I've been reading Dexter Filkins piece in a recent New Yorker about future prospects for Afghanistan. In sum: they're grim.
As they are in Iraq.
Which made me think that for everyone who was sent to conduct those wars/occupations/ counterinsurgencies/nation-building exercises -- regardless of how right or wrong they believe their actions to be -- the futility of both campaigns must be overwhelming.
In Iraq, after 7½ years and at a cost to the U.S. of at least $800 billion, 4486 American troops died and 32,223 were wounded; well over 50,152 Iraqi citizens have been killed (we didn't start keeping count until 2005), and about 4.6 million were displaced, either internally or as refugees. Today, the Iraqi government is riven, the infrastructure is shaky, and violence continues, with 977 civilians killed in sectarian clashes in 2011 alone. (Imagine if that many Americans were killed in “domestic terrorism” incidents.) The only one of our ever-shifting goals that we accomplished there was to depose Saddam Hussein.
U.S. forces are scheduled to leave Afghanistan after 13 years, and as I write this, at a cost of about $554 billion dollars, 2075 U.S. soldiers have died,15,322 have been wounded, 50,152 Afghan civilians have been killed (again, since 2005), and still, the Taliban, along with a long list of war lords, hold sway in much of the country, the government is head-swivelingly corrupt, and the only purported goal we've accomplished has been to kill Osama bin Laden, who neither came from Afghanistan, nor was killed there.
Is the world better off without the two despots? Probably. Were there better, less costly ways to get rid of them? Very likely. Did the United States corrupt itself in the process? Undoubtedly.
It's quite an equation.
Showing posts with label Iraq war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraq war. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
I GOT THE ARMY STOP LOSSED ME AND STUCK ME IN JAIL BLUES
Imagine you’re a soldier in the United States Army. A stretch, probably, since less than two percent of Americans join the military, but try. You served with a combat unit in Iraq
The vast majority of soldiers suck it up and deploy, figuring that if they don’t go someone else will have to go in their place. Around 3,000 soldiers a year desert. Specialist Marc Hall composed a hardcore rap song titled “Stop lossed,” which ended up at the Pentagon. As a consequence, he spent over four months in jail awaiting court martial for what he considered his right to free expression.
Friday, April 16, 2010
WikiLeaks video -- ho hum
The Boston Globe published my letter today -- and got my name wrong.
It occasioned lively reader responses, though of the predictable sort. Still, it shows me (if not book editors) that readers still care about these endless, pointless wars.
Indiscriminate shooting of civilians in Iraq
April 16, 2010
THE GUNNING down of two Reuters employees and 10 Iraqi civilians from a US Army helicopter, as shown in a “graphic video’’ posted on WikiLeaks (“Video shows ’07 US air attack that killed news photographer, driver in Iraq,’’ Page A2, April 6), is being portrayed as both an anomaly and the cost of war. While it was the ultimate cost to the journalists, whose camera was mistaken for a weapon, and to the Iraqis who arrived to help the wounded after the first round of shots, the incident is unusual only in that it has come to the public’s attention.
When dozens of US veterans of the hostilities in Iraq testified in March 2008 at an event called Winter Soldier, they presented documented evidence that suggested the killing of unarmed civilians was frequent, systemic, pervasive, and a result of official policy. They also testified that the rules of engagement, which the soldiers in the leaked video apparently followed, were contradictory, often changed, and loosely enforced.
So it’s not surprising that the indiscriminate shooting of civilians sounds like just another day’s work. You can hear how routine it is in the voices of the gunship crew as they prepare to shoot and then survey their handiwork. The video comes with a warning that the images might be disturbing, but what is really disturbing is how distant and surgical — how commonplace — such actions have come to seem.
Nan Levinsonnan
Somerville
It occasioned lively reader responses, though of the predictable sort. Still, it shows me (if not book editors) that readers still care about these endless, pointless wars.
Indiscriminate shooting of civilians in Iraq
April 16, 2010
THE GUNNING down of two Reuters employees and 10 Iraqi civilians from a US Army helicopter, as shown in a “graphic video’’ posted on WikiLeaks (“Video shows ’07 US air attack that killed news photographer, driver in Iraq,’’ Page A2, April 6), is being portrayed as both an anomaly and the cost of war. While it was the ultimate cost to the journalists, whose camera was mistaken for a weapon, and to the Iraqis who arrived to help the wounded after the first round of shots, the incident is unusual only in that it has come to the public’s attention.
