Former military man Jeff Huber wrote an excellent piece on Military.com regarding the “surge” in Iraq. He points out that the surge was always crafted as a propaganda tactic: In information operations, the objective, at least the stated one, is so vague and flexible that it doesn’t need to have anything at all to do [...]
Archive for December, 2008
Easier Not to Look
Posted: December 31, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Iraq, Jesus, nonviolence
From The New York Times: Quietly, as the United States presidential election and its aftermath have dominated the news, America’s three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq. “The war has gone on longer than a lot of news organizations’ ability or appetite to cover it,” said Jane Arraf, a former [...]
Matthew 2:1-12 2In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” 3When King Herod [...]
Yesterday I wrote a piece on BraveNewFilms on the U.S. military’s use of outrage-stoking home raids in Afghanistan. (The point: these kinds of raids led directly to the uprising in Fallujah in 2003 that included the bodies of Blackwater contractors being hung over a bridge which then led to U.S. forces decimating Fallujah. That was [...]
I intended to leave the Christmas post at the top of the page, but I ran across something today on washingtonpost.com that I thought needed mentioning. A commenter wrote: Certainly there are just reasons to kill people. If an enemy nation threatens U.S citizens or attacks this country, the U.S. must respond with force. American [...]
He is Born
Posted: December 24, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Christmas, Jesus, nonviolence, Thomas Merton
Luke 2:1-20 2In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3All went to their own towns to be registered. 4Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to [...]
Read It and Weep
Posted: December 24, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: militarism, military-industrial complex, Pentagon
A must read in The Washington Post: We no longer have a civilian-led government. It is hard for a lifelong Republican and son of a retired Air Force colonel to say this, but the most unnerving legacy of the Bush administration is the encroachment of the Department of Defense into a striking number of aspects [...]
This is a great idea! I mean, we tried it before… …and it didn’t come back to bite us, right? The U.S. government drew all the wrong lessons from the fall in violence following the ethnic cleansing(s) in Iraq, and insist on imposing their frame on Afghanistan. The surge did not cause Iraq violence to [...]
