You Will Anyway: The War Is Over, Long Live the War

Thursday, December 02, 2010

The War Is Over, Long Live the War

The American combat mission in Iraq has ended," President Obama solemnly announced to the nation. [...] "We have met our responsibility. Now, it is time to turn the page."
No doubt Sgt. Brandon E. Maggart would love to do just that, but he can't. He's dead. The 24-year-old Sgt. Maggart, from Kirksville, Missouri, was killed in action in southern Iraq on August 22--giving him the unfortunate distinction of being the first US soldier to die in Iraq after the war "ended." Sadly, he won't be the last.
[...]
About 50,000 of our troops will remain there for more than a year, still fully armed and going out on 'capture or kill' raids, security patrols, and other military missions. These actions will no longer be called combat, but our soldiers will be maimed and killed just the same.
Jim Hightower

Associated Press - December 2, 2010 8:24 AM ET
TUPELO, Miss. (AP) - Sixty-five soldiers with the 1st 185th AHB Battalion of the Mississippi National Guard are being deployed to Iraq.
WXVT

December 2, 2010 NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) [...] Another 110 soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 185th Aviation (Air Assault) of the 77th Theater Aviation Brigade will be leaving by bus and helicopter for Fort Hood, Texas, for training in preparation for an early 2011 deployment to Iraq.
News Channel 3

December 01, 2010 Over the next two days, the men and women of Winder-based Detachment 1 - a section of the [Georgia National] guard's 1st Battalion, 185th Aviation Regiment - will travel to Fort Hood, Texas, where they will train with other helicopter pilots and ground support crews from across the nation before deploying to Northern Iraq, said Capt. Andrew Bannister.
Online Athens

November 30, 2010 JACKSON, Miss. -- Friends and family gathered at Christ United Methodist Church in Jackson on Tuesday to send off the 185th Aviation Assault unit of the Mississippi National Guard.
Nearly 150 soldiers from the unit will be deployed to Iraq, where they will spend a year.
WAPT

Merry Christmas.

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Daily Twain:

And other words of wisdom...

It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. -- John Andrew Holmes

There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack. -- Molly Ivins

[War] is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious [racket]. ... It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives ... It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. -- Major General Smedley Butler

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. -- Albert Einstein

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." -- James Thurber

One of the fun aspects of Empire is how many ironies it creates. -- Glenn Greenwald

I had a slightly insane discussion the other day with a winger who wanted urgently for me to understand that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. Whereas I was trying to point out to him that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. -- Molly Ivins

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. --George Orwell

I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare. –- Howard Zinn

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. --Upton Sinclair

If we're the greatest country in the world, then maybe we could have the greatest government. -- Lewis Black

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. -- Aristotle

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. -- H.L. Mencken

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -- James Madison, 4th President of the United States

No nation builds a wall out of strength. They build it out of fear. -- Michael Flynn

They call it The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin

Texas justice is Texas justice. -- Victoria Nuland, US State Department spokeswoman

When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, “Except in wartime.” -- George McGovern

Sometimes I go about with pity for myself, and all the while Great Winds are carrying me across the sky. ~Ojibway saying