War Handwavium

Short version: yes, we did.

Longer version:

What we did included the deaths of at least a hundred prisoners, fake executions, threats to kill the family of prisoners, threats to rape the family of prisoners, buttstroking with rifles and knee kicks, dislocated shoulders, induced hypothermia, pressure points on carotid artery,

And waterboarding. That thing we convicted Japanese WW2 war criminals for doing.

Of the approximately one-thousand prisoners who went through Guantanamo, the US government has admitted that the vast majority of them were innocent. About 800 were eventually released without any charges, let alone a trial, or due process of any kind.

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced the most cowardly approach to investigating the obvious war crimes: a “preliminary review” that accepts the guidance from Bush’s DOJ as legal and Holder, that great example of courage that he is, is only going to investigate whether anyone exceeded that illegal guidance. Bush’s DOJ memos advocated torture that violates the Geneva Convention on multiple levels. But Holder doesn’t want to investigate that at all. Instead, Holder wants to use an Abu Ghraib model of investigation which will pursue only the low-level people in the trenches and ignore the obvious evidence that goes all the way up the chain of command directly to the President of the United States.

Cowards all.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/24/ig_report/index.html

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/IG_Report.pdf

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/25/king/index.html

A man was carrying an AR-15 (a semi-automatic version of the military M-16) outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech in Pheonix. The man said he was doing it because he can.

No laws were broken, according to Phoenix police. Arizona is an “open-carry” state, which means anyone legally allowed to have a firearm can carry it in public as long as it’s visible.

During Obama’s health care town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., a man carrying a sign reading “It is time to water the tree of liberty” stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.

A reference to a quote by Thomas Jefferson “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

And why are right wing extremists making open threats against the president’s life? Because he’s is trying to reform healthcare. Because he’s trying to make sure people who have insurance don’t get thrown under the bus by an insurance company who decides you’re no longer profitable and people who do not have insurance can get some.

Seriously, people? This is what you’re going to go to war over? You’re going to murder a president and wage a revolution against your own government because you don’t want everyone to have health care? Because you want insurance companies to keep the right to ditch patients if they cost too much? Of all the evils in the world, this is what you decide to stand up against? Will you be expanding your war to include Medicare too? Will you kill your fellow Americans to stop food programs that help feed Americans who are starving? Will you murder to put an end to unemployment benefits?

The mind boggles at the murders people are willing to commit to prevent anyone from helping their fellow man.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090817/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_protesters_guns

Oh, sorry, that’s number 10, as in we’re ranked tenth in the world for healthcare. Who beat us out? Countries with nationalized healthcare.

The numbers are here:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/were-number.html

Time has an interesting article.

The war in Afghanistan has killed 707 Americans so far and is currently costing the US 4 billion dollars a month.

It might actually be cheaper to simply buy off the taliban and pay them to do something besides fight.

a new report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week says U.S. commanders commonly refer to the “$10 Taliban” — alluding to the amount insurgents earn each day from Taliban coffers swelled by drug proceeds and Islamist benefactors. That’s more than an Afghan cop makes. “They can collect double or triple pay for planting an improvised explosive device,” the report adds. So how many fighters are on the Taliban payroll? Earlier this year during a visit to Washington, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, Afghanistan’s Interior Minister, estimated there are between 10,000 and 15,000 Taliban fighting his government and its U.S. allies.

$10 a day times 30 days is salary of $300 a month. If the Taliban is currently funding 10,000 fighters, that would be $3,000,000 a month. THREE MILLION dollars a month. The US is currently spend FOUR BILLION dollars a month.

What we spend in one month in Afghanistan would pay the Taliban a thousand times over. That means we could pay all the existing taliban for a thousand months (a hundred years) with what we spend on just one month in Afghanistan.

Alexander the Great, in all his conquests, never conquered Afghanistan. He bribed his way through it.

