Word.

More, please.

Posted October 13, 2007 4:10 PM by Lizzy L

Here's the whole speech.

Posted October 13, 2007 4:37 PM by Hector Owen

If I had a dollar for every time I've written to a congressperson, I'd be buying a burger every week.
They'd still not be doing their jobs, though.
(Well, some of them are trying to do their jobs. But ten or twenty out of five hundred is a really miserable ratio.)

Posted October 13, 2007 4:40 PM by P J Evans

Is there any good reason (other than fear, not that that's a good reason) for these guys not speaking up a little sooner? The troops under their command and the Iraqis who are the supposed beneficiaries of their presence all relied on the prudent but firm exercise of power. Instead we got Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, and Blackwater. I'm glad these guys are finally speaking up but my joy is decidedly mixed at the cost of their silence up to now.

Posted October 13, 2007 5:23 PM by paul

paul @ 4

If they spoke up before retiring, they'd be punished.

Posted October 13, 2007 5:48 PM by P J Evans

Paul, #4: I'm getting the impression that a lot of them are retiring so that they can speak. They're muzzled while on active duty.

Posted October 13, 2007 6:14 PM by Lee

Via ThinkProgress, another related story: At an Army School, Blunt Talk on Iraq:

Much of the debate at Leavenworth has centered on a scathing article, “A Failure in Generalship,” written last May for Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran and deputy commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment who holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago. “If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results,” Colonel Yingling wrote.

Posted October 13, 2007 6:22 PM by FungiFromYuggoth

I'm afraid to ask what Congress thinks their job is.

Posted October 13, 2007 6:58 PM by Jon H

Paul@#4: I'm glad these guys are finally speaking up but my joy is decidedly mixed at the cost of their silence up to now.

I was waiting for someone to raise that issue, because I knew in my heart of hearts that someone would. Let me attempt to explain -- or, rather, to essay a bit of cultural translation, because if someone isn't military (or at least fairly conversant with military-as-a-second-language), then they're going to miss a good bit of what's going on.

Point one is that speaking disrespectfully of the Commander in Chief is, as Macdonald points out, simply not done. It is, in fact, explicitly not allowed. This is not simply because military types are mindless lovers of authority; it's because the military, as an institution, depends upon rank and structure and carefully delineated areas of responsibility in order to maintain its functionality even under extreme stress and in chaotic and unpredictable conditions. When rank and structure and carefully delineated areas of responsibility fail or are broken, Very Bad Things Indeed can start happening -- indeed, the present mess in Iraq has furnished us with multiple examples of same.

Point two is that the US military has a strong cultural bias against getting involved in politics. This bias springs not from institutional apathy, but from a strong regard, inculcated over time, for the principle of civilian control of the military. A standing army is a dangerous tool to keep lying around, and not a tool you want to see using itself rather than letting itself be used. (This goes all the way back to George Washington in the days of the Articles of Confederation. When his former officers attempted to convince him to lead a military coup against the then-government, he firmly declined. So any military officer since then, when contemplating such an action, first has to look at himself in the mirror and ask, "Do you, personally, think that you're a better man than General Washington?" -- and so far not even Douglas MacArthur has had the temerity to say "yes" to than one.)

What these points add up to, taken together, is that someone in the military who disapproves of or disagrees with the policy of the civilian government has, essentially, only two choices: stay in, obey, and keep silent, or get out and speak his or her mind. This is not as simple a decision as it sounds. Not only do they have to throw away however many years and however much work they have invested in a presumably-satisfying career, quite possibly taking a considerable financial hit in the process, they also have to leave their comrades-in-arms behind in what they are admitting by their own actions is an extremely bad situation. And this is another thing against which the military -- for what should be obvious reasons -- has a strong cultural bias.

That we are seeing so many senior officers retiring and then giving highly critical interviews almost before the ink is dry on their mustering-out papers is a bad sign. It means that things are severely fucked up. (I don't have statistics on the number of junior officers who are bailing out while they still can, but I'll bet it's not a happy number either.)

The language that Lieutenant General Sanchez uses in his statement is important. He says of the leadership in Washington that "they have chosen loyalty to their political parties above loyalty to the Constitution." In the language of the American military, this is a strong indictment -- upon commissioning, officers swear their primary loyalty not to any individual political figure or governing party, but to the Constitution itself. Even more damning, however, is this, speaking of the national political leadership: "They have unquestionably been derelict in in the performance of their duty." It's hard to explain to someone outside the community just how incredibly strong and absolute a condemnation this is; think "sin against the Holy Ghost" and you won't be too far off.

Posted October 13, 2007 8:11 PM by Debra Doyle

Debra Doyle @ 9

Well, I've started thinking of the government - especially the elected part - as 'those @#$%^&* #$%^&* @#$%^&* in DC'. Or, if you want it with dashes, 'g—d— m—f— c—s— in DC'. (And my congresscritter is one of the better ones, although I can't say that for both of my senators.)

Posted October 13, 2007 8:25 PM by P J Evans

If I'm remembering right, Ricardo Sanchez might not have exactly been on the side of the angels, back in 2003 and 2004. See here, where it suggests that Sanchez authorized the "Enhanced Measures" for interrogating prisoners that Brigadier General Janis Karpinski wound up taking the fall for. Didn't Sanchez have access to the Taguba report and decide to ignore it?

Posted October 13, 2007 9:21 PM by Lenny Bailes

Lenny, I believe you're right. But at this point, I think it behooves us to make alliances where we can. Sanchez may have f***ked up but he's saying the right stuff now, and I'm delighted. Should he have behaved otherwise in the matters of Abu Gharaib? Probably. And Al Gore should have been President in 2000.

Posted October 13, 2007 9:52 PM by Lizzy L

Naahhhh, must be one of those phony generals.

Anyway, this speech is so vague and unspecific that it's open to interpretation. Really, what are we supposed to make of “While the politicians espouse a rhetoric designed to preserve their reputations and their political power, our soldiers die." He probably meant that as a dig against Al Gore, right?
[/snark]

Seriously, this speech should be on the Extended Edition of Why We Fight.

Strike that, he should be on the Sunday talk shows for the next month, starting tomorrow. He should be on 60 Minutes, and The Daily Show for good measure.

But even after that, you'll still have a solid 30% of the populace with their heads so firmly wedged in their ostrich head-holes that they won't notice. I think it's time to start being upset by these fools and start feeling sorry for them. Openly, loudly, sarcastically sorry for them.

Posted October 13, 2007 10:20 PM by Stefan Jones

"I'm afraid to ask what Congress thinks their job is."

