Armistice Day...Every Family Has a Story

[Gary Note: Blogging, of late, has been taking a back seat to life...which is as it should be.  But today you're getting a pair of posts!]

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Armistice Day...Every Family Has a Story

I am reposting the same post I have put up for the past several years on 11 Nov, commemorating the end of World War I.

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For Veteran's Armistice Day (as it was originally called)....

Every family has a story. My mother told me of my great-grandfather, Julius (or Jules?) Brinkmann, who was killed on this date in 1918 in World War I on the Western Front.

Word of the armistice, which took effect the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, did not reach all the lines in real time. He was killed sometime later that day, AFTER the armistice.

He would have been one of the very last casualties of the Great War. You know, the war that was supposed to end all wars.

Oh, and he was a German. Funny, that really doesn't seem to matter, does it?

What is your family story? Please comment.

This is a generic photo, not of Julius--because my Mom's family lost ALL their possessions, including family photos, when they were bombed out in Frankfurt in WW II--but it could have been.

Photo credit here.

A Week Late: Armistice Day

[Gary Note: Blogging, of late, has been taking a back seat to life...which is as it should be]

Armistice Day...Every Family has a Story

I am reposting the same post I have put up for the past 6 years on 11 Nov, commemorating the end of World War I.

============================

For Veteran's Armistice Day (as it was originally called)....

Every family has a story. My mother told me of my great-grandfather, Julius (or Jules?) Brinkmann, who was killed on this date in 1918 in World War I on the Western Front.

Word of the armistice, which took effect the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, did not reach all the lines in real time. He was killed sometime later that day, AFTER the armistice.

He would have been one of the very last casualties of the Great War. You know, the war that was supposed to end all wars.

Oh, and he was a German. Funny, that really doesn't seem to matter, does it?

What is your family story? Please comment.

This is a generic photo, not of Julius--because my Mom's family lost ALL their possessions, including family photos, when they were bombed out in Frankfurt in WW II--but it could have been.

Photo credit here.

A State of Permanent War

I recently read a pretty disturbing article by Micah Zenko, here, asking a pretty simple question: "How many bombs did the U.S. drop in 2015?"

Let’s review U.S. counterterrorism bombing for 2015. Last year, the United States dropped an estimated total of 23,144 bombs in six countries. Of these, 22,110 were dropped in Iraq and Syria. This estimate is based on the fact that the United States has conducted 77 percent of all airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, while there were 28,714 U.S.-led coalition munitions dropped in 2015. This overall estimate is probably slightly low, because it also assumes one bomb dropped in each drone strike in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, which is not always the case.  

So, let's accept these data at face value (Zenko's article does cite source data from which he built this estimate).  What is our policy towards ISIS?

“We kill them wherever we find them,” and just this week, Col. Steve Warren, Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman, claimed, “If you’re part of ISIL, we will kill you. That’s our rule.”

Since our avowed foreign policy seems to be one of destroying ISIS, how are we doing?

Pentagon officials claim that at least 25,000 Islamic State fighters have been killed (an anonymous official said 23,000 in November, while on Wednesday, Warren added “about 2,500” more were killed in December.) Remarkably, they also claim that alongside the 25,000 fighters killed, only 6 civilians have “likely” been killed in the seventeen-month air campaign. At the same time, officials admit that the size of the group has remained wholly unchanged. In 2014, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimated the size of the Islamic State to be between 20,000 and 31,000 fighters, while on Wednesday, Warren again repeated the 30,000 estimate. To summarize the anti-Islamic State bombing calculus: 30,000 – 25,000 = 30,000.

So we've killed 25,000 bad guys, but there still seems to be at least as many of them now as when we started:  "At the same time, officials admit that the size of the group has remained wholly unchanged."

Sounds like a recipe for a state of permanent war.  They are replacing themselves faster than we can kill them.

Also sounds like it's time for a different approach.  Zenko's article touches upon the notion of preventing radicalization of young people to becomes terrorists, rather than wait till they actually have crossed the line and then focus on the kill.