When dozens of US veterans of the hostilities in Iraq testified in March 2008 at an event called Winter Soldier, they presented documented evidence that suggested the killing of unarmed civilians was frequent, systemic, pervasive, and a result of official policy. They also testified that the rules of engagement, which the soldiers in the leaked video apparently followed, were contradictory, often changed, and loosely enforced.
So it’s not surprising that the indiscriminate shooting of civilians sounds like just another day’s work. You can hear how routine it is in the voices of the gunship crew as they prepare to shoot and then survey their handiwork. The video comes with a warning that the images might be disturbing, but what is really disturbing is how distant and surgical — how commonplace — such actions have come to seem.
Nan Levinsonnan
Somerville
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
3-15-2003: before the war begins
The day begins with an email from a soldier in Kuwait. “I have no problem fighting off an oppressive government,” he writes. “I have no problem blowing someones head off if they are trying to rob my house or harm my family.” The problem he does have is the collusion between government and big business using the army for unconstitutional and economic gains. On and one he goes with so much anger against what he calls “our new oilnationstate.” His is not the first such rancor I’ve encountered from soldiers preparing for war.
A few hours later, a friend and I gather with others, hard to tell how many, lining Mass. Ave. about a mile west of Harvard Square with antiwar signs, many clever & pointed. My favorite is two kids with a boombox and a sign saying, “Dance for peace.” They do.
A woman next to us gives us her extra sign to hold and I bounce “NO WAR” up and down as cars pass and flash us the peace sign. “Cambridge,” my friend scoffs. It’s colder than I expected, so I’m not dressed warmly enough, but for a short time it feels like solidarity and that feels good.
We march to Harvard Square, those behind us chanting, “What do we want?”
“Peace”
“When do we want it?”
“Now.”
I’ve been yelling the same words for over half of my life and they’re wrong. I wanted peace yesterday and I want it tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, and goddamn, but I’m not going to get it, all this solidarity and voice-of-the-people aside. Today, I don’t yet know how easily my government will ignore the public outcry against this misbegotten war that hasn’t yet begun, though it’s clear to us all that it’s a forgone conclusion.
Late afternoon, I read from the pile of news stories my oldest friend has sent me about her father, Max Zera, who became, kind of by default, the press attache par excellence for the Army’s 1st division during WWII. The longest piece is a report from the Battle of the Bulge, written by a war correspondent I’ve never heard of: Iris Carpenter. It’s fine journalism and a horrific story. So much slaughter and misery. My friend says Max saw it as politically motivated. This is “the greatest generation,” mostly dead or dying, their greatness repackaged as all valor (which was real) and no horror.
“Your guy in Kuwait would be at the front of the battle if he were in that war,” my husband observes. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I try to figure out at what point one country’s army should try to stop another’s. I fall asleep before I understand.
A few hours later, a friend and I gather with others, hard to tell how many, lining Mass. Ave. about a mile west of Harvard Square with antiwar signs, many clever & pointed. My favorite is two kids with a boombox and a sign saying, “Dance for peace.” They do.
A woman next to us gives us her extra sign to hold and I bounce “NO WAR” up and down as cars pass and flash us the peace sign. “Cambridge,” my friend scoffs. It’s colder than I expected, so I’m not dressed warmly enough, but for a short time it feels like solidarity and that feels good.
We march to Harvard Square, those behind us chanting, “What do we want?”
“Peace”
“When do we want it?”
“Now.”
I’ve been yelling the same words for over half of my life and they’re wrong. I wanted peace yesterday and I want it tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, and goddamn, but I’m not going to get it, all this solidarity and voice-of-the-people aside. Today, I don’t yet know how easily my government will ignore the public outcry against this misbegotten war that hasn’t yet begun, though it’s clear to us all that it’s a forgone conclusion.
Late afternoon, I read from the pile of news stories my oldest friend has sent me about her father, Max Zera, who became, kind of by default, the press attache par excellence for the Army’s 1st division during WWII. The longest piece is a report from the Battle of the Bulge, written by a war correspondent I’ve never heard of: Iris Carpenter. It’s fine journalism and a horrific story. So much slaughter and misery. My friend says Max saw it as politically motivated. This is “the greatest generation,” mostly dead or dying, their greatness repackaged as all valor (which was real) and no horror.
“Your guy in Kuwait would be at the front of the battle if he were in that war,” my husband observes. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I try to figure out at what point one country’s army should try to stop another’s. I fall asleep before I understand.