You shouldn't be afraid to ask. The answer, however, is very frightening. AFAICT, actually protecting the American populace, whether from attack, disaster, tyranny, or anything else, is simply not in the program. Indeed, they are methodically destroying every American strength, resource, power, and authority which could possibly limit or interfere with their own power.

Posted October 13, 2007 10:49 PM by David Harmon

David, it seems to me that Congress has opted for very little actual power. Rather, they have influence and access to corporate money and the feeling of being important. They have ceded political power to Bush and the executive branch, while making sure that they themselves are personally comfortable.

*Ptui...*

Posted October 13, 2007 10:58 PM by Lizzy L

"I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from. And, uh … oh yes. You tear your history down, man! Thirty years old, let's smash it to the floor and put a car park here!
There was a spirit of ex-empire, this thing of "things can't be done", whereas in America, I thought there was a spirit of "can be done!", the pioneer thing. "Go do it, what do you want to do?" "I want to put babies on spikes." "Go, then! Go! What a wonderful idea. It's the American Dream!"
"Hi! I'm Crazy Eddie! I put babies on spikes. Do you want a rack of babies? We've got babies on racks! Mmm, they taste of chicken!" They do! Babies taste of chicken! Cannibals say that human flesh tastes of chicken, so babies must taste of chicken. And chicken tastes of humans. Good, I'm glad you're coming with me on that.
"You killed a hundred thousand people? You must get up very early in the morning! I can't even get down the gym. Your diary must look odd: 'Get up in the morning, Death, Death, Death, Death, Death, Death, Lunch, Death, Death, Death, Afternoon Tea, Death, Death, Death, Quick shower …'"
Japan and Germany should be the peacekeepers of the world. They should be parachuted in whenever something breaks out. Parachute Germans and Japanese in. They go, "Look, we've done this before, we've done the killing. Hello? Take it from us. Just chill, chill out!" And then they organise peace really efficiently: "Peace, peace, peace – peace is organized!"
-Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill 1999

Posted October 13, 2007 11:05 PM by JKRichard

I've heard that the tastiest bit of long pig is the chunk of meat between the thumb and forefinger: one more advantage for opposable thumbs!

Posted October 13, 2007 11:25 PM by Earl Cooley III

I find it very interesting (though not entirely unexpected) that the press reports of General Sanchez's speech have somehow failed to mention that half the whole thing was about the press.

Read the whole transcript.

Posted October 13, 2007 11:45 PM by Tony Zbaraschuk

Here's what jumped out at me from the speech.

"IT SEEMS THAT CONGRESS RECOGNIZES THAT THE MILITARY CANNOT ACHIEVE VICTORY ALONE IN THIS WAR. YET THEY CONTINUE TO DEMAND VICTORY FROM OUR MILITARY. WHO WILL DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THE FAILURE OF OUR NATIONAL POLITICAL LEADERS INVOLVED IN THE MANAGEMENT THIS WAR? THEY HAVE UNQUESTIONABLY BEEN DERELICT IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THEIR DUTY. IN MY PROFESSION, THESE TYPE OF LEADERS WOULD IMMEDIATELY BE RELIEVED OR COURTMARTIALED."

Sorry about the caps, that's how the text is printed on the linked-to page.

I suspect Ricardo Sanchez and I are not, and would not be, soul-mates. Nevertheless, he is speaking truth to power here. Note what people he is talking to: a luncheon crowd of military editors and reporters. He rakes them over the coals, as Tony points out in post 18, for their biases and lack of professionalism, before going on to speak clearly and harshly about the civilian leadership. I respect his decision to speak.

Posted October 14, 2007 12:08 AM by Lizzy L

#13: Naahhhh, must be one of those phony generals.

I wasn't going to say anything else, but since you mention it: maybe like Colin Powell: one of those "fail a moral test and try to save face Generals."

Not that I'm claiming *I* would have been been stronger and more courageous, if I'd found myself in the same uniform. But reality is what it is.

In the meantime, an enemy of an enemy can be a political ally, despite possibly having deserved dismissal or court martial for failure to maintain a firm line between interrogation and torture in the U.S. Army when he had the chance to do so.

Posted October 14, 2007 1:15 AM by Lenny Bailes

Debra Doyle @ 9

Thanks for that articulate explanation. One of the drawbacks of a military which is encouraged to keep its distance from the levers of power is that it's not well understood by those not in the military. This leads to stereotyping and villainization by those opposed to specific wars who don't understand that, at least here in the US, the military doesn't get to choose its targets.

The original idea of a citizen army was that most citizens would have an understanding of the military by being in it for awhile; this hasn't worked well for some time because even the citizens who have enlisted for a term aren't in the same position as career soldiers and often never do get to understand them*. That's one reason the Guard, the Reserves, and the Regular Army have never gotten along very well. Now, of course, you can't tell the difference between them without a scorecard; they've all been in the barrel together. I have hopes this means that the current generation of new citizens will understand the problems better, and not let the next bunch of political leaders strut around like they earned their uniforms and they know what they're doing.

Everyone, please listen to what Macdonald and Doyle are saying here. The military may sound like an alien world to those who've not been in it, but who better to understand aliens than the Fluorosphere? And understand we all must, if we are to have any chance of finding a way out of the hole our government** is digging for us.

* Or want to: "Who cares about a bunch of lifers?"
** Not just the bushite administration; Congress has been busy with the shovels, too.

Posted October 14, 2007 1:38 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

I know the top military leadership will never say a word against the Commander-in-Chief while still on duty, but I would love to be able to read their minds. Or be privy to a late-night confab after the liquor has started to flow.

Posted October 14, 2007 1:56 AM by Steve C.

I actually have a fair amount of sympathy for those officers who have - so far - attempted, with little complaint, to carry out their orders. I can even understand how they might regard Gen. Sanchez as a traitor for saying these things.

"At the time of France's surrender in 1940 the officers who remained in the Army had accepted the position and the orders of their government and had given up the fight. From their point of view, if the course chosen by De Gaulle was correct, then every French officer who obeyed the orders of his government was a poltroon. If De Gaulle was a loyal Frenchman, they had to regard themselves as cowards. Naturally the officers did not choose to think of themselves in this light; rather they considered themselves as loyal Frenchmen carrying out the orders of constituted civilian authority, and it followed that they officially and personally regarded De Gaulle as a deserter."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe.

The boot is on the other foot, here, of course, but something like the same reflections must occur to every soldier prosecuting the war in Iraq. If Sanchez is right, and they have been given orders that are manifestly impossible to carry out, then the only honourable option is protest, and to carry that protest to the point of resigning their commissions. If they do not, then they have placed their personal benefits and military careers ahead of their oaths and their duty to the troops they command; and it must follow that they must regard themselves as poltroons.