You should go read the article, here.  This is not an unexpected result.  Suppose your family was decimated by a drone stoke.  If you're a survivor, wouldn't you bear hatred in your heart forever for the U.S?  We are creating terrorists faster than we can kill them.  It's a failed approach.

Armistice Day...Every Family has a Story

Armistice Day...Every Family has a Story

I am reposting the same post I have put up for the past 45years on 11 Nov, commemorating the end of World War I.

============================

For Veteran's Armistice Day (as it was originally called)....

Every family has a story. My mother told me of my great-grandfather, Julius (or Jules?) Brinkmann, who was killed on this date in 1918 in World War I on the Western Front.

Word of the armistice, which took effect the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, did not reach all the lines in real time. He was killed sometime later that day, AFTER the armistice.

He would have been one of the very last casualties of the Great War. You know, the war that was supposed to end all wars.

Oh, and he was a German. Funny, that really doesn't seem to matter, does it?

What is your family story? Please comment.

This is a generic photo, not of Julius--because my Mom's family lost ALL their possessions, including family photos, when they were bombed out in Frankfurt in WW II--but it could have been.

Photo credit here.

 

A Depressing Thought

So it seems that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan will be extended until 2017 or so...or until the next president extends it again because we're this close to turning the corner....

So when I read this piece by David Swanson, I realized he'd put his finger on it:

The idea that year 15 or year 16 is going to go better in Afghanistan than the first 14 years have gone is based on no evidence whatsoever, but merely the hope that something will change combined with a misguided and arrogant sense of responsibility to control someone else’s country. As numerous Afghans have been saying for nearly 14 years, Afghanistan will be a disaster when the U.S. occupation ends, but it will be a larger disaster the longer it takes to do so.

Afghanistan need not be “abandoned.” The United States owes Afghanistan reparations in the form of significant actual aid, the cost of which would of course be less than that of continuing the war.

Student of history that I am, I did some cursory Googling of the history of Western involvement in Afghanistan (another good article here). The British originally sent an army there in 1839, in part to thwart perceived Russian influence in the region.  The Afghans rose up, and in 1842 drove the invading army out of Kabul:

On January 6, 1842, the British began their withdrawal from Kabul. Leaving the city were 4,500 British troops and 12,000 civilians who had followed the British Army to Kabul. The plan was to march to Jalalabad, about 90 miles away.

The retreat in the brutally cold weather took an immediate toll, and many died from exposure in the first days. And despite the treaty, the British column came under attack when it reached a mountain pass, the Khurd Kabul. The retreat became a massacre.

Slaughter in the Mountain Passes of Afghanistan

A magazine based in Boston, the North American Review, published a remarkably extensive and timely account titled “The English in Afghanistan” six months later, in July 1842. It contained this vivid description (some antiquated spellings have been left intact):

On the 6th of January, 1842, the Caboul forces commenced their retreat through the dismal pass, destined to be their grave. On the third day they were attacked by the mountaineers from all points, and a fearful slaughter ensued…

The troops kept on, and awful scenes ensued. Without food, mangled and cut to pieces, each one caring only for himself, all subordination had fled; and the soldiers of the forty-fourth English regiment are reported to have knocked down their officers with the butts of their muskets.

On the 13th of January, just seven days after the retreat commenced, one man, bloody and torn, mounted on a miserable pony, and pursued by horsemen, was seen riding furiously across the plains to Jellalabad. That was Dr. Brydon, the sole person to tell the tale of the passage of Khourd Caboul.

More than 16,000 people had set out on the retreat from Kabul, and in the end only one man, Dr. William Brydon, a British Army surgeon, had made it alive to Jalalabad.

The above history lesson is offered without further comment.

What to Do About the Middle East

This is some months old but every bit as timely as when it aired.  Thanks to Digby for the link:

Soon-to-be-ex–Daily Show host Jon Stewart recently interviewed Egyptian comedian and satirist Bassem Youssef about America and the Middle East. I found this surprisingly entertaining as well as nuanced; a smart piece. Their opening exchange:

Stewart: Tell me, Bassem. With the Middle East spiraling out of control, what should America do about this?

