Cripple

Amazing! The "Grim Reaper"€ didn't get me! I may have 1 foot in the grave but still here.
What a wise lady! Did you know the VA has WiFi and it's free? Not me & the fine lady here showed me how to get onto the internet. A bit slow but who cares, it's free. I'm sure they need WiFi for their medical stuff, but I can piggy-back on WiFi is fine with me.

Yes, fear! (The wise lady here made me think) I have a fear that people will believe another "Gulf of Tonkin"€ where so many of us died. One of my roommates survived Korea, another "Police Action"€ play on words lie by our government and acceptable by our society. All that death and not even a second thought. I guess the "I'm not afraid of anything!"€ is wrong. I'm afraid of people believing a lie and we don't find out it's a lie until decades later, and it seems nobody cares. I think that guy got fired from Fox who interviewed that Jessie guy; he got upset & stormed away with no care of all those who died in Nam. So many who don't know what the "Gulf of Tonkin incidents"€ mean. Just a number, 58,000+, died, a much larger number disabled. Nobody cares, guess that's what scares me. People who want to worry about anything other than the t***h, refuse to believe the t***h. Who would have thought a "fact" is only a "fact" IF it falls within my belief system. What is a fact? We really don't know what lie will get us into another high death-toll. We follow blind.
Not Me, never again!

I'll be gone from this world soon enough but still want to "Make a Difference"€. How do I get someone to "Open Their Eyes"€? I was a blind follower, v**ed for a liar, and lies in politics are "acceptable conduct"€. The problem isn't the liars, really. It's the millions of us who believe the lies. Our media that we rely upon to find the t***h and now our news has turned into "entertainment". None of all this would happen in politics or media if WE did not support them, encourage them, reward them. I will throw my v**e to the farthest extreme rather than v**e for a liar!
Who is going to "carry the ball"€ when I'm gone? Is there anyone out there who will be strong enough to tell some politician, or anyone for that matter,
NO I will not support a liar any more!

He/she is correct! "All politicians lie"€! Find a politician who does not lie and you'll waste your life. Is it a waste of life to force our politicians to be honest? It couldn't be!

At the time, late 1700's, the thought of people being in-charge of their own government was a thought process of only those people "way out there"€. A Constitution actually v**ed upon by citizens? Unheard of! The people, so brave, who developed our Constitution, all 100% of them were proud liberals! It's true! I guess I would have been a liberal at that time. We now yell and scream about Socialism. Honestly, there has been some piece of good in all the forms of government in our history, yes even c*******m just a little piece. We want to take the best of everything and incorporate such into our government. Don't we do the same with all our experiences through our life? People we meet, all our experiences incorporated into our personality?

Laying here barely dressed and can't get that old song out of my head, first heard it overseas, Barbara Fairchild singing "Teddy Bear"€.

Carol Kelly

I’m afraid! Not afraid of dying but of what I’m leaving behind for future generations of conservatives to deal with. We’ve all known about war if we had anybody family or friend go away and not return or at least not the way they left us. We also know that most of these “clashes” could have been avoided but for the ignorance of our leaders. Most of us haven’t been through what you’ve been through, but we understand and have empathy.
For wh**ever it’s worth, I read what you wrote and I won’t say I felt your pain but I did understand.

Cripple

Thanks Carol, At least I just learned emojis

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

I found and played Barbara Fairchild performing 'Teddy Bear' on stage. It has been decades since I last heard it.

debeda

GREAT posts Carol and Cripple. And the Looney tunes don't like nationalism. Hmmmm. To me nationalism is taking care of your own FIRST. Don't feel you have to be the world's arbiter or police force. Deal with other countries to trade or to share mutually beneficial info, etc. Support your countrymen in getting education and opportunities so the best and brightest can maintain cutting edge medical and tech advances. Reinstitute education standards. STOP college professors, the MSM and entertainers from preaching America h**e and romanticizing moral decay and perversions.