Of course, Sanchez did not choose to resign either, which rather weakens his position now. But nevertheless.

Posted October 14, 2007 1:57 AM by Dave Luckett

FungiFromYoggoth @ 7

Col. Yingling is a highly respected military officer and scholar. As such, he's worked with colleagues of Gen. David Petraeus*, which resulted in Petraeus defending him publically (albeit somewhat lukewarmly, IMO) when that article came out and the inevitable feco-ventilatory event occurred.

Yingling** said publically that, in the two or three days after the article was published, he received several hundred emails from US military officers, and none of them was negative about the points he'd made. My sense is that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with the current state of the general officer corps among field grade officers just now, so the discontent is not just among generals approaching retirement.

Regrettably, I don't have any contacts among junior officers these days; I get the impression from news reports I've heard on the academies that there is a significant and vocal minority of cadets and newly-commissioned officers who see the changes wrought by the administration as a way to move the military back into the mainstream of US politics, which is a scary notion.

* Principally, Col. John Nagl, who was one of the authors of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, for which Petraeus wrote the foreword.

** Scholars of Norse culture and mythology will please forgive me for wanting to spell that "Yngling".

Posted October 14, 2007 2:07 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Lenny Bailes @ 20

Colin Powell was not universally respected as a general by other soldiers. There's a derogatory term that was used for him, "political general". In part it reflects the feelings about a soldier who breaks with the cultural bias against politics that Debra Doyle described; in part it indicates a suspicion that the general so described is not so much a soldier whose primary motivations are honor, loyalty, and duty, as a climber of the greasy pole, whose motivation is ambition.

Posted October 14, 2007 2:16 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Powell had a fair bit of respect until the UN speech.

Yingling has a lot more support than most outside the services would think.

You might want to be at one of those let your hair down sessions. You might not. I can say, with some authority, you'd miss most of it. A lot of it would be in shorthands of culture more dense, and in-group than the explication Debra so kindly gave.

Peter Pace managed to upbraid Rumsfeld in a way which the press didn't get, but every Marine and Soldier (and probably most of the Navy and Air Force) understood.

In public, without any way for him to respond, he pulled Rummy's pants down and spanked him.

The sense of the service is strange right now.

I'll have more when I finish reading my present book, "In the company of soldiers".

It's the first book I've read about the present war. It's, for me, some easy reading, and heavy lifting.

I am way late to bed, as I have a PT test in 6 hours, so that's all I can spare the time to say now.

Posted October 14, 2007 3:47 AM by Terry Karney

Bruce Cohen, #21: "The original idea of a citizen army was that most citizens would have an understanding of the military by being in it for awhile; this hasn't worked well for some time because even the citizens who have enlisted for a term aren't in the same position as career soldiers and often never do get to understand them."

Is your first premise true? According to this history hosted at the US Army's own site, in the original thirteen colonies during the years of the Revolution, roughly 200,000 to 250,000 men were of military age, and of those, "less than half of them, or about 100,000, actually bore arms, frequently under repeated enlistments." And that was during an actual war. This doesn't sound like a world in which "most citizens would have an understanding of the military by being in it for awhile."

Posted October 14, 2007 7:22 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I can see I have to complete my post on the origin of the standing army (the origin of Executive Privilege is part of that same story). It involves the worst defeat under arms that the US Army ever suffered, and a nifty song.

Posted October 14, 2007 8:45 AM by James D. Macdonald

When I think of the military not getting involved in politics, I think of Jimmy Carter's 1992 book , Turning Point. At some point, he recounts his days in the Navy and his once asking his CO if he could attend a political rally. His CO didn't outright say no, but asked if he intended to make a career of being in the Navy.

When did things change?

(By the way, I met Carter that year during his book-signing tour. What I remember the most vividly was that, when a woman introduced her 10-year-old daughter to him, his smile turned into a real one, truly lighting his face up.)

Posted October 14, 2007 10:01 AM by Serge

#23 : the only honourable option is protest, and to carry that protest to the point of resigning their commissions. If they do not, then they have placed their personal benefits and military careers ahead of their oaths and their duty to the troops they command

Perhaps. If the price of honour is (contradictorily) a dishonourable discharge, losing pension and benefits, and for good measure getting endless hassle every time you meet government bureaucracy, such as never being allowed on a plane (supposing you could still afford the fare) without being strip-searched and having the contents of your bags dumped out on the floor, then being honourable has a price that anyone might be forgiven for not paying.

Posted October 14, 2007 10:02 AM by John Stanning

Lizzy L @#15: David, it seems to me that Congress has opted for very little actual power. Rather, they have influence and access to corporate money and the feeling of being important.

Rather, I'd say that they have opted for very little formal power, precisely because the formal powers of their position come with formal restraints that they don't want to accept.

The methodical looting of the Treasury is more of the same: "oh, we can't afford to fix those problems...". Likewise the use of "state's rights" as a figleaf for refusing to restrain state and local abuses, "personal responsibility" for gutting social programs, and many other tactics of the ShrubCo Administration.

If you'll forgive yet another Sandman reference, this is like Gaiman's Lucifer and the "triumvirate" -- it gives him deniability ("Sorry, I'm not actually in charge anymore, so I can't help you..."), when in fact, his power has nothing to do with formal titles. And notice how when Lucifer abdicates, he doesn't just hand over the whole shebang to Beelzebub or whoever, he methodically dismantles everything and locks it up, then drops the resulting mess in his current enemy's lap. Now that's evil....

Posted October 14, 2007 10:05 AM by David Harmon

Generals (and all servicepeople) everywhere are not supposed to speak out against their political masters, but there seems to be a particular problem in the USofA with the political, partisan president also being commander-in-chief. As I understand it, in the UK the army's ultimate loyalty is to the Queen - that is, to the nation as a whole - rather than to the politicians, despite the fact that it's the politicians who actually give the orders. How does it work in other countries?

Posted October 14, 2007 10:09 AM by John Stanning

Terry (#26): The Navy noticed.

Posted October 14, 2007 10:19 AM by James D. Macdonald

David Harmon @ 31... Off-topic, but since you brought up Lucifer... Have you ever seen 1995's Prophecy? It's about a Second War of the Angels, but led by Gabriel. Lucifer is staying out of that one though, and he prefers running a nightclub in Los Angeles. I was amused to realize a few years later that Lucifer was played by Viggo Mortensen.