Friday, August 14, 2009
exerpt from War is Not a Game: David Wilson's story
David Wilson, former Army sergeant & resister of sorts....
by Nan Levinson
Regardless of the official response, nearly all applicants for Conscientious Objection describe being ostracized by their peers and their chain of command and isolated at a particularly stressful time of their lives. David Wilson, an Army sergeant stationed in Kuwait before the invasion, emailed me after he turned in his CO packet that “people in my unit won’t look at me or they give me the evil eye.”
Wilson’s story is his alone, but it follows a familiar trajectory for soldiers who applied for conscientious objection early in the war, from his solo navigation of the process without the knowledgeable guidance of counselors who might have made it easier, to the Army’s maze of obstacles, to the disdain he came to have for the military mission in Iraq and the politicians who created it.
He grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, where his father taught at the Citadel, his mother was a vocational high school principal, and his family worshiped at the Baptist church. (His faith is now in mountain biking.) Looking for money to pay off debt and to return to school, he enlisted in the Army in 2000 at the relatively late age of thirty. He was self-reliant, fit, and sure of himself, so he had no problem holding his own with the other, much younger enlistees. By the time he was sent to Kuwait in February 2003, he had risen to sergeant and was assigned to the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command as an electronic warfare technician.
Wilson and I were introduced by another soldier in his unit, who had gotten out as a CO before the invasion. We exchanged emails in March and April of 2003 and resumed emailing, his preferred mode of communication, six years later. We didn’t know each other and, as with all these exchanges, he had nothing to gain by answering my questions, but answer he did, diligently, promptly and fully, even when his personal time was limited on the Army's computers in Kuwait.
Six weeks after he arrived there and one week before the invasion of Iraq, he wrote: “My position on going to war with Iraq is difficult to describe. I have no problem fighting off an oppressive govt. I have no problem blowing someone’s head off if they are trying to rob my house or harm my family. I do have a problem with a govt that uses its army to achieve those goals. I have a problem with a govt. that does not pay attention to actions it is taking that harm the Constitution that I was sworn to defend.”
A month later, still in Kuwait, it was a different story, as he wrote on drunkcyclist, a friend’s blog. “I hear missiles flying overhead and I get interviewed by CNN as they do a documentary. I feel relief when the A10s hit the persistent launcher in Basra with a missile. Then I get real angry. I wish bad things on those who do what they think is right for America.”
by Nan Levinson
Regardless of the official response, nearly all applicants for Conscientious Objection describe being ostracized by their peers and their chain of command and isolated at a particularly stressful time of their lives. David Wilson, an Army sergeant stationed in Kuwait before the invasion, emailed me after he turned in his CO packet that “people in my unit won’t look at me or they give me the evil eye.”
Wilson’s story is his alone, but it follows a familiar trajectory for soldiers who applied for conscientious objection early in the war, from his solo navigation of the process without the knowledgeable guidance of counselors who might have made it easier, to the Army’s maze of obstacles, to the disdain he came to have for the military mission in Iraq and the politicians who created it.
He grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, where his father taught at the Citadel, his mother was a vocational high school principal, and his family worshiped at the Baptist church. (His faith is now in mountain biking.) Looking for money to pay off debt and to return to school, he enlisted in the Army in 2000 at the relatively late age of thirty. He was self-reliant, fit, and sure of himself, so he had no problem holding his own with the other, much younger enlistees. By the time he was sent to Kuwait in February 2003, he had risen to sergeant and was assigned to the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command as an electronic warfare technician.
Wilson and I were introduced by another soldier in his unit, who had gotten out as a CO before the invasion. We exchanged emails in March and April of 2003 and resumed emailing, his preferred mode of communication, six years later. We didn’t know each other and, as with all these exchanges, he had nothing to gain by answering my questions, but answer he did, diligently, promptly and fully, even when his personal time was limited on the Army's computers in Kuwait.
Six weeks after he arrived there and one week before the invasion of Iraq, he wrote: “My position on going to war with Iraq is difficult to describe. I have no problem fighting off an oppressive govt. I have no problem blowing someone’s head off if they are trying to rob my house or harm my family. I do have a problem with a govt that uses its army to achieve those goals. I have a problem with a govt. that does not pay attention to actions it is taking that harm the Constitution that I was sworn to defend.”
A month later, still in Kuwait, it was a different story, as he wrote on drunkcyclist, a friend’s blog. “I hear missiles flying overhead and I get interviewed by CNN as they do a documentary. I feel relief when the A10s hit the persistent launcher in Basra with a missile. Then I get real angry. I wish bad things on those who do what they think is right for America.”
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