| Friday,
June 2, 2006 Today would be a good day to
renew subscriptions if you haven't done so in a
year or so. (I say this in preparation for sending out one of my infamous
Chaos Manor Gentle Nags, as well as a current subscriber memo in
preparati0n...)
Larry is coming over later to work. I hope I am up to it. I seem to be
pumped up with meds, the day is hot, Sable is lethargic due to her
medications, Roberta is in Seattle for a family reuninon and birthday thing
(not having grown up in a large family I never got used to these; I often go
with her, but this year it came at --) AND it's deadline time. I have
to have Monday's installment done today or tomorrow, and at least 3 weeks'
worth more done by Tuesday.
But we will be working on fiction today, assuming my energy level doesn't
collapse.
============
War Is Hell
The stories are coming to the fore. Afghanis complain that our soldiers
are trigger happy and shoot too much, and the result is innocent civilian
casualties. Stories come out of Iraq of troopers who, pushed beyond human
endurance, snap and go on a rampage of revenge killing. Worse, in Iraq, it's
happening with the elites, the Praetorians, not just the regular Legions.
I do not here comment on the truth or falsity of the particular stories.
In at least one case the sources are suspect, and the stories very likely
exaggerations if not fabrications. Perhaps they are all untrue. What is
certain, alas, is that we must not be surprised when more such stories come
out, or when some prove to be incontrovertible. War is Hell. Even in the
monarchical days of strictly limited war with small professional armies and
rigid discipline imposed by an officer corps trained from birth to enforce
Frederic the Great's dictum that the burgers in the towns and the peasants
in the fields should neither know nor care that the State was at war; even
in those days there were such incidents.
A sergeant has been sent to jail for allowing his dog to bark at a
prisoner. There are stories of looting, arson, rapine, murder, and use of
air strikes to cover up murder. A female MP forced male prisoners to wear
feminine underwear. Children are handcuffed, then shot, and their house
blown up. The stories are endless, ranging from the trivial to the
significant to the truly horrifying.
The one certainty is that there will be more of them. Get used to it. A
nation that sends its young men (well, and women, and perhaps the female of
the species is more deadly than the male, and perhaps not; but the
overwhelming number of both troopers and atrocity reports will be of males)
to war must prepare for such things. They are inevitable. With the best will
in the world they are inevitable.
War is Hell. Sherman knew that, but then so did every commander through
history. In war everything is very simple, but the simplest things are very
difficult, and that goes for enforcing discipline and simple order. To ask
someone to be constantly in danger of losing his comrades -- much less his
own life -- to be constantly under fire and stress, to serve endlessly in a
war without clear objectives, and in those conditions constantly remain
under control; to make soldiers more and more autonomous and independent of
their commanders, give them more and more power while exposed to more and
more danger; to do those things is to generate the atrocity stories.
We face a ruthless enemy schooled in the techniques for triggering the
rage of our young men; who count as great success any such incident; who are
willing to expend lives to generate anger, hatred, revenge; and we are
astonished when they are successful?
And the client states now have the wind up. They want to conduct their
own investigations. They cannot convict Saddam Hussein, but they can charge
US Marines with atrocities.
There will be more of such and you will hear every jot and tittle of it.
The US Press will cooperate with the national enemy while truly believing
they are the only true patriots.
We have sent the troops into War. We keep them there. War is Hell.
=============
And for all that: we have not sent in the Air Force to firebomb cities.
We have set no firestorms. We have had no Hamburg, Kiel, Berlin, Tokyo
raids. We lose more citizens of the United States to murder by illegal
aliens every year than we have lost soldiers in the entire Iraq War.
It is well to have a sense of proportion.
==============
You may find interesting
The full speech as quoted at
http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/Mill_supports_death_penalty.htm
which is worth reading both for its good sense and its rhetorical
style.
=============
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