Posted October 14, 2007 10:20 AM by Serge

With regard to the Pace speech that Terry Karney mentions above: pay particular attention to the frequency-of-use and distribution of the word "sir." In normal military conversation, "sir" goes at either the beginning or the end of an exchange, and is most often used only once and then assumed thereafter. Using it more than once adds emphasis, and not usually of the good kind, either; placing it anywhere other than at the beginning or end of a sentence -- and in particular, placing it between a main clause and a subordinate clause (as in “If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it”) -- is as direct a rebuke as a slap across the face.

Posted October 14, 2007 10:21 AM by Debra Doyle

Serge @#34: Haven't seen it, but I'll keep an eye out, thanks!

Posted October 14, 2007 10:46 AM by David Harmon

John Stanning @#30 - thanks for providing an opportunity to segue to yesterday's story (via thismodernworld.com) of what happened to the man who tried to stop Pakistan from getting the bomb.

Rich Barlow idles outside his silver trailer on a remote campsite in Montana - itinerant and unemployed, with only his hunting dogs and a borrowed computer for company. He dips into a pouch of American Spirit tobacco to roll another cigarette. It is hard to imagine that he was once a covert operative at the CIA, the recognised, much lauded expert in the trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

He prepared briefs for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was at the Pentagon, for the upper echelons of the CIA and even for the Oval Office. But when he uncovered a political scandal - a conspiracy to enable a rogue nation to get the nuclear bomb - he found himself a marked man.

Even though this story supports my long-held "Reagan holed America under the waterline" theory, I kind of hope the story is an exaggeration because it's just too depressing otherwise.

On that note, I think it's important to realize that not every member of the general staff is just waiting to retire and tell the world how badly the war was run. There are Rush-listening, Fox News-watching, right-wing talking-point spouting members of the general staff, and I fear they're a considerable group.

Posted October 14, 2007 11:11 AM by FungiFromYuggoth

FungiFromYuggoth #37: There are Rush-listening, Fox News-watching, right-wing talking-point spouting members of the general staff, and I fear they're a considerable group.

That's just warped natural selection, with normal evolutionary pressures due to pure merit having been systematically suppressed by intense politicization of the promotion process.

Posted October 14, 2007 11:54 AM by Earl Cooley III

John Stanning #30. My point exactly.

Posted October 14, 2007 12:25 PM by Dave Luckett

Patrick Nielsen Hayden @ 27

I may not have expressed myself clearly. I think that having a strong citizen presence in the military was an idea that some of the founders took with them into the design of the Constitution; I don't think it worked out as well as they hoped. And I think it's been working less well over time.

To some extent what's important is not the actual numbers involved but the general feeling about service in the military among the general population. When military service is seen as either a normal part of life, or an important part of some career paths (especially politics), then there's a tendency among those eligible to be interested in the signs and symbols of the military and to be curious about the experience of being in the military. This was the situation in the middle of the 20th Century, when conscription was active and society as a whole was engaged in the conduct of war, both during WW2 and the early parts of the Cold War.

Later, particularly after conscription was halted and the Vietnam War ended so messily, society in general turned away from the military, and those in service came to be considered odd, perhaps antisocial and unsocial.* Those civilians interested in the military included a large proportion of fetishists, who made totems and sexual symbols of military objects and practices.

This feeling about the military is why I've talked about the questions of conscription and service. I do not believe that military conscriptions is either a moral or practical way to fill the ranks, but I am afraid that gulf between military and civilian populations could eventually destroy the firewall we've built between the military and political power.

* Geeks, of a sort.

Posted October 14, 2007 2:46 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Bruce Cohen @ 21, Patrick @ 27: Could the statement "The original idea of a citizen army was that most citizens would have an understanding of the military by being in it for awhile; this hasn't worked well for some time because even the citizens who have enlisted for a term aren't in the same position as career soldiers and often never do get to understand them" be related to the facts "100,000 enlisted soldiers out of 250,000 available men" be related by the ratio of how many men you would have in your circle of close acquaintances who have any experience of military life?

I'm thinking here that in a population of 250,000 where 100,000 have such experience, then if you have 25 acquaintances who you might consider 'close', 10 of them would have experience in the military. Compare the current numbers: a population of 165 million men (or so) and a standing army of... what? 2 million? Five million? It certainly isn't anywhere close to 66 million.

Yes, I'm ignoring women in the military. No, I am not a mathematician, but I can wave my hands in the air and pretend. It's kind of fun.

Posted October 14, 2007 2:57 PM by Renee

Debra Doyle #35: I've noticed Keith Olbermann uses "Sir" that way, to great effect.

Posted October 14, 2007 3:00 PM by ethan

Earl Cooley & FungiFromYoggoth

There are also a lot of "company men" in the general officer corps, people who will go with the program in order to keep or increase their position on the greasy pole*. BushCo have been selectively replacing the soldierly and reflective generals and admirals like Pace with these company types for as long as they've been in office.

David Brin has posted a series of articles on his blog in the last few weeks on what he calls "the war of the GOP against the military". I'm not at all sure I agree with many of his conclusions, but it makes some scary reading.

* I love this image; it so captures the combination of greed, fear, adrenaline, and desperation that I've seen in people climbing it.

Posted October 14, 2007 3:03 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Renee @ 41

Yes, certainly, that's a large part of what I'm talking about. You may have missed seeing my #40 in response to Patrick, which talks about the need for the population to be familiar with the military as a way of life.

The numbers you mention are an indicator of the problem; I wonder if we couldn't make it more rigorous using network theory. In qualitative terms, network theory says that some nodes in a network (individual people in this case) are better connected* than others, and so have a larger affect on the communication channels and traffic flow in the network. In most theoretical approaches the connectivity is assumed to be some random function of time or space, weighted by previous connectivity**, in society I would treat it as an evolutionary function. In times of little contact between the general population and the military, few well-connected people in the population are also connected to the military, and there is little evolutionary selection pressure for those who are so connected to increase their general connection. The danger I'm warning against is that eventually the connections become so tenuous that the military and civilian populations and cultures act as if they were completely disconnected.

* "have more arcs" in the sense of graph theory
** the "Them as gots shall get" principle

Posted October 14, 2007 3:17 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

For a cautionary (and darkly comic) tale about the dangers of an unconnected military, read Walter Jon Williams' short story "Dinosaurs".

Posted October 14, 2007 3:24 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Sorry for the breakdown in link physics; here's the correct wormhole dialing address: Dinosaurs

Posted October 14, 2007 3:49 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Lizzie L @ #15 writes: "They have ceded political power to Bush and the executive branch..."

