Diesel Civil Trust

Keep them in your thoughts.

lawful:

Hey gang,

Over this long weekend, please spare a thought/prayer/toast to the men and women in the Helmand province of Afghanistan, both locals and our/your own. This weekend will more than likely kick off a push into the city of Marja near the southern most point of Afghanistan (planes are currently dropping leaflets on the city to tell people to get out). US Marines and soldiers, British Marines and Afghan ANA soldiers will soon launch an attack on the Taliban’s last and largest stronghold in southern Afghanistan.

The attack, if successful, will likely break the Taliban in this region. They are pushed up against the Pakistani border already and facing pressure from that side as well. This is the culmination of Operation Khanjari that my brother’s unit started in May when they landed in Helmand and began to push the Taliban south. Marja is all that is left. One of the USMC platoon commanders is a friend of the family and my brother’s college roommate. He has a son at home and another on the way. He is just one of thousands there right now. While my brother is home, we feel like David has just taken his place over there.

The Taliban, despite rumors that they’re seeking a truce, have rigged Marja like never before. The city is being described as being literally ringed with IEDs and bombs. Non-combatants are being held in the city and few have escaped. Those left behind will likely be used as human shields to prevent the use of air power or artillery. That means the fighting will be on the ground, person to person. Them protected in the city, us trying to force our way in. It will likely not be pretty.

Anyways, keep them in your thoughts. Thanks.

emergentfutures:

Future Soldiers May Get Brain Boosters and Digital Buddies
The soldiers of the future might controversially boost their brains with drugs and prosthetics, augment their strength with mechanical exoskeletons, and have artificially intelligent “digital buddies” at their beck and call, according to the U.S. Army’s Future Soldier Initiative.

emergentfutures:

Future Soldiers May Get Brain Boosters and Digital Buddies

The soldiers of the future might controversially boost their brains with drugs and prosthetics, augment their strength with mechanical exoskeletons, and have artificially intelligent “digital buddies” at their beck and call, according to the U.S. Army’s Future Soldier Initiative.

ataxiwardance:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military,authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said… .

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, “it doesn’t really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them,” a senior administration official said. “They are then part of the enemy.”

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Thousands of extra Marines pouring into Afghanistan’s opium-growing heartland will go after those who process drugs but not those who grow the crop, the commander of U.S. Marines in the area said.

This is a nation-building opportunity if ever was one. Let the Marines drive out the Taliban, but make sure we give farmers safe alternatives to growing poppies. Show a man an ethical way to support his family, more often than not he’ll take it. Emphasis mine.

azspot:

The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.

Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.

…To fuel yet another war - this time against Iraq - by cynically manipulating people’s grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief, the commerce of grief, the pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a State to do to its people.

Arundhati Roy (via newfilosofee) (via bibliotheque)

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Over the past eight years, deployments to the Middle East have become so routine at this military base that President Obama’s declaration Tuesday of a military buildup in Afghanistan was like an announcement that winter was coming.

The contractor got the judgment vacated on the grounds that the court had no in personam jurisdiction to handle the suit. Watching the lawyers for the contractor high-five one another was almost as painful an experience as the first word of his son’s death, Mr. Baragona said. “They bragged, ‘We never even had to notify our insurer.’” The contractor had been required by U.S. contracting rules to take out insurance to cover just such an event–not that it mattered, since no American court could require them to pay. Neither could any court in Iraq, it turns out, because of Order No. 17, issued by Paul Bremer as American proconsul, which had granted contractors immunity from process in Iraqi courts. The contractor, it turned out, had been completely immunized for its wrongful acts.

Grappling with Contractor Immunity (via azspot) (via robot-heart-politics)

azspot:

After the second bomb dropped, a Japanese company sent a film crew to document what was happening in the cities – the leveled ground, the dying. They were the only ones filming. If you were an American, you hadn’t seen a thing but a mushroom cloud. The news told you that we’d bombed the Japanese, and why we did it – ostensibly, to end the war.

But the U.S. military stepped in and banned the filming, taking what the Japanese had already recorded. Later, the military selected one of its own to head up a camera crew, Lt. Daniel McGovern, and document this campaign in Japan. They recorded every horror they saw.

What happened to that film, the footage we’d sent soldiers and civilians in to radiation-blasted cities to capture? The government suppressed every bit of film that documented the effects of the bombings and attempted to do the same with photographs. The Japanese film disappeared for more than 20 years. The footage McGovern’s crews recorded vanished for more than 30. We labeled it secret and hid it away.

It’s easy enough to come up with reasons why the government would have wanted to suppress the films — if people saw the sort of devastation atomic bombs could cause, they might not be so quick to support the use of nuclear weapons.

Such well-kept government secrets only reinforce the importance of journalism, even in the age of user-generated content. And we can thank people like McGovern and his crew and the Japanese newsreel team for their bravery.

Today, we have a parallel, of course. How many photos have you seen of dead soldiers in Afghanistan? How many photos of soldiers’ coffins?

The argument for suppressing the photos is that it’s unpatriotic to publish them and pushes a pacifist agenda. It can also be incredibly painful for families to see their dead loved ones in the news.

The argument against is that unless we see what we’re sacrificing, we don’t understand the cost of what we’re engaged in, or the courage it takes to get it done.

This is a very difficult one for him. And it isn’t just a one-time decision. This is the decision that will have consequences for the better part of his administration. So Mr. President, don’t get pushed by the left to do nothing; don’t get pushed by the right to do everything. You take your time and you figure it out. You’re the commander-in-chief and this is what you were elected for.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who says he advised President Obama “not to be rushed into a decision” on sending additional troops to Afghanistan “because this one is the decision that will have consequences for years to come.”

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that guy was ever a part of this guy’s administration. (via savingpaper)

No it’s not.

(via retropolitics)

With both the 1st Cavalry and the 4th Infantry Division based in Fort Hood but rotating through Iraq, there are many walking wounded here: a student who stayed up at night because he was afraid his mother would try to kill herself while his father was gone; a school employee whose husband had a breakdown just before he was to leave for his second Iraq tour and threatened to throw her out of her own house. A new economics teacher just back from Iraq replaced the one just sent to Afghanistan, and an assistant librarian’s husband has just left. Many, many students are connected to a parent through laptops and cell phones, waiting every day for a call or an e-mail. Fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, brothers, and sisters: For all the ripple effects the war in Iraq has caused in this small community, the fighting could be as close as Waco.

Heartbreak High: Texas Monthly, March 2006 (via elizs) (via apsies) (via robot-heart-politics)

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