when the status quo frustrates.

Wingnuts claim Rethugs too soft on genocide

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006

As many of you know by now, Bill Frist’s comments on giving into the Taliban sent the wingnut blogs into self-destruct mode. People like Ace of Spades, Der Commissar, Allahpundit, Rusty, and others were all ready to take a hatchet to the GOP leadership and start over. Many of them were even claiming they’d vote Democrat in 2006.

By now, most of the wingnuts have pulled back from that position, especially since Frist’s weird pseudo-retraction. Only Commissar remains convinced the Republicans should be voted out for abandoning conservative principles.

Before we celebrate the conversion of the masses, let’s examine their deeper explanations of the mutiny.

Ace of Spades clarifies:

If Afghanistan truly cannot be de-Taibanized, it’s time to pull up stakes there and simply begin bombing it as frequently as necessary to kill as many Afghans as possible.

They either reject Talibanism or bin Ladinism or they don’t. They killed 3000 people. Before, one could claim they didn’t know what the Taliban was up to. Now there are no such excuses.

If they still are unwilling to reject the Taliban, let them reap the whirlwind.

After quoting Ace and following it up with an “Amen, brutha,” Rusty completes our transformation into the Roman Empire:

Their entire culture and civilization must be completely wiped off the face of the earth. It was only after millions of civilian casualties and the total wasting of all centers of production that the Germans and the Japanese could be rebuilt in our image.

To quote Gladiator, A people should know when they are conquered. Only after this can we even begin to think of changing their ways.

The impotence of the US military abroad has embarrassed the bloodthirsty wingnuts so much they’re calling openly for full-on genocide. So invested are they in our ability to colonize the rest of the world by force that a single admission of our inability to do so by one of their own has sent them into a murderous temper tantrum.

We should be wary of these feelings. Wingnut blogs can be the canary in the coal mine, and if our failure to subjugate the Muslim world is causing them to agitate for more extreme methods, how long will it take until the administration starts to react the same way?

03.10.2006 Imperialism for Dummies, Military bullshit, Mutterings Of The Disturbed, Wingnuts 8 Comments

Lt. Gen. Yosemite Sam

Sunday, August 20th, 2006

A few days ago, Tiny Revolution linked to abb1, who pointed out that Lt. Gen. James Mattis is now the top Marine general in US Central Command. Part of his new job will be to decide if charges are warranted in the Haditha massacre.

Abb1 also linked to a CNN article from last year featuring the words of Mattis himself:

“Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot,” Mattis said, prompting laughter from some military members in the audience. “It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.

“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” Mattis said. “You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”

Whitehouse.org has a hilarious fictional Q&A with the man, but the NRO wasn’t laughing at the criticisms directed at Mattis after his comments:

The context of the comments makes clear that Gen. Mattis was having some fun and playing to his audience. My criticism of Gen. Mattis is that he forgot that he wasn’t trying to inspire his Marines but was instead addressing a civilian group with press present. We wouldn’t want the ladies of the press getting a case of the vapors, now, would we?

In 2003, Mattis conducted an interview with PBS. Some of his comments (emphasis mine):

We were going to try to avoid adversarial relationships and we were going to try to remain friendly one week longer, one day longer, one hour longer than perhaps some of the people who distrusted us coming in might have expected. And that’s worked out pretty well.
[...]
So if you want to be our friend, we’ll be the best friends you ever had. If you want to fight us, you’re going to regret it.
[...]
We had wave tactics, waving to the people, assuming we were there as friends. Eventually that expectation paid off.
[...]
But I would tell you that already they are running the things that are most important to people. Are the street lights on? Is the neighborhood safe? These kinds of things are already in their hands with the marines very much in the background.

It’s reassuring to know a man who had such a clear grasp of how well the war was going in 2003, who has such respect for human life, calls the shots these days, isn’t it?

20.08.2006 Military bullshit 2 Comments

The Marines are single and loving it!

Monday, July 24th, 2006

Actually, I don’t know that for sure. On their spicy new myspace.com profile (via Shake’s Sis), the Marines decided to leave off some of their more personal information like salary, relationship status, and zodiac sign. But they’re out there on the internets and they’re looking for a few hott boyz to spend some quality time with and maybe take on a trip around the world.

I applaud the UMSC for acknowledging their true intent. No one preys on the young in this country quite like the Corps military, and creepy stalkers know myspace is the place to start looking for fresh meat. So for anyone who likes long hard objects that shoot quite a load should make a friend with the Marines today.

sir yes SIR!