I'm in Chapter 3 of Takeover, Charlie Savage's 2007 Pulitzer-winning book about exactly that. It's enlightening and terrifying at the same time.

Savage is the reporter who first broke the story about Bush's signing statements.

Posted October 14, 2007 5:30 PM by Linkmeister

John Stanning (#32): In the US armed forces, the enlistment or commissioning oath is to defend the Constitution. (Against, I may note, "all enemies foreign and domestic".) The enlistment oath also includes "I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice"; the commissioning oath does not.

Posted October 14, 2007 5:56 PM by Christopher Davis

Christopher, despite differences in wording between enlisted and commissioning oaths you will find that officers, even retired ones are subject to the laws of the UCMJ.
Being that is the case, any retired officer speaking against the president may be subject to several/ articles/and then / some.

All personnel, officers included also sign a page 11 (13?); Statement of Understanding, regarding the UCMJ. (though I doubt few people in the military have actually read the UCMJ --- much less the very Constitution which they are defending)

Posted October 14, 2007 11:03 PM by JKRichard

#44 Bruce Cohen "The danger I'm warning against is that eventually the connections become so tenuous that the military and civilian populations and cultures act as if they were completely disconnected."

I have to agree here. This is the crux of the concept of the "civilian soldier." It was to purposefully break with the tradition of the "warrior caste." It was meant to tie the military to the people (not so much the people to the military as Bruce said in his first comment). Then add in the civilian government control of the military and you effectively diffuse the impulse of a military coup.

The last thing holding the military back from a potential backlash against the civilian control would be professionalism and their individual (innoculated culture of) honor, duty and sense of service. This is the third leg that prevents military coups (the founding fathers were big on three legs/pillars).

Posted October 14, 2007 11:44 PM by Steve Buchheit

The only article that you'd really find useful is Art. 88. (I don't see how Art. 99 could apply at all, and the rest (including Conduct Unbecoming) would be a real stretch.

I think you'll find that most military members are very familiar with the UCMJ (particularly the punitive articles), and the Constitution.

One important note about the Constitution is that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to the military. They fall under a different section entirely.

Posted October 15, 2007 12:02 AM by James D. Macdonald

JKRichard: There are very few members who are not moderately familiar with, at least, the punitive articles.

Further, the nature of the beast is such that the subjectivity is complicated by the fact that to enforce it the person must be recalled to active duty to face the charge. In the case of a general officer that probably requires the acquiesence of Congress (since it would, technically, affect the number of general officers, which is in their direct purview).

No matter how you did it, it would make a bigger stink than the speaches of those officers. Since the traditions of the nation, and the services, are such that the speaking out of retired officers is normal; getting a conviction would be damned near impossible (because of the way a "jury of one's peers" is interpreted in the USMJ).

Posted October 15, 2007 12:45 AM by Terry Karney

Jim (and I say Jim with all due respect sir), my experience from service is that the UCMJ was stretched to cover many NJPs.

In my second day of Naval Basic Training I was assigned as EPO (Educational Petty Officer) and asked to conduct an last minute night-study before taps (that's nighty night time for the non mil-spec crowd). I gave a speach (borrowed from my father (who served proudly for 26 years) about the Navy Core Values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment. When I hit Commitment I talked about the Oath of Enlistment and asked for a show of hands as to who had actually read the Constitution. Zero hands raised.
I believe you would be correct in saying most Senior NCOs and commissioned officers have a formal and familiar understanding...but give the bell curve of population by rank --- I'd say most of the military serving today have only a vague understanding of what they are defending.
"I signed up for the college benefits."

Posted October 15, 2007 12:54 AM by JKRichard

Dave@23: If Sanchez is right, and they have been given orders that are manifestly impossible to carry out, then the only honourable option is protest, and to carry that protest to the point of resigning their commissions.

I'm not certain, but I don't think "impossible to carry out" orders are, by default, dishonorable orders. You could be ordered to defend a position against an incoming soviet tank division and defend it with nothing more than a shovel, because that's all you've got left that works, and that wouldn't neccessarily be a dishonorable order. If you swear to uphold the constitution and if you swear to follow the ucmj, then the only thing that is dishonorable is any order that breaks those two oaths.

Which isn't to say that there haven't been instances in Iraq that were in violation of the UCMJ, or the constitution, or basic human rights, and therefore dishonorable.

But by itself, an impossible order, isn't neccessarily a dishonorable one.

Posted October 15, 2007 1:06 AM by Greg London

Steve Buchheit @ 50

Obviously I don't know what was in the Founders' minds*, but I think the citizen army works in both directions, and that both are equally important. The military must feel a duty and a loyalty to the society they protect**, but the citizenry must also feel a need for and a gratitude to the military. Otherwise it's easy for the military to become marginalized, stereotyped, and scapegoated, and that pushes it away from its loyalty and sense of duty. It's a two-edged sword.†

* Unlike some people who seem to be sure that they're channeling them.
** Hence the oath to the constitution, not the general, the president, or even the government as a whole.
† Aren't they all?

Posted October 15, 2007 2:18 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Bruce #55 :
It's a two-edged sword.†
† Aren't they all?

Not necessarily, depending on what counts as a sword. For example, AFAIR sabres and cutlasses are usually single-edged. I have a Burmese (I think) curved, double-pointed sword with the edge on the inside of the curve.

Posted October 15, 2007 6:53 AM by John Stanning

> It's a two-edged sword.
> Aren't they all?

You mean literally? No.
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falchion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backsword

Posted October 15, 2007 7:21 AM by Alan Braggins

Not to mention the möbius swords.

Posted October 15, 2007 8:38 AM by ethan

Never take a möbius blade to a klein gun fight.

Posted October 15, 2007 9:39 AM by NelC

JKRichard #53

It doesn't surprise me at all that boot recruits on their second day of basic don't know anything about anything.

"I do too! Shinola is a shoe polish!"

Posted October 15, 2007 9:42 AM by James D. Macdonald

Well, I didn't mean literal swords, but yes, there are a lot of single-edge types. Sabers can be either*; some cavalry sabers had no edge, being sharpened only at the point.

* In the American Civil War Confederates favored the single-edge cavalry saber as being more "modern", Union officers used the two-edge version, considering it the traditional weapon of the officer and gentleman. Personally, I agree with the cavalrymen who used a carbine; God is usually on the side of the most guns.**

** except for counterinsurgencies.

Posted October 15, 2007 9:55 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Jim, and others with military experience:

I have the impression that the current administration is not "supporting the troops" OFF the battlefield to nearly the previously expected extent (e.g. provisions made for returning home; pay and benefits; medical care for veterans; acknowledgement and appropriate treatment of PTSD). Do you think this is true? If so, do you think it contributes to the retired generals' willingness to criticize the administration publicly? And finally, if this impression is true, why hasn't there been more of a stink raised, either by the press or by military families?