Cripple

Thank you for what you wrote debeda. I think the biggest problem we all have is a lack of "Ethics" mostly concentrating on "Deceit". I'm greatly concerned who will "carry the ball" on "Ethics" when I'm gone. I feel like shaking people to wake them up that "Deceit" has nothing to do with what side of politics you happen to be on, it has everything to do with what you find as "acceptable conduct" you are willing to accept from those you meet, including who you support. I've been told that's why so many people stay away from the polls on e******n day, the exact opposite of what you should be doing. V**E, v**e against those who deceive. Be public & proud about it, deceit is unacceptable conduct, period! I know of no-one who is willing to continue. I refuse to die until I accomplish this one area of finding someone! Take it from an old Marine who will win this fight!

debeda

What is considered acceptable conduct has gone so far into left field it's hard to fathom us ever getting a humane and wholesome code of standards.

Morgan

You had a good post until your last line. It's too bad your point of view ended up so slanted, it's like looking at the world with just one eye. College professors are not the problem, but it is people who make false accusations or intentionally misinform the public, which does include the president. These are the things as crippled say we should not accept, and people who do these acts should be called out on and be accountable by a form of punishment. There should be a place for news and facts and a place for opinionated editorials and a clear distinction between the two, these muddied grey lines need to end.

Who is this new forming cult that continually disparages our government, our governing system, our education system and our homeland security? They are an enemy.

debeda

I agree that there should be standards set for entities that want to call themselves news organizations and the rest can call themselves entertainment or opinion. Would certainly make it easier for people to get facts. As to the rest of your rant....everyone has an opinion. Funny you talk about a "new forming cult". You must not have spent much time in schools or colleges or with well educated people over the past 50 years to watch how education has changed or, in my opinion, devolved.

Cripple

Cripple

buffalo Loc: Texas

I am with you, cripple! First off, thank you for your service and sacrifices. Yes, honesty and ethics seemed to have disappeared in almost everything, especially politics, the lapdog mainstream media, colleges and college professors, in fact the entire indoctrinating education system.

I ran across this article by Nick Turse this morning and I thought it appropriate:


Raids by U.S. commandos in Afghanistan. (I could be talking about 2001 or 2018.)

A U.S. drone strike in Yemen. (I could be talking about 2002 or 2018.)

Missions by Green Berets in Iraq. (I could be talking about 2003 or 2018.)

While so much about the War on Terror turned Global War on Terrorismturned World War IV turned the Long War turned “generational struggle” turned “infinite war” seems repetitious, the troops most associated with this conflict — the U.S. Special Operations forces — have seen changes galore. As Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ), chairman of the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, pointed out in 2006, referring to Special Operations Command by its acronym: “For almost five years now, SOCOM has been leading the way in the war on terrorism: defeating the Taliban and eliminating a terrorist safe haven in Afghanistan, removing a truly vicious Iraqi dictator, and combating the terrorists who seek to destabilize the new, democratic Iraq.”

Much has changed since Saxton looked back on SOCOM’s role in the early years of the war on terror. For starters, Saxton retired almost a decade ago, but the Taliban, despite being “defeated” way back when, didn’t do the same. Today, they contest for or control about 44% of Afghanistan. That country also hosts many more terror groups — 20 in all — than it did 12 years ago. “Vicious Iraqi dictator” Saddam Hussein is, of course, still dead and gone, but in 2014, about a third of “the new, democratic Iraq” was overrun by Islamic State militants. The country was only re-liberated in late 2017 and the Islamic State is already making a comeback there this year. Meanwhile, Iraq is besetby anti-government protests and totters along as one of the most fragile stateson the planet, while the Iraqi and Afghan war zones bled together — with U.S. special operators now fighting an Islamic State terrorist franchise in Afghanistan, too.

