"Ancillary casualties" (civilian deaths), "insurgents" (native people defending their homeland) and even "tactical nuclear weapons" (for which Fat Man and Little Boy both quality) are par for the course with the "Department of Defense," which so far since its creation from the War Department in 1949 has ONLY attacked.
This is old hat.
As Tim O'Brien wrote,
"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."
As two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner General Smedley Butler pointed out in 1933, war is a racket. It's also an American obsession. Where are the statues of pacifists and conscientious objectors?
Viktor Frankl: "Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
Yes, war is hell but the fact remains it is often necessary when one nation state attempts to rob another and its people of their sovereign territory or freedom.
The Ukrainians have fought a nation four times larger with a military ten times better equipped to a standstill and with one arm tied with conditions from us and
NATO. Soon Trump will play God and deliver large portions to Russia as a “deal” to claim the crown as a peacemaker.
It will be the greatest betrayal of democracy in the 20th century right up there with the handover of Hong Kong.
Onr of the necessary conditions of isolationism is withdrawal from national intercoure with those of like mind. Putting the knife in Ukraine will send a clear message to the Russians and Chinese. The world is for the taking
"They teach about war to soldiers at places like West Point and the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy and the Command and General Staff College and the War College. They teach about war to civilians in the history departments of colleges..."
But sadly not in high schools or basic college courses, where the students who become political leaders should have learned enough to keep us from as many wars as we've seen.
So how did our current president-elect get to the head of the class?
Surely not because he is the sharpest pencil in the pack. No, no, no.
What's the real reason, if such a proof can be asserted.?
The old fashioned way: by being in the right place at the right time.
Right for him, bad for everybody else.
There's a small part of me, probably the bile duct, that actually feels sorry for his compatriots.
They're about to find out what it's like to work for a guy who's about to redefine what it once was to be human. For now, all bets are off (somewhere, somehow, there's a way to bet on this kind of thing)!
Heavy hangs the head of the king, but not soon enough for my tastes. The fact that we fail and fail and fail again is no reason to celebrate defeat. But that's exactly what we're doing, and it's a fruitless, salvage operation. Maybe some artist will duct tape a banana to a gallery wall and make a shit ton of money. Done. Maybe Banksy will come out of hiding and reveal himself to be a woman.
Maybe we get on with our lives and lose a few pounds worrying. Maybe we'll speculate about the ensuing catastrophes and write a series of books (fiction and non-fiction), with matching covers.
Maybe we'll discover who the next, best hero ,and be declared the next, best hero for pinning a metal on the next best hero. I think that's called self-gratification in what once passed for polite society.
Maybe we should hide under our desks and kiss our asses goodbye like we did in the good, old days of the Cold War. And maybe not. Was Heraclitus correct when he postulated that "The only thing constant is life is change, and further asserted that conflict was necessary and inevitable? Well then, get into a comfortable chair, turn off the tube and get ready to cry. There's no use kissing your ass good-bye if you can get someone else to do it. You're choice. See . . . it's not all that bad; we really do have choices to make.
5 hrs ago·edited 4 hrs agoLiked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
Trump is a fiction created by those who use him now to achieve their Oligarchic ends.
He has NEVER been truly in control of his “political” career, nor of making the actual decisions his administration has wrought. He is a tool, and he is being masterfully wielded on the world stage … He’s supported by and manipulated by a power base “behind the curtain.” He is and has always been a tool {and, yes, I mean that in the sense both of being used AND being a dick… ]
Why is it that war "...is a place where we sadly must live, all of us."? What is it about us that renders war inevitable?
There are many similar questions regarding our species, who we really are and what we are capable of accomplishing at the societal level. I fear the answers are alarming.
I am leaning into the idea that war is part of the human instinct. What I visualize is ancient: one caveman bashing another on the head with a rock over (fill in the blank).
It doesn’t take a LOT of humans to bring on a war — A small number with power over large numbers … they can plunge millions into war. The millions might never have warred, if left to their own choices, but a few with the power … And how the powerful come to power. Mmm, there’s another conversation ….
That's not what I think. I think that early man was basically non-violent, unless a member of the group was mentally ill. Violence came into play, I think when there was a more stratified society, after people starting growing crops and living in fixed villages. Jericho, for example, had walls and defenses, and it is cited as one of the earliest fixed villages/towns. Of course, in an aside snark, it could be an early example of Palestinians defending themselves against an early invasion from Ur (Abraham and his descendants.)
