Fallows does an excellent job of describing why this is superbly hacktackular, but let me just add that in a sane polity you'd get politely asked to step out into the alley behind the studio after getting caught saying stuff like this and then biffed about the head and shoulders with a stuffed eelskin.
And never, ever invited back to spew this sort of nonsense to a credulous public.
This is exactly the sort of thing that seydlitz used to rave at; a senselessly myopic focus on "how can we/they/"somebody" do this" without any of the adults stepping in to ask "why the fuck would you WANT to do this?" Or, as Fallows himself sums up the geopolitical inanity of this "discussion"; My at-home version of similar analysis: "would plastic explosives, or a ball peen hammer, be more effective in destroying the neighborhood leafblowers, if it must be done?"
And the problem is that We the People, most of us, depend on people like these mooks to "inform" us, which this article does the exact opposite of. Especially when - buried in the blogosphere far from the popular reach of journals like The Atlantic - there are far, far better analyses of this very issue.
Honestly. I know that you're not supposed to attribute to malice what's explicable by incompetence, stupidity, and hubris, but really...
I suppose we should take comfort that there is very little support for actually attacking Iran and that these sorts of "analyses," with their obviously flaws, won't get much traction.
ReplyDeleteThe warmongers get to dictate what the discussion is about ... no discussion about BS does not help the media to fill on-air minutes or front pages.
ReplyDeleteIt's a failure of the entire society that dangerous idiots do not get faced and kicked out of the limelight for being dangerous and idiots.
The worst warmonger senators have a very poor track record in regard to being useful for the unemployed, the sick and the poor. Still, they get re-elected.
This is off-topic, but I don’t know how to bring it up otherwise.
ReplyDeleteHow is it that 22% of female military personnel say that they were raped by their fellow soldiers? How is it that the Pentagon reports that there were 26,000 incidents of sexual trauma in 2012? Of these, 3,374 were reported, resulting in accusations against 2900 individuals. 302 of the accused were courts-marshaled. 238 were convicted. Half of those found guilty were permitted to remain in the service.
Rape victims who report the offense do so at their peril. Stacy Thompson, a Marine lance corporal, stationed in Japan, was drugged and raped by a sergeant. She reported what had happened to her commanding officer and was rewarded by an other-than-honorable discharge. The sergeant walked. Marine 2nd Lt. Elle Helmer was knocked unconscious and raped by a major in Washington, D.C. That gentleman was found asleep in his office, naked from the waist down. Military justice resulted in a promotion for the major and an other-than-honorable discharge for Lt. Helmer.
Warriors? Or pigs?
Chief,
ReplyDeleteI attended the USAF CT crs. at Hurlbert Field in the middle 80's and in their infinite wisdom we were treated to the music of BOMB BOMB IRAN played to the beach boy song Barbara Ann.
Cute -that.
I believe that we still have the ass about 1979 and eventually there will be a payback.
I'll bet money on it and i'll also bet that the TLIC course or it's replacement will still be singing the same old song.
ALL THE CT COURSES IN THE US GOVT ARE WRITTEN BY DELUSIONAL INSTRUCTORS BASED UPON DELUSIONAL THINKING.I've been to them all and that's my analysis.
jim
Paul: I honestly don't know much on this subject, and it IS a very critical issue with a lot of serious implications for how we the armed services deal with our soldiers. I hate to say this but I don't really want to go into this here. But I think it's worth a thread of its own.
ReplyDeletejim: Thing is, there is a lot of fairly decent geopolitical and strategic analysis out there. That's what makes it more frustrating to see this sort of completely misleading and utterly craptacular bullshit in the major public outlets...
Paul: I can add this. You'll note that the cases you cited all involved juniors being raped by seniors. I suspect that the armed services are little different in that respect from other hierarchical organizations such as corporations; the typical pattern is for a man in a senior position to abuse his position in ways ranging from harassment to blackmail to (as in these cases) rape. The organization has an institutional bias to protect the senior; add to that the military bias for male over female (not that there's any sort of feminist leanings in private corporations or society as a whole, just that armed services - especially lately - are "warriors" and warriors have dicks, right?) and you've got a very high risk that some senior guy with more cock than sense will use one or more of his female subordinates as sex toys.
ReplyDeleteBut...there are a lot of organizational, social, and political implications involved.
To stop this sort of thing utterly would require a wholesale change - not just in the military services but in the larger U.S. and Western society. I personally would say that the changes needed to do that would be a good thing for everyone, but I won't pretend that they would be easy and I won't try and tell you that they can and will happen without serious pushback...
Again, this is such a huge issue that it's really not compassable in a handful of comments on another topic...