Posted October 15, 2007 10:11 AM by Lila

Is it even theoretically possible to bring peace & stability to a region characterized by theocratic governments?

Posted October 15, 2007 10:55 AM by Steve C.

On the subject of the increasing disconnect between military officers and the civilian population, there was a cover article in the Washington Post magazine July 22, 2007 entitled "Their War" discussing this. My web skills aren't up to posting the link, but googling turns it up readily. May be behind a subscription wall. It's multifaceted and to me - with no military background and limited interest in politics - quite thought-provoking. Mentions the low number of active duty troops as a percentage of the population and therefore the fewer civilians who know them personally, the rise in military leaders who attended service academies rather than ROTC programs where they would have encountered future civilian leaders (and vice versa), and other factors.

Posted October 15, 2007 10:59 AM by OtterB

Steve C. #63 : How many theocratic governments - countries ruled by priests or equivalents - are there anywhere?
Iran, yes. Although Ahmedinejad is elected, Ayatollah Khamenei the "Supreme Leader" can over-rule him.
Saudi Arabia, semi-theocratic - although it's a monarchy, with the King having absolute power, he has to tread carefully with Mecca and Medina being in his kingdom.
But apart from those two, I can't think of any theocratic governments (Vatican City, maybe?).

Certainly Iraq under Saddam Hussein wasn't a theocracy.

Being a Muslim country doesn't make it a theocracy, and is no bar to being stable and peaceful. Look at Oman under Sultan Qaboos; also, for example, Kuwait and Malaysia.

Posted October 15, 2007 12:22 PM by John Stanning

Lila @ 62, there's nothing unusual about not supporting the returned vetrans; I remember a study that was done about ten years out from the fall of Saigon that showed Viet Nam vets were the largest single demographic among users of homeless services, and even further back, there was the Bonus Army.

Posted October 15, 2007 12:22 PM by JESR

Jim Macdonald @28:

Would it be Sinclair's defeat you're thinking of, as related in Martha Keller's "Retreat Along the Wabash?"

Tell the truth to a man you trust,
The truth to a man you fear,
Lie to woman because you must,
But since whatever you do or say
He'll never believe you anyway--
Lie, lie, lie to the General, lie to the Brigadier...

Posted October 15, 2007 1:27 PM by Lori Coulson

Lila @ 62, JESR @ 66

It's been SOP for as long as I know about (as far back as the Civil War at least) for the government, and often for the common citizens, to ignore or actively discriminate against returning veterans. Certainly there's documentation of this after WW2 and Vietnam; I think the lack of interest in Korea when studying or talking about history speaks for itself. And the treatment of WW1 veterans was one of the most shameful episodes in the history of our country; the president ordered a demonstration trying to get the benefits the veterans had been promised fired upon by active army troops.

Posted October 15, 2007 1:39 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

John Stanning @ 65

Tibet, at least before the Chinese started colonizing. Bhutan, too, I think, though I'm ignorant of recent (after about 1970) history there. There are also countries where, at least in living memory, the ruler was anointed as a religious leader or even a semi-divinity: Ethiopia under Hailie Sellasie and Japan.

All of these countries under these regimes were highly stable internally; their problems came from outside.

Posted October 15, 2007 2:00 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Lila@#62, JESR@#66, Bruce@#68: The neglect-of-returning-veterans problem has been around long enough that there's an entire subcategory of "poor boy rescues princess, achieves prosperity" folktales that begin "Once upon a time there was a poor soldier returning home from the wars...."

Posted October 15, 2007 2:02 PM by Debra Doyle

#61 Lori --

That would indeed be St. Clair's Defeat. The other, older, song begins:

'Twas November the Fourth in the year of '91
We had a strong engagement near to Fort Jefferson
St. Clair was our commander, as it may remembered be,
For we left nine hundred lying in that curséd territory.

In one morning General Arthur St. Clair lost, not just 90% of his own command, but 60% of all the men then under arms in the service of the United States.

Posted October 15, 2007 2:03 PM by James D. Macdonald

Seeing the date in the poem Jim cites in #71 caused me to Google; I've never known of a momentous event in history which occurred on my birthdate.

St. Clair's Defeat.

It occurred on the Wabash River in Ohio on, sure enough, November 4.

Posted October 15, 2007 2:14 PM by Linkmeister

Linkmeister @ 72

You've been around since 1781? [snicker]

(My father's b-day was 4 Nov also.)

Posted October 15, 2007 2:18 PM by P J Evans

John Stanning at 65:

Tibet; the Dalai Lama.

Posted October 15, 2007 2:22 PM by Lizzy L

#71 Jim --

Cool -- the only song I knew was the one that Juanita sings on "Rifles and Rhymes," a bunch of Keller poems set to music. Stands to reason that there would have been others written much earlier.

I've learned more American history from filks than I ever did in school. Would you believe that St. Clair's Defeat is NOT taught in Ohio history classes?

Posted October 15, 2007 2:24 PM by Lori Coulson

PJ @ #73, Why, yes. I'm the role model RAH used for Lazarus Long. It's always been an irritant that I was never mentioned in any of his acknowledgements.

Posted October 15, 2007 3:55 PM by Linkmeister

They called us out and put in us their trust.
A force whose strength and skill would hold at bay
the unexpected terror that came on that day,
the dark 'gainst which our light and might would thrust.
Then off we went to fight in Iraq's dust,
to bring to heel Saddam, to make him pay
for all the horror, torture, and decay
he had inflicted with a rule unjust.
We brought him down as all had known we must,
but left the country deep in disarray,
with services and law thrown down to rust.
Now violence stalks the souk and leaves behind
the bodies of the ones who could not flee.
Our comrades pay the price of leaders' greed.
The ones who live lose limbs or minds, are blind,
and being no more use, discarded like debris.
We wonder now the meaning of "succeed".

Posted October 15, 2007 4:06 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Linkmeister @ 76

Didn't think you'd be willing to cop to that. How are you and your mother getting along these days?

Posted October 15, 2007 4:11 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Bruce, he, um, expanded that relationship beyond what was factual.

Posted October 15, 2007 4:28 PM by Linkmeister

NelC: Never take a möbius blade to a klein gun fight.

Now that's why I read Making Light.

Posted October 15, 2007 4:55 PM by Claude Muncey

I suspect that theocracies tend to be more internally stable because they present an obvious central organizing point for the country. Bets are off, of course, where there are rival sects/religions within the same region.