As I understand it now both sides think Trump will end the war when he takes office on Jan. 20. Meanwhile each side is scrambling to hold on to as much of Ukraine as is possible in order to improve their negotiation posture. It's just such a tragedy that so many brave soldiers will die in the interim, for little apparent purpose. If peace and negotiation are inevitable do it now and get this over with. The saddest parts of any war are reading about the soldiers killed for no purpose once the leaders have already determined that the end is inevitable. Of course the main victims here are the brave people of the Ukraine who mistakenly thought they had an ally in the United States.
With the current list of clowns from the televison world selected for Donald Trump's cabinet, I'm expect to hear that Sponge Bob Square Pants is to be the next selection.
Many if not most of us are taught from the cradle to compete; our game players (gladiators) are hugely rewarded; we also worship our entertainers (jesters), paying them hugely. Thus, the maintenance of Payne's "splendid slavery of rank" continues to define the wobbles of the human journey.
Regarding Trump’s naïveté: ‘When they talk too much about peace, there’s sure to be a war.’ - a quote referring to politicians’ talk. From the excellent “A Narrow Street”/“The Last Time I Saw Paris”. Elliot Paul’s book about life on the rue de la Huchette in the 1920s and 1930s, and published in 1941.
1. You have no problem with a very old man who can't coherently debate a buffoon and appears afflicted in many of his public appearances in the past year who was removed from his own re-election now being compus mentis enough to risk starting a nuclear war with ATACMs ? Huh ! ?
2. You use this overarching tearjerking screed about the horrors of all war to slip in your total consumption of US Government hawk Kool-Aid about Ukraine being European and its Democratic government being 100% oblivious to Western lies about not expanding NATO into nations of the former Soviet Union. American hawks have taken over Ukrainian government like the cymotha crab takes over the feeding process of the fish it infests. Zelensky has been a puppet of our hawks all
along.
3. You appear here to be the one who is ignorant of the history of this region for the past 200 years. Required reading: "Bloodlands" - Tim Snyder and any of a dozen books on Soviet history of the 20th century.
4. One would imagine a cool old counter-culture leaning fellow like you would be more fair-minded re: conservative-liberal matters. A big disappointment to see you in the same pen as Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Hayes, Morning show yammerers, Big Defense puppetmasters and all liberal / warmongering inhabitants of your echo chamber.
5. If it weren't for Stalin sending 6 million of his soldiers to death in the WWII meatgrinder of war on the Eastern front, the men in your family would have been ground up as well, i.e. no greatest generation - all dead fighting Germans in east. How do we thank the Russians for saving a generation of American soldiers? By trying to remove all of their territorial cushion with our nasty expansion of NATO. Save Ukraine for Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Defense, Big Agra and 500 other predatory American corporations. All-in-all, it is sad to see you so delusional and resistent to learning or even seeing a bigger/deeper picture than the one you think you see.
In addition to LKTIV's way with words, I particularly enjoy reading the generally thoughtful and courteous comments on his columns, a reminder that we can still debate without incivility.
I'd be more inclined to consider your points seriously were you to avoid using terms like "tearjerking screed", "ignorant", "delusional", "resistent [sic] to learning".
Trying to blame the Ukrainians for the aggressive, genocidal invasion of Putin's Russia - now aided by North Korean troops, btw - is a fool's errand. And the idea that it was "Russia that saved a generation of American soldiers" is equally bizarre. As if there was no determined opposition from the allies in Western Europe and Africa, really? Not to mention the fact it was US aid that helped the Russians mobilize against the Germans effectively as well.
Contrary-to-fact conditionals are very treacherous parts of logical thinking, but one can't avoid the hypothesis that a failed Russian response to the June, 1941 invasion would have lengthened the war but by no means have guaranteed a Nazi victory.
Finally, I would love to see the response from Ukrainians to your sarcastic bilge about being "saved" from the ability to purchase and own pharmaceutical products, food, a functioning armed defense, and invest in hundreds of other American businesses. They would laugh in your face, in all probability.
Doublespeak is the lingua franca of war.
"Ancillary casualties" (civilian deaths), "insurgents" (native people defending their homeland) and even "tactical nuclear weapons" (for which Fat Man and Little Boy both quality) are par for the course with the "Department of Defense," which so far since its creation from the War Department in 1949 has ONLY attacked.
