War as metaphor, again. The linguist
George Lakoff writes a sequel to his seminal
piece on the first Gulf war.
The Nation as Person,
The Just War,
War as Business (and Politics),
War as Fairy Tale: will these ways of thinking ever be re-framed in the interests of peace and common humanity? Not if any dissent from the accepted line continues to be
silenced.
Source: Too Much News
posted by cbrody
on Apr 4, 2003 -
4 comments
War as national therapy- revisiting the Gulf War: (scroll down 5 paragraphs to "Powell and the Persian Gulf War")
Some 100,000 retreating Iraqi troops were incinerated, blown to bits, etc. (Schwarzkopf's estimate) with unexpectedly light US casualties (383 from all causes). “Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this.
It’s pathetic.“ said Major Bob Nugent, Army intelligence officer. But the stunning victory - and the ensuing US euphoria - were almost sabatoged by a Russian peace plan....
"The President's problem was how to say no to Gorbachev without appearing to throw away a chance
for peace"(wrote Colin Powell in
American Journey) “We have to have a war,” Bush told
his inner circle of Secretary of State James Baker, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and Powell" (narrates Bob Woodward)...."Fear of a peace deal at the Bush White House [wrote columnists Evans and Novak] had less to do with oil, Israel or Iraqi expansionism than with the bitter legacy of a lost war. 'This is the chance to get rid of the Vietnam Syndrome,' one senior aide told us."
Peace threatened, but Colin Powell had a plan......
posted by troutfishing
on Feb 16, 2003 -
31 comments
A Blast from the Past. In 1998, George Bush, Sr. explains why Saddam was not removed in the Gulf War: "Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome."
posted by owillis
on Sep 12, 2002 -
19 comments
What happened in the final days of the Gulf War? "The Battle of Rumaila was closely reviewed at the war's end by an analyst for the C.I.A., who confirmed that the Iraqi losses were great. The toll included at least a hundred tanks from the Hammurabi division. "It's like eating an artichoke," one colonel had said of combat.... 'Once you start, you can't stop.' One of the destroyed vehicles was a bus, which had been hit by a rocket. The precise number of its occupants who were injured or killed is not known, but they included civilians and children. One of the first Americans at the scene was Lieutenant Charles W. Gameros, Jr., a Scout platoon leader, who called in a Medevac team for the victims. At the time, he was "frustrated" by what he saw as needless deaths, Gameros recalled in an interview. 'Now I look at it sadly,' he said. Unresisting Iraqis had been slain all morning, but the deaths of the children troubled many soldiers."
What's happening in "the final days" of the war in Afghanistan? What will be happening in the upcoming war in Iraq?
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Sep 5, 2002 -
100 comments