Posted October 15, 2007 5:19 PM by C. Wingate

Doesn't the whole citizen-soldier thing in the USA trace back to the notion of the military being based in the militia?

Posted October 15, 2007 5:22 PM by C. Wingate

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) #77:

That, sir, is sheer brilliance. If I had a hat I'd doff it to you.

Posted October 15, 2007 5:25 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Fragano @ 83

*blush*
Thank you.

Posted October 15, 2007 5:35 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.
An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;
For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an, we thought we'd call an' tell.

"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write
A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

O thirty million English that babble of England's might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made-"
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

-- Rudyard Kipling (1891)

Posted October 15, 2007 5:52 PM by James D. Macdonald

The US WW I vets' Bonus Army didn't have a spokesman with the eloquence of Kipling, but its action did seem to result in passage of the GI Bill of Rights after WW II.

Posted October 15, 2007 6:05 PM by Linkmeister

I'm out of step with the rum tum tum of the military drum.

God bless the good soldiers. Yes, let's pay them decently and take care of them during and after their term of service. Let's hope Sanchez's diatribe spurs Congress to investigate and document just how horribly the good soldiers have been betrayed by their civilian Commander-in- Chief.

But I'm not so much into the subtext of how much better it would have been if only our invasion had been run properly, by good soldiers. I want poems that remind us the Iraq invasion was immoral from its inception, and an abomination that's destroyed our honor as a nation while it's destroyed the lives of its victims.

This was written with the American Civil War in mind, but I think it also speaks to the aftermath of the last five years. Patrick and Teresa will recognize that I've cited that link before. They, Jim, and the rest of you should free to tell me if I'm being annoying by citing that, again. Particularly, I'm aware of my proclivity to feel I've accomplished something by citing dramatic poetry instead of making more phone calls to Congress and donating money to candidates likely to stop the horrors being inflicted in our name.

Posted October 15, 2007 8:10 PM by Lenny Bailes

Lenny Bailes @ 87

I agree with you. That poem was about the soldiers, told from their point of view. Sometimes you have to just get down to where the injustice is happening and see it from the point of view of the shaftee, which is what I was trying to do. Remember not to assume that the views expressed in fiction or poetry are precisely those of the author; I tend to write from other points of view, especially in my poetry. So that's not a political subtext, it's intended to make it even more poignant that these soldiers believed in what they were doing, and don't anymore.

Posted October 15, 2007 8:26 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Lenny@#87: It should be intuitively obvious -- but, unfortunately, it never seems to be -- that one of the many possible ways for a civilian government to shaft its standing army is to order it into unwinnable or unjust wars.

Posted October 15, 2007 8:50 PM by Debra Doyle

The GI Bill of Rights has been gutted, then gutted again, since WWII.

Posted October 15, 2007 10:26 PM by James D. Macdonald

James D. Macdonald @ 90

The educational part of it has been especially bureaucratic as well. My son served a reserve enlistment and then used the GI Bill for grad school; he spent most of his time waiting around for the payments, and had to get loans to pay off the school while waiting for the GI money to come in; when he asked the VA what was going on they would routinely lie and say the money had been sent already, or that they'd lost the records and couldn't verify that he was owed money.

Posted October 15, 2007 10:40 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Lila, #62, the WashPost has a continuing investigation on how soldiers were treated at Walter Reed.

Posted October 15, 2007 11:40 PM by Marilee

Forget Walter Reed.

A Wife's Battle

Me, I had to stop reading "In the company of Soldiers". Maybe in a few more years.

Posted October 16, 2007 12:13 AM by Terry Karney

When I used the GI Bill it was very well run and very straightforward. Serve 180 days or more, get four years of assistance to be used within ten years of your End of Obligation.

My first time around I got $270/month for three months, then left school. The next time around, three years later, I got $311/month for about twenty months and finished the BS degree with about six years left on the meter. Then I went to work fulltime and didn't have time or inclination to use up what I had left before time ran out in 1984.

As I understand it, since then it's been made into a system of matching contributions which don't get made until the servicemember puts in some time or money first.

Posted October 16, 2007 2:22 AM by Linkmeister

Linkmeister @ 94

That's correct; it appears that at least some uncivil servants have been using that as a way to procrastinate on the payments; they say the paperwork documenting the money hasn't arrived and so they can't authorize the payment. This is probably not a universal thing by any means, but it went on for almost the entire 6 years of my son's PhD program. And it's consistent with the fun I used to have with the DOD over other matters.*

* I'm not going to get into the hilarity my draft board visited upon me; that's bureaucracy of a whole other order, for which the only solution is exorcism.

Posted October 16, 2007 2:34 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Debra Doyle @ 70

The treatment of veterans in Russia, especially under the Tsars, was so bad that folk tales are full of those stories. Many of them got started after Napolean's invasion was broken by the Russian winter; what many people don't know is that while the French lost that war, the Russians didn't really win it, the winter did, and many Russian soldiers were casualties.

Also, the Russian Empire, and a lot of other states in Europe, had a bad habit* of conscripting ethnic minorities, equipping them poorly, if at all, and using them as cannon fodder. Those that survived usually got no veterans benefits at all; in fact they'd usually lost the possessions they'd had to their ethnic majority neighbors when they were conscripted.

A great-uncle of mine was conscripted that way during WW1. He was given a broomstick in lieu of a rifle and marched off to (what the Germans called) the Eastern Front. Given the stories about him**, I've always wondered if he hadn't met Jaroslav Hašek at some point during the war and became a model for one of the characters in "The Good Soldier Švejk".

* Bad from the soldiers' point of view.
** It's said that he fell asleep in the basement of a town that was in Russian hands, and woke up after it had been taken by Germans and the basement turned into a field hospital. When he woke up, he tried to surrender, but because he spoke no German, they thought he was demanding their surrender, so they gave it to him, which is how he captured an entire town full of Germans. Oddly, this did not endear him to his superiors; I think they thought of him as a "smart-aleck Jew".

Posted October 16, 2007 3:12 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

It's one thing that the military is bound by law to not criticize (or, heaven forbid, rebel against) the President...

Then why does Congress also seem to follow the same law? Someone told me that it's a cultural thing; a tendency to treat the President as some kind of king, in a nation that never had kings.

But the USA is not a monarchy. (Yet.)

Posted October 16, 2007 7:33 AM by A.R.Yngve

Yngve #97:

My guess (not joking) is that this has a lot to do with all those (very important for national security) warrantless wiretaps, national security letters, data mining done to "profile terrorists," etc. Those sources of information must give a huge advantage to anyone using them in a political contest. Think how useful it is to know about your opponents' gay flings, extramarital affair, weird financial dealings, dope-smoking teenage son, etc.