And after you’re done snacking on that, you can keep the oral fixation satisfied with the military’s own candy bar, Hooah!. Everything’s coming up yummy in the Corps.

24.07.2006 Military bullshit 4 Comments

“I got your back:” the real man law

Sunday, June 4th, 2006

I already referenced the Guardian article on the alleged US abuse and murder of Iraqi civilians. The killings are awful, but the cover-ups, if they occurred, are also unforgivable.

It points to a larger issue:

Mejia believes the problem is a systemic one. He points out that both the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Haditha massacre have only come to light because either locals or US soldiers took photographs of the crimes or their aftermath. If left to the army alone, they would never have been uncovered.

‘These things are just the ones we know about. Just think about how much else has gone that we don’t know about. Civilians are dying there almost every day,’ he said.

The Catholic Church has been mercilessly derided for covering up the abuse of children by its priests. Should undeniable evidence come to light that our military repeatedly covered for soldiers harming or killing Iraqi civilians, I hope they receive an even greater public shellacking. Unfortunately, even if we see those responsible for hiding the truth punished or fired, it’ll be a slap on the wrist when compared against the destruction their actions facilitated. Covering up these brutalities directly reinforces the institutionalization of the getting-away-with-it culture that has almost certainly enabled many of these crimes to take place.

Then again, that culture is exactly what one would expect from the military, isn’t it? Every boys-only club, or those dominated by men or a macho culture, seem to live by the same code. Cops, priests, soldiers, frat boys, male athletic teammates — all appear to share in the belief that solidarity amongst members comes before any other rule or value. This, friends, is the patriarchy in action.

(more…)

04.06.2006 Feminism, Military bullshit 6 Comments

U.S. military producing mass murderers on our side and theirs

Sunday, June 4th, 2006

Nobody covers Americans likes the Brits. Today the Guardian reports on the crumbling morality in the US army culture:

And as the occupation and insurgency have dragged on, the sense of unaccountability has only increased. Last November, during the referendum on the new Iraqi constitution in the dangerous northern city of Mosul, a young sniper in a Stryker fighting vehicle described being hit by two improvised explosive devices in one day and his crew’s reaction: ‘I just wanted to get out and kill some Iraqis.’

It is a lack of discipline that has been commented on with horror by British officers – representing an army that itself has seen its own soldiers seriously mistreat Iraqi civilians.

In the days since evidence of the Haditha killings emerged, media organisations, including The Observer, have been contacted with details of other incidents that Iraqis have long claimed involved the execution of civilians by US troops.

Yesterday, McBoing’s post illuminated the self-defeating circular logic of the occupation-happy global war on terror. Just being there is bad enough; how many more mortal enemies do we make every time a US soldier misdirects his rage and shoots an innocent?

If a wingnut ever demands evidence that many in our military are extremely unhappy or being irreparably damaged by fighting in Iraq, perhaps we should point him to the various graves containing the women and children our boys appear to have murdered in cold blood. While it’s probable some of the soldiers abusing and/or slaughtering Iraqi civilians would have demonstrated this behavior in life regardless of what the Iraq conflict has put them through, I’m gonna venture the obvious thought that this war turned a lot of kids into monsters. In general, some form this behavior is probably an unavoidable result of war. Given how avoidable this war was, though, that should provide zero consolation.

04.06.2006 Imperialism for Dummies, Military bullshit 5 Comments

I’m sure the spooks aren’t interested

Tuesday, May 30th, 2006

Hey, good news, folks. Soon, the NSA won’t spy on your conversations via the telecom companies. In a few years they’ll simply station an officer comfortably in your living room, probably behind that plant you should really water.

You might be thinking, “That’s stupid, marc. You’re so stupid. I would see him. God, you’re so stupid.” Mayhaps, but I’m also here to scare you with tech news as I play the foil to Kyso’s “Yay! Science!” with “Boo! Abuse!” — ’cause I’m guessing there’s already been some parallel development in the ol’ NSA labs on this sweet gear:

Reporting last week in the journal Science, physicists J.B. Pendry of Imperial College London and David Smith and David Schurig of Duke University described a way to make high-tech “metamaterials” that can funnel light around an object and make it invisible.

Metamaterials, assemblages of small artificial bits of patterned metal films, can be engineered to bend almost any kind of electromagnetic energy. Schurig said that “probably this year” scientists will produce a metamaterial that can shield equipment from microwave radiation. However, protecting objects from visible light — creating an invisibility cloak — is “further out,” he said in a telephone interview — “maybe 10 years.”

