21 July 2011. The Poor Bloody Infantry… They Bleed the Most… and Benefit the Least…. from ANY War

The above image shows us two sets of victims. Of course, there are the civilians caught in the path of the army… like all civilians in all climes and all times, they do their best to avoid becoming statistics, and, all too often, they fail. That’s tragic. The infantrymen are caught in just as tragic a bind. All too often, they’re men who’ve joined up because of lack of opportunity in their home-towns or because they lost their situation on Civvie Street. Of all people, they’re amongst those who benefit the least from the foreign adventures of the USA. They take the risks… they absorb the bullets… they come home in zinc coffins… they get thrown on the rubbish-tip if they’re wounded badly enough. Their families are the ones who deal with an empty spot in the family, they’re the ones with “holes in their hearts”. In short, they get the shitty end of the stick, whilst the Five Percenters party on, oblivious to these men’s suffering, and to the suffering of their families. “Only little people get killed in the wars…”, that’s the America of today… and I think that I’m not the only person to be disgusted at that attitude (remember… the Five Percenters are the “productive” people, after all… they DESERVE their affluence).

If the Five Percenters want wars in foreign parts so badly… let them pay for them, and let them fight in them! Somehow, I think that they’d lose their enthusiasm for it right quickly, wouldn’t they?

BMD

21 July 2011. Your Tax Dollars at Work… Here’s What Defeat Looks Like…

This is the shattered window of an American military vehicle after an IED went off near it. It’s a sad metaphor for the failed war in Afghanistan. It never was winnable, for it was nothing but a blind stab at a mostly non-existent enemy… al Qaeda and the Taliban were creatures of the American special services that turned feral in the ’90s. There was never a conspiracy… there never was a wide-ranging terrorist network. There WAS an internet will o’ the wisp that inspired individual nutters, but that’s not a “conspiracy” in anyone’s book. In general, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, and, unless my guess is very wrong, you hold the same disdain towards them as I do. Real motives DO lie behind most uses of force. In the case of Iraq, its oilfields were just too big a temptation for GWB and his transnational buddies. In the case of Afghanistan, there’s supposedly mineral riches in its mountains. There… no need to talk of an al Qaeda/Taliban conspiracy, or bellicose talk about Islamocist terrorists (that there’s Muslim terrorists, that’s for certain, but they’re few, fragmented, and without focus). I feel sorriest for the poor bloody sods in the middle of all this… the soldiers, who’re just following their orders. The New GOP has BILLIONS for this war and for the perpetual stationing of troops in Iraq, besides rattling its sabre in Yemen and Libya. If this doesn’t tell that Ike was right about the Military-Industrial Complex, nothing will…

BMD