This started long before Bush (J Edgar Hoover's FBI apparently had extensive files on all important congressmen). The Clinton administration had a major scandal involving this, with Clinton's political people being given access to FBI files of prominent Republicans. (Back then, Republicans' deep commitment to principle led them to protest these abuses of power, while Democrats' deep commitment to principle led them to explain that these were innocent mistakes.)

There is a large, fundamental shift happening in terms of how much privacy a normal human being has from his government. Hardly anyone really understands what this looks like, how big the impact is, or how much power it hands to people with the right access to information. It changes the balance of power in a democracy, in favor of the currently-powerful and the people running those programs. It's been developing for a long time, and 9/11 and the Bush administration have only sped it along, not brought it about. There seems to me to be almost no chance that anyone will get elected who will stop this progression.

Posted October 16, 2007 8:40 AM by albatross

Terry @ #93, I don't have any experience with PTSD, but I've worked with TBI patients. If it's true that the VA is grossly undertreating TBI, they are setting up a huge avalanche of problems for thousands of people--not just the patients, not just their families, but pretty much anyone they come in contact with. And not just in the short term.

(This article in Army Times about undertreatment of PTSD estimates that 10% of the wounded have TBI. Given that most of the casualties are caused by explosions, that seems way low to me.)

Posted October 16, 2007 9:39 AM by Lila

Thanks to OtterB for the "Their War" article reference, great reading.

> It's a two-edged sword.
> Aren't they all?

Well, time to take the old taoist blade-less sword out of it's empty sheath, I guess.

albatross (#98): There is a large, fundamental shift happening in terms of how much privacy a normal human being has from his government.

There is a large, fundamental shift happening in terms of how much privacy a normal human being has, period. Or even, more profoundly, a shift in what is considered to be privacy.
People are now having private, and by that I mean private conversations on their headset phones in crowded public areas not caring one bit. They enter into "fidelity programs" of, say, supermarket chains, and do not care that they're basicaly selling part of their private lives to the highest bidders. Not to talk about some of the aspects the blogging and myspace culture have somehow taken (please do not hit me, I'm not equating one for the other).

Posted October 16, 2007 10:48 AM by MD²

Excellent and scary point, albatross. Even if we do remove the tools for the sitting president to use to hamstring his opponents, they can be put back in place within a few weeks of any horrific attack against us little people. We'll insist on it, out of anger.

No future leader, no matter how clueless, can ever be ignorant to the fact that a large tragedy, manufactured or not, only serves to increase the leader's power.

We live in interesting times, don't we?

Posted October 16, 2007 10:50 AM by Nangleator

Lila @ 99

The thing that really gripes me about undertreatment of veterans for any disability is that, even though our society has tried to ignore it after every conflict, we have 40 years of documentation on the negative consequences: there are lots of Vietnam veterans who ended up homeless or otherwise socially and economically incapacitated, and behind each one is a group of family, friends, and loved ones who lost somebody. Oh, wait, I forgot, that was because of the moral laxity of my generation.

Posted October 16, 2007 11:02 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Twelve former Army captains have joined the generals (and the seven sergeants) in speaking out about Iraq. Their conclusion: institute a draft, or get out - now.

Posted October 16, 2007 12:02 PM by Leslie in CA

Leslie @ #103, that link takes me to a blog post about Arabic slang.

Posted October 16, 2007 12:40 PM by Lila

12 Captains

Posted October 16, 2007 1:49 PM by Earl Cooley III

Lila, my apologies - I thought I'd copied the proper link. Thanks to Earl Cooley III for supplying the correct one.

Posted October 16, 2007 3:39 PM by Leslie in CA

From Spencer Ackerman at The American Prospect:

Contrary to its billing, this was no mere attack on the administration. Sanchez's speech is perfectly positioned to accelerate the stabbed-in-the-back myth of explaining the war now emerging on the right. That corrosive idea, revived most recently by revisionist Vietnam historian Mark Moyar, holds that sybaritic and feckless civilians recklessly squander the hard-won gains of the military.

Posted October 16, 2007 3:49 PM by P J Evans

Well, actually, "sybaritic and feckless" seems to me to be a pretty accurate description of the Bush administration....

Posted October 16, 2007 5:52 PM by Debra Doyle

OK -- try this: The sybaritic and feckless Bush Administration recklessly squandered the troops they committed to a mission which could never be accomplished.

(And hurrah! Iraq's government just grew a pair, they're ordering Blackwater to leave.)

Posted October 16, 2007 5:58 PM by Lori Coulson

If Iraq's government really grew a pair, they'd declare Coalition Provisional Authority Order #17 null and void, and say "Effective immediately all civilians in Iraq fall under Iraqi law."

Posted October 16, 2007 6:11 PM by James D. Macdonald

James D. Macdonald @ 110

Given the current situation vis a vis Turkey, maybe the Iraqi government's first "stand-up-on-two-hind-legs" moment ought to be a statement that if a nation supposedly allied with the Coalition nations invades Iraq that all concessions and affordances made to the Coalition are automatically void. It might leave them in a nasty position if US forces aren't allowed off their bases, for instance, but having a few divisions of Turkish troops running around Kurdish country sounds to me like opening up a second front on a an already bloody civil war.

Posted October 16, 2007 7:47 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

If speaking disrespectfully of POTUS can get jail time, why was nothing done about the general who encouraged his troops to hold Clinton in contempt?
Shinseki didn't get jail time either; he was treated shabbily for telling the truth, but that's not the same. When has a general ever been jailed for speaking?

A commander in chief cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare an order given by his minister or his sovereign, when the person giving the order is absent from the field of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the lateest state of affairs. It follows that any command in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall. Napoleon, Military Maxims and Thoughts, quoted in Townsend, Up the Organization

Bruce: how many Iraqi Arabs do you think are rooting for the Turks to weaken the Kurds? Every supporter of a unified Iraq is probably having visions of a de-facto independent polity crying "Mummy!" and creeping back into the fold, and many of the rest are interested in a bigger share of Kirkuk oil.

Posted October 16, 2007 10:51 PM by CHip

#110 "Effective immediately all civilians in Iraq fall under Iraqi law."

Is there any reason a military force shouldn't fall under the law of the country they are in just as much as civilians do? I mean, assuming we aren't talking about a hostile invading/occupying power?

Posted October 17, 2007 6:43 AM by Alan Braggins

107

Precisely so. I think the origin of the term is the German word D