Archive for August, 2008

The Cowards’ Birth Right

Monday, August 25th, 2008

I am convinced that Cheney’s calculations of power would be alien to any of the real master of Real Politik.

Thank God the current threshold for a nuclear exchange is high, or I swear he’d find a way to get us in one.

Instead of conventional calculations of risk, I see calculations based on ideological purity and aggrandizement of personal power.  Rather than the way my father used to kick off military briefings during the Nixon administration where the briefing would begin with a list of who is in military contact with whom, who got killed or injured, and what is at risk, I see a Cheney briefing opening with which donor promised what, who’s unhappy in the neocon base, and how they can get even with Republicans Cheney perceives as having “deserted” the cause.

In other words, Cheney and “W” don’t perceive risk because they consciously don’t look for and wouldn’t know it if wacked them over the head with a Backfire bomber.  We’re ruled by moral cowards who believe power is their birth right and stewardship is something liberals do.  We’re really lucky it isn’t any worse than it is.  Really lucky . . .

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The End of the Illusion

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

Numerical superiority only matters at the point of contact (where soldiers and weapons platforms operate the “meat grinder”).  We no longer live (although many pretend we still do) in an age of phalanxes pressing against each other).  We now live an age of tidal waves of steel splinters, transonic blast waves, and superheated air.  More often then not, he/she who shoots first, wins–or at least survives.

No longer does a nice, neat, clean bullet pierce the heart of the fallen hero.  In modern warfare, our hero is much more likely to be incinerated beyond recognition.

Nor do our “invincible” tanks go hither and yon at will while all weapons bounce harmlessly off their flanks.  In the real world, whether you call them anti-tank mines or improvised explosive devices, is semantics next to the practical effects of such a device on a tank’s hull and crew.  Moreover, all recent HAWs (Heavy Anti-tank Weapons) will easily slice through the armor of any tank and incinerate and/or shread the crew inside.  Most of the improvements to me made in such weapons involve the survivability of the crew firing the weapon and not lethality.

The modern battlefield is not a pushing ground but a killing field.

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From the Mouthes of Babes

Monday, August 18th, 2008

This evening, on the way home from work in a bus, I met a young soldier just back from his first tour in Iraq. In addition to his description of fire fights and explosives, he described something terribly ironic. Toward the end of his tour, an officer from echelons-above-reality was addressing a large group of soldiers and was remarking that we’d be winning this war if only we’d taken a lot fewer casualties.

The soldier’s rejoinder was extremely profane, but amounted to saying something like “a day late and a dollar short.” The rank-and-file understand this war in a manner their leaders seem utterly unwilling to come to grasp with.

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