In spite, or perhaps because, of these circumstances, SOCOM continues to thrive. Its budget, its personnel numbers, and just about any other measure you might choose (from missions to global reach) continue to rise. In 2006, for instance, 85% of Special Operations forces (SOF) deployed overseas — Army Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs, and others -- were concentrated in the Greater Middle East, with far smaller numbers spread thinly across the Pacific (7%), Europe (3%), and Latin America (3%). Only 1% of them were then conducting missions in Africa.

Today, the lion’s share — 56% — of those commandos still operate in the Greater Middle East, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by SOCOM, but all other foreign deployments have grown at that region’s expense. Africa Command has leapt from last to second place and now hosts 16.5% of America’s overseas commandos, European Command 13.9% of them, the newly renamed Indo-Pacific Command 8.6%, and Southern Command 4.5%.

In the zone

As deployments have shifted geographically, the number of special operators overseas has risen dramatically. In any given week in 2001, an average of 2,900 commandos were deployed abroad. By 2014, that number had hit 7,200. Today, according to SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw, it’s 8,300.

A generation of commandos have spent their careers fighting on the proliferating fronts of Washington’s forever wars, hopping from one conflict zone to another or sometimes returning to the same campaign again and again. Some have spent much of their adult lives at war and a number have lost their lives after multiple warzone tours, still without a victory in sight. “At this stage in the ongoing counter-violent extremist type of fight, it is not a rare exception for airmen to be on their 12th, 13th, or 14th deployment,” Lieutenant General Marshall Webb, the chief of Air Force Special Operations Command, told the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities earlier this year. And when it comes to serial deployments, special ops airmen are hardly unique.

Consider, for example, Green Beret Colonel Owen Ray who recently took command of the 1st Special Forces Group (1st SFG). His path to that post might be thought of as the military equivalent of working one’s way up from the mailroom. He has, in fact, held a command at every level of the 1st SFG. In 2003, he served as a detachment commander in Afghanistan. By 2011, he was back there as a company commander. In 2013, he returned as the chief of the 1st Special Forces Group’s 4th Battalion. Now, he heads a unit whose members have spent the last years deploying to hotspots across the planet. “I stand in absolute awe at the service rendered and the impact this unit had on multiple theaters,” said outgoing commander Colonel Guillaume Beaurpere at a July change of command ceremony in which he handed over the reins to Ray.

Beaurpere himself is a model of the long-war SOF experience in multi-theater warfighting. A French immigrant commissioned as an officer in 1994, he served in South Korea, Kosovo, and sub-Saharan Africa. In 2007, he commanded a Special Forces company in Iraq. In 2008, he was back in Iraq as the executive officer for a special operations task force in Baghdad. In 2010, he served as the deputy chief of staff of a SOCOM joint task force and the task force deputy operations officer during the lead-up to NATO’s war in Libya. In 2011, he took command of a special forces battalion and supervised its operations in West Africa. He also played a role in establishing a special ops presence in Central Africa to aid local proxies fighting Joseph Kony’s Lord's Resistance Army. In 2012, he served as the chief of a special operations command and control element in the Horn of Africa. Beaurpere is now assigned to Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida, where he serves as executive officer to the commander.

This spring, President Trump tapped Lieutenant General Scott Howell to be the first Air Force officer to head Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), SOCOM’s secretive “h****r-k**lers,” which include the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team Six. A longtime special operator, Howell has hopped back and forth between combat zones and stateside posts while steadily climbing the special ops ladder. His assignments have included a 2005-2006 stint, when he was still a lieutenant colonel, as commander of the Joint Special Operations Aviation Detachment Arabian Peninsula at Joint Base Balad, Iraq; a 2008-2010 assignment, when he was a colonel, as commander of the Joint Special Operations Aviation Component, Special Operations Task Force, at Balad Air Base, Iraq, and Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan; a 2012-2013 stint, when he was a brigadier general, as deputy commanding general of Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan and NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan; and then, a 2016-2017 position, when he was a major general, as the head of NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan and Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan.