Youssef: (winning smile) Well, how about ... nothing.

Sounds like a plan to me.  There are nearly 200 nations on the planet.  The U.S. has troops in approximately 150 of them.  And a tough-to-pin-down number of permanent overseas bases, totaling some 800-900 (go ahead and Google for the number...your head will quickly spin).

Maybe it's time we un-assumed the role of the world's policeman? 

BIG Shortfall in the National Park Service Budget...and Ultrarunning

Seems that our beloved NPS--and when I say "beloved" I am not being facetious, this is a vital agency for the things we love--and which has an approximately $11.5 billion backlog on deferred maintenance costs, according to this mainstream Marketplace article.

The article focused on the famous DC cherry blossoms, in full bloom as we speak, but it's part of the larger issue that affects all 50 states:

Craig Obey, the senior vice president of the National Parks Conservation Association, said that the federal neglect of the National Park Service’s funding is a bipartisan problem that has grown more severe in the past 30 years.

“I think the parks have been dealing with less for quite a while, they’ve been asked to do more with less and we are at the point where they’re able to do less with less,” Obey said.

And indeed, the “less” is lessening, Obey said, “because the Park Service gets about between $200 and $300 million less than they need each year just to keep it even, not even to begin reducing it.”

Too bad there is not sufficient money elsewhere in the national budget that we could prioritize for this purpose.  Wait!!!...maybe I just found some money:

The future bill from the Afghan war is likely to run into hundreds of billions of dollars more. The Pentagon has indicated it wants funding of $120 billion for 2016-19 for operations in Afghanistan, although the eventual cost will depend on the future mission that the White House decides on.

This on top of the $765 billion already spent, according to the CNBC article.

Do you think that maybe we could spend this money on parks instead of war?  Butter instead of guns?  Trails on which to run in the backcountry instead of airfields and bases?  And leave a better legacy for our children and grandchildren?

On the Other Hand...Thinking About Iran

Saw a good cartoon today by Dan Bagley, originally appearing in the Salt Lake Tribune:

This sentiment was echoed by Digby a few days back, when she wrote:

Am I the only one who finds it just a little bit odd that the American officials loudly claiming Iran cannot be trusted to fulfill any deal are simultaneously pledging that they will not fulfill any deal? Is it possible they have such little self-awareness?

I'm sure the Iranians will have to be very closely watched. There's a reason why this agreement is necessary in the first place. But bellowing about how untrustworthy they are while boldly asserting your own untrustworthiness doesn't exactly set a good example. 

Which again brings to mind the immortal words of Duncan Black, who blogs at Eschaton, entitled Wars are Bad:

And if for some reason the people who run the United States feel the need to start one, it means they've failed. It means they should all resign in shame and let someone else clean up their mess. This country has immense power - military, economic, political - and if you can't use the latter two, along with the implicit threat of the first one, to make war unnecessary then you've fucked up and it's time to go home.

An Interesting Parallel

Via Digby, who points us to an interesting post by Steven Walt.  Mr. Walt draws a parallel between the (failed) war on drugs and our (failed) wars of intervention in the Middle East:

The final reason for recurring failure is the tendency to rely on the same people, no matter what their past track records have been. We’ve seen a revolving door of (unsuccessful) Middle East peace negotiators who then spend their retirements giving advice on how future peace negotiations should be conducted. We’ve got a CIA director who’s been centrally involved in U.S. counterterrorism policy since the early 1990s, and who continues to enjoy the president’s confidence despite a dodgy relationship with the truth and a conspicuous lack of policy success. We’ve got famous generals who were better at self-promotion than at winning wars, yet whose advice on what to do today is still eagerly sought. And of course we’ve got a large community of hawkish pundits offering up the same bellicose advice, with no acknowledgement of how disastrously their past recommendations have fared. The result is that U.S. policy continues to run on the same familiar tracks, and with more or less the same unhappy results.