We might want to seriously consider following in Alexander the Great’s footsteps. Instead of tripling the US presence in the Graveyard of Empires, instead of trying to conquer the land that the Soviet Union at the height of its power could not conquer, we might want to consider smarter alternatives to victory.

The population of Afghanistan is 28 million people. Half live below poverty level. Unemployment is %40. About half the population suffer from shortages of housing, clean drinking water, and electricity. Is this a land that must be “conquered” to achieve our goals?

What exactly are our goals? Does anyone even know?

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1916521,00.html

excerpt:

In one of the cases mentioned, two women and three children were standing in front of their home after a soldier ordered them outside. At least three of them were holding pieces of white cloth when a soldier opened fire, killing two girls aged two and seven and wounding the third girl and their grandmother.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/08/200981335844986966.html

(that we know of)

Raymond Azar, a 45-year-old Lebanese construction manager with a grade school education, is employed by Sima International, a Lebanon-based contractor that does work for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also has the unlikely distinction of being the first target of a rendition carried out on the Obama watch.

And apparently, he was tortured in American custody.

I thought we all “learned our lesson” about torture? I thought we were never going to torture again? What about the international backlash that will endanger American lives?

Enough is enough. Release the photos. Prosecute the law breakers. Stop endangering American lives.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/11/target-of-obama-era-rendi_n_256499.html

The US has a bunch of photos of prisoners held by Americans being tortured. The Bush administration and now the Obama administration are arguing that these photos cannot be released because they will create international backlash and cause terrorists to attack Americans.

Let’s assume for the moment, that this backlash argument is true. Let’s assume that these photos are never released. Let’s assume that the American Government is able to torture prisoners for years, including killing at least 100 of them, and are never prosecuted for those crimes.

Are we saying that these Americans who authorized, ordered, and executed the torturing of prisoners have learned their lessons? That they’ll never do it again? Are we saying that the US Government will never again overstep its bounds?

Because if the government did NOT learn it’s lesson, if the people who authorized, ordered, and executed the torture of prisoners are simply waiting to torture again, then doesn’t that mean there could be another torture incident? Maybe more photographs that will have to be suppressed because it will create an international backlash that could kill Americans?

Obama is currently working on a way transfer prisoners from Guantanamo but keeping them in a due-process-free zone identical to Guantanamo. He’s working on a way to imprison people without due process, who have not committed a crime, indefinitely and without recourse to law.

We still have massive domestic spying going on. We still have a massive chunk of rights ripped up and thrown to the ground.

And now Obama is looking to ramp up the military presence in Afghanistan, from 30,000 troops when he got into office to 120,000 by the end of his first year in office.

This is the same Afghanistan where CIA predator drones have repeatedly killed Afghan civilians, Afghan civilians at wedding parties. This is the same Afghanistan where Afghan General Abdul Rashid Dostum working with our military and paid by the CIA committed a massive attrocity of killing some 2,000 prisoners by suffocating them in container trucks.

Are we really saying that the US government will stop committing attrocities that will create international backlash? Are we really saying that these torture photos are the only ones we have to worry about?

If backlash is the true concern here, then the long view is that we must make sure that these incidents stop. Because if the US government continues to violate humanitarian laws and cause incidents that generate international backlash that threatens American lives, then we’re in for serious trouble in the long term.

And how do we make sure the US government does NOT commit more attrocities in the future? How do we prevent more backlash in the future? We have been given two options: (A) Bury the evidence or (B) Air the evidence and prosecute those who violated the law.

If we bury the evidence, that may reduce the backlash from that one particular incident. But it enboldens the government to continue its behaviour of law breaking. And if the US government continues to break humanitarian law in the future, then that can do nothing but create far more backlash than any single incident.

The alternative is to release the evidence and prosecute the law breakers. Make it known to future Americans that using the government’s power to commit attrocities will not be tolerated.

The “we must keep the photos secret to prevent international backlash and protect American lives” only works if you are short-sighted. It only works if you think the American Government has somehow “Learned its lesson”.