Or, for a grimmer look at the special ops experience in these years, consider the biographies of some of the commandos recently k**led overseas. They offer a unique window on the operations tempo, scale, and scope of America’s never-ending wars. Take Chief Special Warfare Operator William "Ryan" Owens. He completed his Navy SEAL training in December 2002 and then deployed 12 times, carrying out perhaps 1,000 missions or more, including assignments in Afghanistan and Somalia, before he was k**led in Yemen last January. Similarly, Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Kyle Milliken, who enlisted in the Navy in 2002 and joined the SEALs a short time later, survived tours in — in 2007 alone, he took part in 48 combat missions there — and Afghanistan only to be k**led in Somalia last May.

Staff Sergeant Logan Melgar, a Green Beret who was reportedly strangled to death by two fellow special operators in Mali last June, was a veteran of two tours in Afghanistan. Staff Sergeant Dustin Wright, one of two Green Berets k**led in an Islamic State ambush in Niger in October 2017, was reportedly on his second deployment to that West African nation. Army Sergeant 1st Class Mihail Golin — the victim of a New Year’s Day attack in Afghanistan — enlisted in the Army in 2005, a year after emigrating to the United States from Latvia, serving in Iraq in 2006-2007 and Afghanistan in 2009-2010, 2011-2012, and again in 2017. Staff Sergeant Alexander Conrad, a 26-year-old assigned to the Special Forces, served two tours in Afghanistan -- in 2012-2013 and again in 2014 — before losing his life in a June 2018 attack in Jubaland, Somalia.

Hallowed halls

Today, who remembers Dan Brouthers or the Troy Trojans and Buffalo Bisons, the professional baseball teams he played for? The same could be said of William “Judy” Johnson of the Hilldale Daisies, Mike “King” Kellyof the Boston Beaneaters, and Charlie “Old Hoss” Radbourn of the Providence Grays who, in 1884, pitched 73 complete games and won 59 of them. (Yes, you read that right!). Those men are nonetheless immortalized in bronze forever — or at least as long as the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum stands in Cooperstown, New York.

Philip Cochran, Leroy Manor, and Aaron Bank might be even less well known to the rest of us, although they’re enshrined in the equivalent institution for their line of work. They are among the 69 members of the Commando Hall of Honor at SOCOM headquarters, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. Cochran is best known for his service as the chief of the 1st Air Commando Group in the China-India-Burma Theater during World War II. Manor commanded the Air Force Special Operations Forces and headed the Joint Task Force responsible for the unsuccessful 1970 Son Tay prison compound raid to rescue American prisoners of war in North Vietnam. And Colonel Aaron Bank, known as ''the father of Special Forces'' for his role in creating the Army units that became known as the Green Berets, conducted small-unit operations with resistance fighters in N**i-occupied Europe during World War II.

This year saw six new inductees to that Hall of Honor, including Major General James Rudder, who led three companies of Rangers during the 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy, France, and Air Force Colonel William Kornitzer, who took part in both the Son Tay prison raid and the even-more-disastrous Operation Eagle Claw, the failed special ops mission to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran that cost eight military personnel their lives in 1980. But not all of 2018’s honorees harkened back to the hazy past. The war on terror has been going on for so long that two of this year’s inductees played roles in it, one of them perhaps the most famous commando of his generation.

Continued next post...sorry about the length but I think well worth the read...

buffalo Loc: Texas

General Stanley McChrystal, reads an Army news release about his induction ceremony, “served more than 34 years where he commanded both Joint Special Operations Command and. . . is credited with changing the way special operations forces are employed and how the nation views those forces in a positive way.” The article, however, says nothing about how the “runaway general” lost his job as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2010 after the publication of a Rolling Stone exposé in which his staff criticized Obama administration officials in his presence. Nor does it mention that, despite the widespread credit he’s received for defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq through relentless “man-hunting” missions back in the 2000s, that group nonetheless evolved into the Islamic State. It then swept across that same country in 2014, seizing town after town that JSOC and other U.S. troops had spent years clearing.

