENT) are seeking to destroy their way of life.
The Afghan way of life is to grow poppies for us to inject (as I am sure you enjoy to do) in our veins to get away from our responsiblity(sp) for our vices and their consequences… Why doesn’t the Big O
Just legalize it?
Sorry, you are a fool, and if the current strategy to disrupt the drug traffic in Afghanaistan doesn’t fit into your ‘World-View’ why don’t you move their and hep ()sic with the harvest?
February 28, 2010 at 5:18 am
Stunned, delayed applause, then a standing ovation.
February 28, 2010 at 8:10 am
Ahh, another military apologist shape shifter is afoot. Which is the boogey man here? Is it “Obama” bin Laden (that was really clever!), the evil Afghans who are variously “at war with the rest of the world (funny, I’m not aware that they’re occupying ANY foreign territory)” AND nefariously infecting the world with their evil opium poppies, or the ever elusive (and ALWAYS convenient) “communists.”
Aside from the fact that their growing of opium poppies would have no effect whatsoever were US customers not so absolutely insatiable in their appetites, let me suggest that if we were all to get one good big national “fix,” maybe we’d stop seeing turbaned boogeymen under every bed.
As far as terrorist incidents go, I’d reckon that the body count since 9-11 to be about what? 1000-1 in our favor? Probably more like 10,000-1, although we’ll never know, cause guess what? The military, not surprisingly, doesn’t really track that kind of shit, as “terrorists (who are, by definition, anyone who falls in the crosshairs)” don’t count. Wonder why?
As far as moving, might I suggest that the US Army and Marine Corps (in particular) have really quite lenient recruiting standards these days. Don’t let a little thing like age, extra weight, a criminal record, or whatever deter you in your pursuit to visit foreign nations, meet their people, and KILL them. It’s really be the most rewarding thing you can ever do in life.
February 27, 2010 at 10:25 pm
I’m Voltron, so I make mistakes with missiles all the time, but yeah I could see how that could be annoying. Like I tell my customer care center to tell the people that I “save” with my laser cannons to make at least one empathetic statement and to say the clients name twice during the call so long as it doesn’t last longer then two minutes. But, yeah. I’m Voltron.
February 27, 2010 at 11:03 pm
That’s why everybody votes for Voltron!@ ;)
February 28, 2010 at 10:16 am
So now we’re pretending not to know why we went to war in Afghanistan?
Really?
Hokay.
February 28, 2010 at 11:47 am
I know why we went to war in Afghanistan, but that was about a decade ago. Things have changed. Osama emigrated. His hosts have had their noses bloodied. Once you are there, you can always find some reason to stay, but I’m hard-pressed to think of a currently-valid reason which compares with 9/11. Maybe it exists and I’m stupid, but most of what I hear describes some kind of free-form ideological/civil war against zealot militants in Asia so that neighboring countries don’t fall like proverbial dominoes. I don’t know how this ends, but I’d bet against ‘cleanly’ and ‘well’.
February 28, 2010 at 7:21 pm
1. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
2. Yeah, Yemen, Somalia, any mountainous hard to penetrate region will do for ‘a hiding. He could be in Appalachia, might as well be. That’s why you can’t be at war with a tactic it’s not a time/space issue, it’s a strategy.
3. I’m Voltron, so yeah, there’s that.
4. We broke Afghanistan, so we kind of bought it. If you leave those people back to the Taliban and Opium Gangs, not cool. It’s kind of an Old West problem of bringing justice and security enforcement to farflung areas, much like the compound in Road Warrior v. Apocalyptic Biker Gang.
February 28, 2010 at 12:31 pm
As I recall, our mission was to bomb them back into the Stone Age. Mission accomplished (although I also recall some saying we were simply bombing a Stone Age culture into a smoother, pea-gravel Neolithic puree), we now seem to be working to keep them stoned.
February 28, 2010 at 11:46 am
March 1, 2010 at 3:25 am
I see no moral issue at all with our military continuing to kill civilians in Afghanistan until a bunch of Saudi Arabians apologize to us. Who could have a problem with that?
March 1, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Lemme guess: somebody tweeted back to HQ in Qatar saying it was more than 33% probable there’d be more than 30 Al Qaeda at some wedding ceremony somewhere in Afghanistan?
March 2, 2010 at 6:37 am
And from Stars and Stripes we get this little gem, which has left me wondering: In what cultures do civilians thoughtfully leave the front and back porch lights on in consideration of foreign soldiers just passing through?
A new NATO directive, confirmed Wednesday by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, aims to limit nighttime raids on Afghan civilians. It was prompted by a storm of complaints from Afghans who were enraged over foreign soldiers bursting into their homes. “We didn’t understand what a cultural line it was,” McChrystal said during a luncheon with a group of young Afghans involved in a leadership program.
March 2, 2010 at 11:38 am
And leaving notes like: ‘Hi boys, help yourselves to the pita crackers, and there’s some hummus in the fridge. And my cousin brought in some killer hash over by the night table.”