Just like the war on drugs.

I can't speak for the personnel of the war on drugs, but I know that some of the biggest cheerleaders for war with Iran (think Dick Cheney)--instead of being disgraced as war criminals and emptying bedpans in VA hospitals for the rest of their miserable lives--are somehow considered elder statesmen whose opinions on the matter, matter.

And We've Complacently Begun to Think of This as Normal

The drone war, that is.  Highly touted as an alternative to "boots on the ground," our policy of raining death from the skies has had some unintended consequences (of course, "unintended consequences" are so common as to be recognized with their own rule).

Via Digby, the superb analyst of our day, speaking of the operators who pilot these drones:

Some say that the drone war has driven them over the edge. "How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile? How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?" Heather Linebaugh, a former drone imagery analyst, wrote in the Guardian. "When you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience."

"It was horrifying to know how easy it was. I felt like a coward because I was halfway across the world and the guy never even knew I was there,” Bryant told KNPR Radio in Nevada. "I felt like I was haunted by a legion of the dead. My physical health was gone, my mental health was crumbled. I was in so much pain I was ready to eat a bullet myself."

Digby goes on to discuss the effectiveness of drone strikes:

How effective are the drone attacks? Chatterjee cites a report by Jennifer Gibson of the British-based human rights organization, Reprieve, that claims some targets on the White House "kill list" have allegedly “'died' as many as seven times."

Gibson adds, “We found 41 names of men who seemed to have achieved the impossible. This raises a stark question. With each failed attempt to assassinate a man on the kill list, who filled the body bag in his place?” In fact, Reprieve discovered that, in going after those 41 “targets” numerous times, an estimated 1,147 people were killed in Pakistan by drones. Typical was the present leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In two strikes against “him” over the years, according toReprieve, 76 children and 29 adults have died, but not al-Zawahiri.

Uruguay's President: "The Worst Negotiation is Better than the Best War"

I've been following with some interest the presidency of Jose Mujica, the leader of Uruguay.

Via The Smirking Chimp, a great article by Medea Benjamin about Mujica's policies.  You should read the entire article at the link; below I summarize the major highlights:

1. He lives simply and rejects the perks of the presidency.

2. He supported the nation’s groundbreaking legalization of marijuana.

3. In August 2013, Mujica signed the bill making Uruguay the second nation in Latin America (after Argentina) to legalize gay marriage.

4. He’s not afraid to confront corporate abuses.

5. He supported the legalization of abortion in Uruguay (his predecessor had vetoed the bill).

6. He’s an environmentalist trying to limit needless consumption. 

7. He is focusing on redistributing his nation’s wealth, claiming that his administration has reduced poverty from 37% to 11%. “Businesses just want to increase their profits; it’s up to the government to make sure they distribute enough of those profits so workers have the money to buy the goods they produce.”

8. He has offered to take detainees cleared for release from Guantanamo. 

9. He is opposed to war and militarism. “The world spends $2 billion a minute on military spending,” he exclaimed in horror to the students at American University. “I used to think there were just, noble wars, but I don’t think that anymore,” said the former armed guerrilla. “Now I think the only solution is negotiations. The worst negotiation is better than the best war, and the only way to insure peace is to cultivate tolerance.”


Why can't we have somebody like this here in the U.S.?

Why We Are Reluctant to Cut Our Losses in Afghanistan...and Ultrarunning

From the always-good Boing Boing, the following from David McRaney:

The same psychological hooks that cost companies millions of dollars to produce products obviously destined to fail can also keep troops in harm’s way long past the point when the whole war effort should be brought to an end. 

It’s a universal human tendency, the same one that influences you to keep watching a bad movie instead of walking out of the theater in time to catch another or that keeps you planted in your seat at a restaurant after you’ve been waiting thirty minutes for your drinks. 

If you reach the end of the quest, you think, then you haven’t truly lost anything, and that is sometimes a motivation so strong it prolongs horrific, bloody wars and enormously expensive projects well past the point when most people involved in efforts like those have felt a strong intuition that no matter the outcome, at this point, total losses will exceed any potential gains.

