A Tragedy of Errors. On Feb. 21, 2010, a convoy of vehicles carrying civilians headed down a mountain in central Afghanistan and American eyes in the sky were watching. "The Americans were using some of the most
sophisticated tools in the history of war, technological marvels of surveillance and intelligence gathering that allowed them to see into once-inaccessible corners of the battlefield. But the high-tech wizardry would
fail in its most elemental purpose: to tell the difference between friend and foe."
FOIA-obtained
transcripts of US cockpit and radio conversations and
an interactive feature provide a more in-depth understanding of what happened.
posted by zarq
on Apr 10, 2011 -
59 comments
War Dances:
“I wanted to call my father and tell him that a white man thought my brain was beautiful”. Sherman Alexie doing his thing in The New Yorker, excerpted from his upcoming book (
early review; interview
1,
2.)
posted by Non Prosequitur
on Oct 5, 2009 -
45 comments
The argument I make in my book is that what I describe as the new American militarism arises as an unintended consequence of the reaction to the Vietnam War and more broadly, to the sixties... If some people think that the sixties constituted a revolution, that revolution produced a counterrevolution, launched by a variety of groups that had one thing in common: they saw revival of American military power, institutions, and values as the antidote to everything that in their minds had gone wrong. None of these groups — the neoconservatives, large numbers of Protestant evangelicals, politicians like Ronald Reagan, the so-called defense intellectuals, and the officer corps — set out saying, “Militarism is a good idea.” But I argue that this is what we’ve ended up with: a sense of what military power can do, a sort of deference to the military, and an attribution of virtue to the men and women who serve in uniform. Together this constitutes such a pernicious and distorted attitude toward military affairs that it qualifies as militarism. An interview with Andrew Bacevich, international relations professor and former Army colonel, and author of
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War--and here is a
review. Recently by Bacevich:
We Aren't Fighting to Win Anymore - U.S. troops in Iraq are only trying to buy time.
posted by y2karl
on Feb 21, 2005 -
37 comments
Special Operations Soldiers return from Afghanistan and kill wives. With all the talk about going to war with Iraq, is it time to take a serious look at what the effects of modern combat have on the soldiers who we send to fight? In the past six weeks four soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg (all recently returned from Afghanistan) killed their wives by shootings (2), strangulation (1) or stabbing (50 times) and burning the body (note - not a special opps soldier for this one). Are these killings just the tip of the iceberg for a future trend, and what can the US military do to make sure that the training they give to soldiers not turn them into domestic terrorists upon their return?
posted by DragonBoy
on Jul 31, 2002 -
34 comments
