Tag Archives: war

Political Rants

The other side.

Last week I wrote about the P.O.W. Bergdahl and how he and his family were being used as a political football. The other half of the story is about the prisoner trade the Taliban negotiated with our government. The same voices that were denigrating the Bergdahl clan described the traded Guantanamo detainees as a  Taliban “dream team” or a set of “MVPs” for the other side in the Afghan war. Setting aside the ridiculousness of the sports analogy, this characterization is as stupid as it is irrelevant.

Let's ask this guy.First of all, they were not high-value detainees. They were leadership within the Taliban regime of the 1990s – 2001, yes, but they were not implicated in the deaths of any Americans. Nor were they captured at great cost, as has been suggested by some. Two or more of them turned themselves in; others were turned in by Pakistani intelligence, probably in exchange for some payment. Will they return to “the fight”? Well, that may be, but keeping Guantanamo open all these years has inspired more (younger) people to join the fight than we could ever release from that legal limbo on Cuban soil. A lot of people want us dead; are we that worried, really?

Then there’s the simple fact that the Afghan war is going to end. Face it, McCain, Graham, Ayotte, etc. … stick a fork in it. Your awesome war is coming to a close, whether you like it or not. Only you are in favor of keeping it going, just as only you were in favor of expanding the Global War on Terror to Syria. The American people are sick of the Afghan war, and they will not miss it.

Now the same political hacks have their hair on fire about Iraq because it is melting down as a result of our having trashed the place with their blessing. This, they suggest, is the argument for staying in Afghanistan for … well, forever. Does anyone, anyone in America agree? Does anyone want their kid to go over there and take a bullet for this sorry project? My guess is no.

Next week, I’ll rant a bit about Iraq. Stay tuned.

luv u,

jp

Podcast

Left behind.

The right-wing nut-job media machine has really been cranking overtime this past few weeks. One wonders how long the hair-on-fire outrage routine can possibly continue to work for them. When you sound the emergency broadcast system every day, 24 hours a day, doesn’t it reduce the effect … or, at least, the specialness? Maybe not in the context of today’s insatiable media culture. Perhaps there is no saturation point for this level of madness.

Right-wing target #1 this weekI confess, this Bergdahl-as-a-traitor obsession is simply astounding. Didn’t think they would go there, but apparently they have. The man spent five years as a captive of the Taliban, is finally released, and the reactionary pundits (and some of the centrists, as well) have been roasting him and his family alive ever since. This is trial by media, and they keep stoking the flame higher and higher, trotting out retired colonels and former Army comrades of Bergdahl who paint this craven picture of the young man, none of it based on demonstrable fact. My reliably conservative neighbor came out of his house the other day spouting this line about Bergdahl being a “deserter”; pretty much parroting what’s being said on Fox News.

Amazing. Really, people … can you give the guy a chance to recover, at least, and speak for himself? Of course, in actuality he is the projectile, not the target. The target is Obama and congressional Democrats. That will be the focus of everything the GOP does, every position they take, every word they say, from now until November. It should be lost on no one that at this point in the Clinton presidency, the impeachment process was well underway with an eye to the approaching mid-terms. This time around, I think they may be smart enough to avoid actual impeachment, opting instead for relentless, daily assaults on every breath Obama takes from a policy standpoint. That capability was in its infancy in 1998. Not anymore.

I will say this. If any of what they say about Bergdahl is true, it’s likely that he is actually a sensitive kid who was disillusioned by war.  Hard to blame him for that. The rest is pure conjecture.

luv u,

jp

NEXT WEEK: The “other side” of the deal.

Political Rants

Mission unaccomplished.

If there is one enduring truth about America, it is this: we are extremely good at making a mess and abysmally inept at cleaning it up.

The Veterans Administration controversy has been over a decade in the making, and is nothing unprecedented or even particularly unusual. Recall that the Afghan and Iraq wars were supposed to be conducted, in essence, free of charge with minimal casualties. The Iraq war, in particular, was low-balled by Bush administration officials, most notably Paul Wolfowitz, who opined to Congress that it might cost us a billion or two. They were convinced that the war would be short and sweet. They did not plan for the occupation of Iraq, nor did they plan for decades of health care services for returning veterans. It was going to be a cake walk.

wolfo-witsYeah, not so much. But it did sound good at the time, didn’t it? And now, many deaths, dismemberments, and billions of dollars later, we are faced with an enormous backlog of wounded and battle-stressed soldiers, attempting to access a VA system that does not have the physical infrastructure to serve them in a timely fashion. That’s a large part of what’s behind the deceptive practices we are hearing about now – people trying to feign success when the system is failing miserably, at least on the intake end.

It is worse than that, though. We also never provided adequately for veterans of either the Vietnam War or the Gulf War. Vietnam vets faced similar problems with the VA upon their return, and now as they age they are coping with the same types of difficulties as Iraq vets: not enough primary care doctors, not enough admission capacity at VA hospitals … simply put, not enough resources to serve them.

I used to bring my dad to the VA hospital in Syracuse so that he could get discounted medications for his glaucoma. That was long before the post-9/11 wars, and outpatient services seemed adequate, if a little stretched. What we need to do, more than anything, is roll the costs of veteran recovery and long-term healthcare planning into any proposed deployment before we undertake it. Just like the oil industry should be expected to invest in proven safety and recovery technologies before they drill, we should plan on these expenses instead of minimizing the impact of war on the lives of our military families and the wealth of the nation.

How can we act surprised when the predictable consequences of more than a decade of war come to pass?

luv u,

jp