Knowing when to start and when to quit are often not clear-cut.  Believe me, I am not trying to be flippant in comparing running and war, but in thinking about this post I'm wondering where the point comes when dropping out makes sense.  I've only dropped out of one race in my career (a marathon back in the 1990s) and it was because I was cold and tired, not because I was injured.

So within half an hour I was feeling just fine and kicking myself for bailing.  That incident has served as a motivating reminder for the rest of my running career.

The U.S. is Wanting With Respect to Manliness

Ran across a list of some of the journalistic fails of 2014, and this one particularly tickled me:


-Fear and Manliness Foreign Policy Award: David Brooks, Cokie Roberts

During a discussion of the Gaza War, ABC pundit Cokie Roberts (7/13/14) argued that the problem with US foreign policy was that no one fears the United States.

You know, we just haven't made a strong enough presence in that region to have people be afraid of this country. And so I think there's a sense that, you know, they can get away with anything they want to get away with.

So the problem with the Iraq invasion, which killed roughly half a million people, along with a 13-year occupation of Afghanistan, the destruction of the Libyan government and drone strikes that have killed thousands in Pakistan and elsewhere--is that they don't instill enough fear.

Roberts wasn't the only one to have this insight; New York Timescolumnist David Brooks explained (Meet the Press, 4/20/14):

Let's face it, Obama, whether deservedly or not, does have--I'll say it crudely--a manhood problem in the Middle East: Is he tough enough to stand up to somebody like Assad, somebody like Putin?

 Let me pull out the main takeaway and repeat it here:

So the problem with the Iraq invasion, which killed roughly half a million people, along with a 13-year occupation of Afghanistan, the destruction of the Libyan government and drone strikes that have killed thousands in Pakistan and elsewhere--is that they don't instill enough fear.

But don't worry.  Changing the name of the Afghanistan War from Operation Enduring Freedom,  to Operation Freedom's Sentinel will totally change the wuss factor.  I mean it.

Christmas Truce, 1914

I originally posted this back in 2010.  I cannot think of a more fitting post for Christmas, 2014.

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Christmas, 1914

(image credit here:  British and German soldiers meeting in No Man's Land during the Christmas Truce of 1914.  Picture courtesy the National Army Museum.)

My great-grandfather died on the Western Front on the last day of WWI, 11 November 1918.  He was a German soldier.  I blogged about it here at Mister Tristan. So I found this tale of the 1914 Christmas truce to be very touching.


Via Avedon Carol at The Sideshow, who sends us over to The Daily Brew and a post from 2002: 

As the Bush Administration continues to prepare for its war of aggression, please don't give up hope that the illegal war by the illegal Bush regime may still be averted. Remember that Christmas is just around the corner, and strange things have been known to happen at Christmas. Below is a letter from the front line written Christmas Day, 1914.

My dear sister Janet,

It is 2:00 in the morning and most of our men are asleep in their dugouts—yet I could not sleep myself before writing to you of the wonderful events of Christmas Eve. In truth, what happened seems almost like a fairy tale, and if I hadn’t been through it myself, I would scarce believe it. Just imagine: While you and the family sang carols before the fire there in London, I did the same with enemy soldiers here on the battlefields of France!

[SNIP]

I went to the dugout to rest, and lying on my cot, I must have drifted asleep. All at once my friend John was shaking me awake, saying, “Come and see! See what the Germans are doing!” I grabbed my rifle, stumbled out into the trench, and stuck my head cautiously above the sandbags.

I never hope to see a stranger and more lovely sight. Clusters of tiny lights were shining all along the German line, left and right as far as the eye could see.

“What is it?” I asked in bewilderment, and John answered, “Christmas trees!”

[SNIP]

I was just starting back to the trenches when an older German clutched my arm. “My God,” he said, “why cannot we have peace and all go home?”

I told him gently, “That you must ask your emperor.”