This is old hat.
As Tim O'Brien wrote,
"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."
As two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner General Smedley Butler pointed out in 1933, war is a racket. It's also an American obsession. Where are the statues of pacifists and conscientious objectors?
Viktor Frankl: "Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
Yes, war is hell but the fact remains it is often necessary when one nation state attempts to rob another and its people of their sovereign territory or freedom.
The Ukrainians have fought a nation four times larger with a military ten times better equipped to a standstill and with one arm tied with conditions from us and
NATO. Soon Trump will play God and deliver large portions to Russia as a “deal” to claim the crown as a peacemaker.
It will be the greatest betrayal of democracy in the 20th century right up there with the handover of Hong Kong.
Onr of the necessary conditions of isolationism is withdrawal from national intercoure with those of like mind. Putting the knife in Ukraine will send a clear message to the Russians and Chinese. The world is for the taking
"They teach about war to soldiers at places like West Point and the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy and the Command and General Staff College and the War College. They teach about war to civilians in the history departments of colleges..."
But sadly not in high schools or basic college courses, where the students who become political leaders should have learned enough to keep us from as many wars as we've seen.
So how did our current president-elect get to the head of the class?
Surely not because he is the sharpest pencil in the pack. No, no, no.
What's the real reason, if such a proof can be asserted.?
The old fashioned way: by being in the right place at the right time.
Right for him, bad for everybody else.
There's a small part of me, probably the bile duct, that actually feels sorry for his compatriots.
They're about to find out what it's like to work for a guy who's about to redefine what it once was to be human. For now, all bets are off (somewhere, somehow, there's a way to bet on this kind of thing)!
Heavy hangs the head of the king, but not soon enough for my tastes. The fact that we fail and fail and fail again is no reason to celebrate defeat. But that's exactly what we're doing, and it's a fruitless, salvage operation. Maybe some artist will duct tape a banana to a gallery wall and make a shit ton of money. Done. Maybe Banksy will come out of hiding and reveal himself to be a woman.
Maybe we get on with our lives and lose a few pounds worrying. Maybe we'll speculate about the ensuing catastrophes and write a series of books (fiction and non-fiction), with matching covers.
Maybe we'll discover who the next, best hero ,and be declared the next, best hero for pinning a metal on the next best hero. I think that's called self-gratification in what once passed for polite society.
Maybe we should hide under our desks and kiss our asses goodbye like we did in the good, old days of the Cold War. And maybe not. Was Heraclitus correct when he postulated that "The only thing constant is life is change, and further asserted that conflict was necessary and inevitable? Well then, get into a comfortable chair, turn off the tube and get ready to cry. There's no use kissing your ass good-bye if you can get someone else to do it. You're choice. See . . . it's not all that bad; we really do have choices to make.
Trump is a fiction created by those who use him now to achieve their Oligarchic ends.
He has NEVER been truly in control of his “political” career, nor of making the actual decisions his administration has wrought. He is a tool, and he is being masterfully wielded on the world stage … He’s supported by and manipulated by a power base “behind the curtain.” He is and has always been a tool {and, yes, I mean that in the sense both of being used AND being a dick… ]
Why is it that war "...is a place where we sadly must live, all of us."? What is it about us that renders war inevitable?
There are many similar questions regarding our species, who we really are and what we are capable of accomplishing at the societal level. I fear the answers are alarming.
I am leaning into the idea that war is part of the human instinct. What I visualize is ancient: one caveman bashing another on the head with a rock over (fill in the blank).
It doesn’t take a LOT of humans to bring on a war — A small number with power over large numbers … they can plunge millions into war. The millions might never have warred, if left to their own choices, but a few with the power … And how the powerful come to power. Mmm, there’s another conversation ….
The jaw bine of an ass.
See opening of film 2001.
"Forever War"
That's not what I think. I think that early man was basically non-violent, unless a member of the group was mentally ill. Violence came into play, I think when there was a more stratified society, after people starting growing crops and living in fixed villages. Jericho, for example, had walls and defenses, and it is cited as one of the earliest fixed villages/towns. Of course, in an aside snark, it could be an early example of Palestinians defending themselves against an early invasion from Ur (Abraham and his descendants.)