Tell me, has Dick Cheney learned his lesson? Has he had a change of heart? Has he shown regret and remorse for his hand in the torture of thousands of prisoners for years, many of whom were innocent?

I don’t think so.

In fact, it seems fairly apparent that Dick Cheney is trying to exert influence on the US government to get it to continue his lawless and inhumane methods. And Cheney isn’t the only one, just the most visible and the most cranky.

If we want to prevent international backlash and protect American lives, then we must think of the long-view of American behavior. Covering up this one attrocity and letting the criminals get away with breaking the law will only enable and encourage more law-breaking in the future, creating more attrocities, and creating more international backlash, endangering more lives.

If the Government were truly interested in saving American lives, they would publish all the photos and prosecute those who broke international law.

But the government isn’t interested in that at all. It’s interested in maintaining its power. Obama is interested in his own agenda and doesn’t want prosecutions to be a distraction. He wants to get reelected in 2012. Much lower on his priority is protecting American lives. And the neo-conservatives don’t give a damn about anything but themselves and their power. Like Cheney, they want to continue exerting their power and want nothing to be a restraint on their power, including an American public that would be aghast by their behaviour if it were revealed in the photos of their crimes.

Release the photos. Prosecute those who violated international law. Protect American lives.

Over on Glenn Greenwald’s blog, Daphne Eviatar points out an interesting bit of history: The reason we have the Geneva Convention of 1949 is because after WW2, the US and General Eisenhower insisted on distributing huge volumes of photos to the media showing the attrocities that happened during the war: the death camps, emaciated prisoners, corpses. These photos were so repugnant that nations around the world created a set of laws that described universal humanitarian norms, the Geneva Convention of 1949.

This is the Geneva Convention that gives us the rules on how to treat prisoners of war, rules the United States has recently broken in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, and at various black sites around the world.

And there are photos of Americans violating the Geneva Convention that the US government is trying to supress. These very photos could reinforce with the American public and the world why the Geneva Convention is so important, because they would show what it really looks like when those laws are violated.

We could release these photos and remind the world why the Geneva Convention, why the treatment of human prisoners, is so important. Or we could sit on the photos and reinforce the notion that we are above the law.

It’s 60 years old.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/08/200981212154828506.html

This is the War Handwavium score for “Pork Chop Hill”, the 1959 movie starring Gregory Peck.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053183/

Gregory Peck plays Lt. Joe Clemons, a company commander in the Korean War.

Actor Rip Torn plays Lt. Walter Russel. George Peppard plays Cpl. Chuck Fedderson. Robert Blake plays Pvt. Velie. Martin Landau plays Lt. Marshall. Gavin MacLeod plays Pvt. Saxon.

“This is a true story based on the book by Brig Gen S.L.A.Marshall, USAR. In most cases not even the names have been changed. We are deeply grateful for the cooperation of the United States Army.”

Technical Adviser Captain Joseph Clemons Jr, Infantry, USA.

Total Score: -94 points.

Note: !!!!!!SPOILERS!!!!!!

-3 points: GI (name of Forstman) complains to Clemons that he’s got his points to rotate out. Army says he is one point short. Showing sacrifice due to bureacratic indifference.

-57 points: Initial operation storming the base of Pork Chop Hill, 19 American GI’s shown killed.

+3 points: Americans storm first trench. 1 Chinese shown killed.

28 minute mark: Chinese bugle sounds.

+6 points: 2 Chinese killed.

-3 points: 1 American with Suki killed.

+1 point: 32 minutes: American runner going from Suki to Clemons crosses a chinese machine gun nest. Throws grenade, misses, injures himself. Throws another grenade, takes out gunner. -2 points for injury. +3 points for killing chinese.

+3 points: 1 Chinese killed

-3 points: 1 American killed.

-6 points: 41 minutes: Love company shows up. 12 men left out of 150. Artillery shell kills 2 men.

-3 points: Wounded GI being carried on stretcher with foot blown off.

+9 points: three Chinese are killed as Americans take bunker.