He looked at me then, searchingly. “Perhaps, my friend. But also we must ask our hearts.”

[SNIP]

Still, one cannot help imagine what would happen if the spirit shown here were caught by the nations of the world. Of course, disputes must always arise. But what if our leaders were to offer well wishes in place of warnings? Songs in place of slurs? Presents in place of reprisals? Would not all war end at once?

All nations say they want peace. Yet on this Christmas morning, I wonder if we want it quite enough.

Your loving brother,

Tom 

You really should read the whole letter.  It has much more than the pieces I've excerpted.  The link is here.

Drone Deaths

This hasn't made the national news--and it probably won't, although the numbers should be pretty easily verifiable--but an independent organization has done some math on the drone strikes of the U.S.:

According to Reprieve’s analysis as of November 24th, 1,147 people were killed in attempts to kill 41 men.

“Drone strikes have been sold to the American public on the claim that they’re ‘precise,'” Jennifer Gibson of Reprieve told the Guardian. “But they are only as precise as the intelligence that feeds them. There is nothing precise about intelligence that results in the deaths of 28 unknown people, including women and children, for every ‘bad guy’ the U.S. goes after"

Go read the whole article at the link.  And remember that every death adds to the growing list of people who will hate us.  Forever.

An Interesting Fiscal Proposal

Ran across this by the always-good David Swanson.  You should read the whole piece, but here's an excerpt:

What would our lives be like if college were as free and unquestionable as military spending is now, but military spending arrived as an optional bill?

Those who didn't want it could choose not to pay. Those who wanted a coast guard, a national guard, and some anti-aircraft weapons could chip in a few bucks. Those who wanted a bit more than that could pay a bit more.

And those who wanted troops in 175 nations, aircraft carriers in every sea, enough nuclear weapons to destroy life on several planets, and fleets of drones with which to traumatize and antagonize several nations at once -- well, they could pay their $3,822, plus of course another $3,822 for anybody opting out.

What a naive proposal! Left to individual choice, the commons would be destroyed, and our national defense would crumble!

Really? People in the United States give over $300 billion to charity each year. Nobody forces them to. If they believed weapons and wars were the most important cause to donate their dollars to, they'd do it. No nation on earth spends $300 billion or anywhere close to it on its military, other than the United States.

And with the government no longer funding the military in its socialistic manner, it might choose instead to fund many of the humanitarian causes to which private charity is now largely devoted. Private giving could take care of the Pentagon.

But if wisdom about the counter-productive results of militarism spread, if nonviolent alternatives were learned, if free college had a positive impact on our collective intellect, and if the fact that we could end global poverty or halt global warming for a fraction of current military spending leaked out, who knows? Maybe militarism would fail in the free market.

I just love the last statement.

Another Post About the Dead

If you are a history sort of person--and I think that most people of sound mind surely must be--then this tale may be familiar.

Seems that a number of years ago, a certain country was involved in a war.  Now, having a long history of being a warlike people in that country, I suppose this is not especially remarkable.  

This particular war (indeed, all wars) certainly could and should have been avoided, yet it began like most wars do.  There was macho posturing on both sides by politicians who should have known better, and agitation for war by the young men who, frankly, wanted a glorious, heroic adventure.   

These young men thought they were indestructible, invincible, and bulletproof...until the real bullets began flying.  Then they died or were maimed forever by the tens of thousands.  And the politicians hardened their hearts and their political positions and the war dragged on.

During this time period most people died at home and were soon buried nearby.  But the scale of deaths in this war, and the lack of funeral practices such as we know today dictated that the dead soldiers, by the thousands, needed to be buried essentially where they fell.  There was no practical alternative.

Now, the politicians of this country were not totally insensitive.  Perhaps, knowing how royally they had screwed up, they wanted to memorialize the dead from a particularly grisly battle that had occurred a few months previous.  The remains of dead had been disinterred from their hastily dug battlefield graves, collected, and reburied about a mile away in what would become a national cemetery.