Smith compared the process to a stream flowing around a stone — essentially creating a “hole” in the water, where anything can be hidden and remain unnoticed from the outside. “We have shown it can be done for almost any frequency,” he said in a telephone interview. “Being able to build it is another story.”

So we’ve got ten years, maybe less if the military labs are ahead of the game (which the conspiracy theorists assure me is true). After that, cops and spies may soon be able to suit up like the Predator. Hopefully, they won’t make that creepy Predator noise, though.

For my money, I’d like to get my hands on this tech and rent it out to untrusting spouses and parents as a Do-It-Urself PI kit. Then I could retire to my own private island with my infrared cornea implants and live a life of privacy.

Until then, though, I’ll just keep my eye out for any extra crumbs in the corners of my pad. The conspiracy theorists also assure me that, as a side effect of the brainwashing, no NSA man can resist a Cheeto.

30.05.2006 Military bullshit, Technology 4 Comments

Pawn, First Class

Monday, May 15th, 2006

When I took Japanese, there was this guy, T, in my class. He was not only taking a full course load, but also trying to work off a semester of incompletes. The previous semester, the National Guard had called him up and he spent finals week fueling helicopters in Missouri or Montana or some M state. We had a good time, then during finals week he dissappeared again and gained another 12 credit hours of “I.” Then he took a semester off. That was three semesters ago and since then he’s advanced from bagger to customer service at the shadier of the two local Giant Eagles. He no longer makes eye contact with me when I come in to shop. Not sure if that $20,000 for college they dangle in front of your face in the commercials ever did him any good.

I don’t know why I just told you about him, other than I was reading this:

President George Bush, scrambling to hold on to an increasingly disaffected conservative Republican base, was last night poised to announce that he is deploying thousands of troops on America’s border with Mexico to crack down on illegal immigration.

With recent opinion polls charting a steep decline in support from the conservatives who have been the president’s bedrock, the White House envisaged last night’s primetime speech on immigration as the first in a series of steps intended to get rightwingers back on side ahead of November’s mid-term elections.

and thinking about how much it must suck to be those 10,000 soldiers-cum-pawns whose lives are about to be disrupted so that they can sit in the desert and temp for the border guards until W gets his hovercraft photo-op. It’s bad enough to have the Army fuck you over as part of the terms of your agreement with them. It’s 1000 times unnecessary to interrupt the lives of 10,000 soldiers because your xenophobic base needs a bone to gnaw on until midterms.

It’s the National freakin’ Guard. You can’t just send a whole bunch of highly trained, but part-time, soldiers someplace to shuffle papers so that you look manly and decisive. They’re supposed to be for actual emergencies. You know, stuff like this:

Thousands of people have been evacuated in America’s north-eastern New England states due to a heavy flooding – one of the worst since the 1930s.

not stuff like this:

Last night’s speech on immigration marks the first phase of a concerted effort by the White House to shore up a conservative base whose support for Mr Bush that has declined from 80% to 50%. Later this week Mr Bush will hold a signing ceremony at the White House for an extension of his tax cuts. Next month Congress is expected to return to the hot button-issue of gay rights, with a vote on a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriages.

15.05.2006 Bush is a cock, Military bullshit, Politics 2 Comments

Uncle Sam wants me, but can he have me?

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006

Unintentionally, I suppose I’ve made this punkassbody(autonomy) week over here at punkassblog, at least as far as my posts are concerned. Seeing as how this is also our first week in existence, some folks are probably wondering if that’s all I intend to carp about. The answer: nyet. But I am enjoying myself, and the debates have been a blast, so I figured I would follow up on a promise I made and discuss the consription issue as it relates to my views on bodily coercion.

Caveat #1) I’m riffing here. This particular angle is not something set in stone, so I reserve the right to shuck and jive down the line.
Caveat #2) I don’t actually know whether I will consider conscription acceptable or unacceptable under the umbrella of “bodily autonomy over all else” by the end of the post. Should be fun to find out.
Caveat #3) I’m gonna geek out on philosophy crap, so if that isn’t your thing, please move onto the next post. And, again, I promise I won’t be like this all or even most of the time. I think.

Enter my lair to see where we wind up…

(more…)

26.04.2006 Bodily Autonomy, Military bullshit 3 Comments

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