Massive setback in Afghanistan, Special Forces Chinook shot down causing a record number of American deaths, thirty, two dozen of them Navy SEALs. Is this Obama’s plan to draw down our forces, by attrition? The night raid truncation is the biggest withdrawal over ten years. Plus side of course, it’s fewer Afghan civilians those soldiers would have killed.
A record number of US soldiers killed at once. Yeah, we don’t usually get confirmation so early, but Afghan President Karzai bypassed the usual censors and announced the catastrophe. So war-cheerleaders are scrambling for a silver-lining, and this is what they found. They assure war fans that the shoot-down of the Chinook didn’t kill any of the SEAL Team 6 patriots who bum-rushed Osama bin Laden.
Because, I don’t know, would that have made it worse? Because we don’t want it to look like Osama was avenged? Unfortunately the specificity would seem to imply that Navy SEALs are more valued than ordinary soldiers.
Actually, it’s curious, because we’re not told who was on that team, nor who died yesterday, so who’s to know? The military doesn’t even know if they were gay or not.
Karzai circumvented the usual casualty reporting protocol that’s succeeded for a decade now in obfuscating the US death toll in our wars. Deny early reports, pretend you need more time to confirm the deaths, wait until actual expiration of fatally injured casualties, and if they’re under the command structure of NATO, pretend they’re not American at all. Such a process draws out the impact of having to declare the death toll when it occurs. If Karzai hadn’t intervened, the Chinook casualties could have dribbled out over a week. Three or four a day would be no great shakes for Afghanistan these days.
Remember when a truckload of female MPs hit an EID the first year in Iraq? I didn’t think you would. It was the largest group loss of female soldiers in US history, but it wasn’t, because the DoD confirmed the deaths individually over days.
If journalist wanted to report US casualties in Afghanistan honestly, they need only check with the other nations participating in the occupation. The US is the only partner which has declared a policy of not acknowledging its dead. In the event of unclaimed NATO casualties, they’re American.
What did you learn in school today,
dear little boy of mine?
I learned that Washington never told a lie,
I learned that soldiers never die
I learned that everybody’s free
and that’s what the teacher said to me,
and that’s what I learnt in school
I sometimes wonder, just not for very long at any time, if the propagandists have any conscience whatsoever. I mean, they spin every defeat as a Glorious Victory, like the Marines at Tripoli (they did not accomplish their mission, took casualties, but say it was a victory in the opening lines of their song)
I realize that Marines aren’t all that rational, they’re trained not to be, but what of their “superiors”?
Which would also imply that they themselves are the “inferiors” of the Military Established Order.
But I once again digress.
What of those who use not only the deaths of the arbitrary enemy du-jour but also of those who die on “our” side in the return fire, to sell military membership to, let’s face the truth, Children. American kids. Told on the one hand that they can’t succeed in life without the
brainwashing regimenHyper-disciplined environment and camaraderie that only the Military provides, essentially telling them they’re too stupid to make it any other way… and that they have a glorious mission to avenge other fallen storm-troopers and assassination squads. Kind of like the Horst Wessl Lied rewritten into English and broadcast on every radio and television channel many times a day.It’s not any measure of consolation that they cheerfully sell their own spawn into the armed slave forces along with ours.
This must be a red-letter day for you and your faux activist buddy, Eric – for so many US soldiers dying must make you very happy. Useful idiots.
Actually we’ve been opposed to them being sent over to kill and be killed for oh, let’s see… since they were first sent over.
They, and the many uncounted, nameless Afghans killed, have been dying for the profit of the likes of ..
Lamborn and his War-Monger buddies.
George Bush and his grave-robbing family.
The “defense” industry complexes just beyond city limits and of course, city taxes, but not city services,
The jobs they “created” but also filled with their existing employees who are also using city services without paying for them.
Undertakers are making a “killing” on the trade too.
Propagandists who urged, successfully, to extend the killing spree to other nations, including puppet dictatorships “we” have, whenever the workers get uppity and demand wages that are better than abject slavery, Guatemala for instance, Panama, Honduras, even an attempt to bring Venezuela and Cuba back under the capitalist empire…
Seems they’ve been given a golden propaganda opportunity to recruit more kids into the killing machine, and you, somehow, don’t disapprove of their actions enough to do anything more than criticize those who DO have the cojones to speak out.
They must love your contribution to the Death Business.
And, no, bubba, I ain’t in love with the idea of people dying. If I were, I could do some idiot shit like making people die until they, in return, make me die.
There’s enough stupid people with guns to make that happen, no need for me to support it and plenty of reason to oppose it.
Complaining about evil might not make it go away, but keeping silent about it definitely won’t make it go away.
Uh-oh, that failed-to-catch-on “faux-activist” line can only mean troll Janice Heuberger is back, aka funinsnow, beepbeep, piblius whatever. This time she’s glommed on to the GOP talking point “useful idiot” as a put-down.