The politicians wanted to say a few flowery words over the dead when then cemetery was dedicated; this, I suspect, was more to assuage their hearts than those of the dead.  The chief politician was invited to speak, and he spoke for only a couple of minutes.

But in those couple of minutes, he ceased being a mere politician and became a human being.  One who knew, finally, the vast toll that the war was costing the very soul of the nation.  And so he said:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863


If you are like me, you learned this speech in elementary school and have seen it countless times since.  But I ask something of you right now as your eyes rest on this page: today, don't blow by it.  Scroll back up and take 2 minutes to actually read it as though you were seeing it for the first time.  Assume you will be tested on it, or whatever it takes, to focus on what Mr. Lincoln actually said...but in context.

See, the war had begun as a sectional war, but Mr. Lincoln was among the first, being President and all, to steer the rationale away from the vague principle of "state's rights" and hone in on the ultimate cause: slavery.  No slavery, no American Civil War.  

So, while the speech above does not mention human bondage, Mr. Lincoln somehow knew that"these honored dead" would in fact have died in vain...unless a higher order principle was at stake that would be decided by the war.  

In other words, after a couple years of war, if the Confederate States of America and the United States of America had made peace, in which either the rebels would come back into the fold or split off to form a new country--but slavery still persisted--then those thousands of deaths were absolutely meaningless.  

And you realize that Mr. Lincoln got it right.

Armistice Day...Every Family has a Story

I am reposting the same post I have put up for the past 4 years on 11 Nov, commemorating the end of World War I.

============================

For Veteran's Armistice Day (as it was originally called)....

Every family has a story. My mother told me of my great-grandfather, Julius (or Jules?) Brinkmann, who was killed on this date in 1918 in World War I on the Western Front.

Word of the armistice, which took effect the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, did not reach all the lines in real time. He was killed sometime later that day, AFTER the armistice.

He would have been one of the very last casualties of the Great War. You know, the war that was supposed to end all wars.

Oh, and he was a German. Funny, that really doesn't seem to matter, does it?

What is your family story? Please comment.

This is a generic photo, not of Julius--because my Mom's family lost ALL their possessions, including family photos, when they were bombed out in Frankfurt in WW II--but it could have been.

Photo credit here.

 

When You Shoot, You've Lost

Now this is kinda a sobering observation, recently made by Glenn Greenwald:

Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by the 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate.

Which again causes me to turn to Duncan Black, who blogs at Eschaton:

Wars Are Bad

And if for some reason the people who run the United States feel the need to start one, it means they've failed. It means they should all resign in shame and let someone else clean up their mess. This country has immense power - military, economic, political - and if you can't use the latter two, along with the implicit threat of the first one, to make war unnecessary then you've fucked up and it's time to go home.

I still cannot fathom the nearly headlong rush to make war on ISIS.  Congress rattles its sabers yet steadfastly refuses to even discuss a declaration of war as called for in our Constitution.  To hear the talking heads tell it, ISIS is the devil incarnate and Must.  Be.  Stopped.  Now.  At any and all costs.

Perhaps a better, saner approach might be this one, as I posted a couple years ago, where we'd take war dollars and use them for humanitarian purposes instead:

We're declaring a unilateral cease-fire.  And in lieu of fighting we are taking those combat dollars to dig wells, immunize children, and build roads and bridges.

Perhaps I am naive but I do speak from the knowledge base of decades of work for the DOD, and say as I hold a grandchild on my lap, by God, we can do better than this.  We have to do better than this.

A Bizarre Warning Along the Appalachian Trail

While visiting the in-laws recently in Tower City, PA, I took a short run over in Stony Valley.  There is a rails-to-trails path off Gold Mine Road which intersects the Appalachian Trail some 3.5 miles in.

Anyway, an interesting warning sign appears at the trailhead, warning of possible unexploded ordnance from an Army base nearby:

Hope you can enlarge sufficiently to read the warning poster.  I don't know about you, but the last thing that I want to think about while I'm running trails is military activity and the possibility--even if extremely remote--of getting blown up.