-36 points: Americans take command post. Artillery shells their position. A dozen men shown in wreckage.

Possibly friendly fire incident. Men are angry. Clemons talks them down.

+12 points, -12 points: Bayonet charge over the hill and into the trenches. 4 Chinese killed. 4 Americans killed.

Take crest of hill and trenches.

-3 points: American (Chuck the machine gunner) is killed.

-6 points: Radio man (Sam) and GI eating beans are found dead by Clemons.

Lieutenant from Public Relations comes up hill to take pictures of “successful” operation.

George company leaves the hill

Franklin points gun at Clemons. Says he doesn’t want to die for Korea. Clemons talks him down. Franklin joins him.

Chinese propaganda officer says they have 45 minutes to surrender or there will be a massive attack. Plays orchestra music.

Division finally contacts on radio. Can’t reinforce. Can’t withdraw.

At peace conference, chinese refuse to negotiate over Pork Chop Hill. Americans think Chinese know they aren’t going to reinforce the hill, and know Chinese intend to attack in an hour to take it. American General thinks Chinese picked the hill because it is worthless and they’re willing to die for it, and it’s a test to see if Americans are willing to die for a worthless hill too.

Attack begins.

-2 points: Suki is wounded.

Americans pull back into bunker. Chinese flamethrower attacks them.

American reinforcements show up.

+6 points: 2 chinese are killed.

The hill is won.

Summary:

I was flipping through the channels when I caught a part of this movie. I was intriqued by the fact that it kept showing Americans getting killed, but not the enemy. So I scheduled it to be recorded on DVR and scored it.

This movie really contrasts the differences between a realistic portrayal of war and a fantasy war-handwavium portrayal of war. The movie focuses on the sacrifices American GI’s made. Compare this to some modern day Rambo movie that focuses on creating an enjoyable gladiator fight in the colosseum where we are encouraged to enjoy the sight of killing.

There is one scene in the movie where the radio guy, Sam, sees some Chinese prisoners, and he exclaims, “That’s what they look like? That’s what I”m afraid of?” Compare this to the demonization of the enemy that a movie like “300″ employed to make the bad guys seem nonhuman.

We’re not meant to watch this movie and enjoy the killing of the enemy. We’re meant to watch this movie and see the sacrifices that Americans made in war.

This movie is the antithesis of the war handwavium flick. And the massive negative score reflects that.

From wikipedia:

The Battle of Pork Chop Hill comprises a pair of related Korean War infantry battles during the spring and summer of 1953. These were fought while the U.S. and the Communist Chinese and Koreans negotiated an armistice. In the U.S., they were controversial because of the many soldiers killed for terrain of no strategic or tactical value. The first battle was described in the eponymous history Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man in Action, Korea, Spring 1953, by S.L.A. Marshall, from which the film Pork Chop Hill was drawn.

The United Nations, primarily supported by the United States, won the first battle when the Chinese broke contact and withdrew after two days of fighting. The second battle involved many more troops on both sides and was bitterly contested for five days before United Nations Command conceded the hill to the Chinese forces by withdrawing behind the main battle line.

The movie portrays the first battle for Pork Chop Hill, when the Americans won, rather than showing the second battle, which the Americans lost.

Wikipedia reports that during the first battle, company K and L attack the hill, suffering 50% initial casualties, later helped by Company G. Due to miscommunication, and not realizing the number of castualties suffered, command orders Company G to withdraw. By the time command realized the true situation, K and L companies were down to 25 men. Command sent reinforcements in the form of several additional companies.

In this respect, the movie is fairly accurate in the window of time it represents. Two companies (about 200-300 men total) start the attack and are reduced to 25 men before reinforcements arrive.

The French premiere was received with criticism on grounds of racism, as the character played by Woody Strode, an African American, was shown to be a coward during the initial attack on the Chinese position. I would have to say the fact that the film has only one African American character, and that character is a coward, is a bit suspect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pork_Chop_Hill

http://www.warhw.com/warhw-in-fiction/