As I understand it now both sides think Trump will end the war when he takes office on Jan. 20. Meanwhile each side is scrambling to hold on to as much of Ukraine as is possible in order to improve their negotiation posture. It's just such a tragedy that so many brave soldiers will die in the interim, for little apparent purpose. If peace and negotiation are inevitable do it now and get this over with. The saddest parts of any war are reading about the soldiers killed for no purpose once the leaders have already determined that the end is inevitable. Of course the main victims here are the brave people of the Ukraine who mistakenly thought they had an ally in the United States.
With the current list of clowns from the televison world selected for Donald Trump's cabinet, I'm expect to hear that Sponge Bob Square Pants is to be the next selection.
Many if not most of us are taught from the cradle to compete; our game players (gladiators) are hugely rewarded; we also worship our entertainers (jesters), paying them hugely. Thus, the maintenance of Payne's "splendid slavery of rank" continues to define the wobbles of the human journey.
There's more than 1 Ring
Master in Trump's 2025
Circus and we better not
forget that.
Regarding Trump’s naïveté: ‘When they talk too much about peace, there’s sure to be a war.’ - a quote referring to politicians’ talk. From the excellent “A Narrow Street”/“The Last Time I Saw Paris”. Elliot Paul’s book about life on the rue de la Huchette in the 1920s and 1930s, and published in 1941.
Is there any way to stop the repeat?
Lucian, I am a little confused. Are you upset that Biden authorized Ukraine to use our missiles against Russia?
1. You have no problem with a very old man who can't coherently debate a buffoon and appears afflicted in many of his public appearances in the past year who was removed from his own re-election now being compus mentis enough to risk starting a nuclear war with ATACMs ? Huh ! ?
2. You use this overarching tearjerking screed about the horrors of all war to slip in your total consumption of US Government hawk Kool-Aid about Ukraine being European and its Democratic government being 100% oblivious to Western lies about not expanding NATO into nations of the former Soviet Union. American hawks have taken over Ukrainian government like the cymotha crab takes over the feeding process of the fish it infests. Zelensky has been a puppet of our hawks all
along.
3. You appear here to be the one who is ignorant of the history of this region for the past 200 years. Required reading: "Bloodlands" - Tim Snyder and any of a dozen books on Soviet history of the 20th century.
4. One would imagine a cool old counter-culture leaning fellow like you would be more fair-minded re: conservative-liberal matters. A big disappointment to see you in the same pen as Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Hayes, Morning show yammerers, Big Defense puppetmasters and all liberal / warmongering inhabitants of your echo chamber.
5. If it weren't for Stalin sending 6 million of his soldiers to death in the WWII meatgrinder of war on the Eastern front, the men in your family would have been ground up as well, i.e. no greatest generation - all dead fighting Germans in east. How do we thank the Russians for saving a generation of American soldiers? By trying to remove all of their territorial cushion with our nasty expansion of NATO. Save Ukraine for Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Defense, Big Agra and 500 other predatory American corporations. All-in-all, it is sad to see you so delusional and resistent to learning or even seeing a bigger/deeper picture than the one you think you see.
Talk to Poland and see what they think about your "bigger deeper" picture about Russia.
Ah yes, Eastern Europe--part of the Russian homeland for, let's see, less time than I have been alive.
Rude!
In addition to LKTIV's way with words, I particularly enjoy reading the generally thoughtful and courteous comments on his columns, a reminder that we can still debate without incivility.
I'd be more inclined to consider your points seriously were you to avoid using terms like "tearjerking screed", "ignorant", "delusional", "resistent [sic] to learning".
Trying to blame the Ukrainians for the aggressive, genocidal invasion of Putin's Russia - now aided by North Korean troops, btw - is a fool's errand. And the idea that it was "Russia that saved a generation of American soldiers" is equally bizarre. As if there was no determined opposition from the allies in Western Europe and Africa, really? Not to mention the fact it was US aid that helped the Russians mobilize against the Germans effectively as well.
Contrary-to-fact conditionals are very treacherous parts of logical thinking, but one can't avoid the hypothesis that a failed Russian response to the June, 1941 invasion would have lengthened the war but by no means have guaranteed a Nazi victory.
Finally, I would love to see the response from Ukrainians to your sarcastic bilge about being "saved" from the ability to purchase and own pharmaceutical products, food, a functioning armed defense, and invest in hundreds of other American businesses. They would laugh in your face, in all probability.
😓😓😓😓😓😓😓😣😢
No words.