Similarly, the article fails to note that the war in Afghanistan that McChrystal was sent to win has ground on for the better part of a decade since his departure. Instead, it says that he is “recognized” for having “directly contributed to the nation's success in the Global War on Terrorism.” His inclusion offers a clue about where SOCOM’s Hall of Honor sets the bar for success in this century and suggests that many veterans of the forever war, perhaps for generations to come, could join McChrystal in the Cooperstown of commandos.

Generation war

At a recent Pentagon press briefing, "Task & Purpose"’s Jeff Schogol asked General Joseph V**el, former SOCOM commander and the current chief of U.S. forces in the Greater Middle East, if “a new generation of children will grow up to have to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.” V**el largely punted on the issue of how generational the war on terror might prove to be, but his answer was still a telling one. “I do recognize we’ve certainly been in Afghanistan for a long time — and of course, we’re back in Iraq for a second/third time addressing some of these problems,” he replied. “I think this is a reminder that these things often take time.”

Time indeed.

The idea of Washington being engaged in a “generational war” was front and center earlier this year when Army General Austin “Scott” Miller, a career special operations soldier, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. As a young infantry officer, he had led elite Army Delta Force soldiers during the infamous “Black Hawk Down” Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia in 1993 and has since charged up through the ranks. He first deployed to Afghanistan as a lieutenant colonel in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. Then came a combat tour in Iraq and a return to Afghanistan as a brigadier general in 2010 to command the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan. In 2013-2014, he was back in Afghanistan again, this time as a major general in charge of NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan/Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan. Today, he has a brand new fourth star and commands all U.S. forces in that country, the 17th U.S. commander there since 2001.

At Miller’s confirmation hearing in June, Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton raised an uncomfortable question that even a cursory examination of the general’s biography should provoke. “Did you imagine in 2001 that you would be deploying... to Afghanistan in 2018?” he asked. Miller replied that he had not, adding, “Senator, I actually recall conversations of people who were out over Christmas in 2001 talking about they were doing this so their kids did not have to.” That response led Cotton to call attention to a soldier seated just behind Miller: a young Army 2nd Lieutenant with the 82nd Airborne Division who just happened to be the general’s son, Austin Miller.

“If Lieutenant Miller does his job well and stays as a platoon leader at the 82nd Airborne into next year, 2019, he is going to have a private report to his platoon in all likelihood who was born after the 9/11 attacks. That is a pretty shocking fact. Is it not?”

“Yes, Senator,” Miller agreed.

It’s likely as well that the members of the 82nd Airborne, perhaps even Lieutenant Miller and one or more post-9/11 privates, will deploy again to Afghanistan in the coming years. As the core of the military’s Global Response Force, the 82nd Airborne Division is on-call to react anywhere in the world within 18 hours. It is a globe-trotting, rapid-response light infantry force that has seen recent service in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and the Horn of Africa and shares its home, Fort Bragg, with U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

It’s also likely that an increasing number of Special Operations forces from Fort Bragg and elsewhere will be spread ever more equally across the planet, while deployments to perpetual hot-spots like Afghanistan and Iraq continue. A generation of special operators has already deployed repeatedly to South Asia, the Middle East, and increasingly Africa. Some of them are now entering the special ops hall of fame despite the fact that not one post-9/11 war has been definitively won, the number of terror groups aligned against the United States has markedly increased, and the number of special ops battle fronts — from Afghanistan to Cameroon, Iraq to Tunisia, Yemen to Somalia, the Philippines to Niger, Libya to Syria — in this country’s forever wars has only grown.

Tactical successes have been many — battles won, territory taken, foes k**led, enemy leaders eliminated. But failures have been far greater, including ill-conceived deployment policies that neglect to link SOF missions to strategic outcomes, man-hunting being substituted for strategy, and commanders leaning on Green Berets and Navy SEALs to solve national security problems — issues that ought to be addressed by policymakers, not commandos.

In his confirmation hearing, General Miller put a spotlight on one of the most critical shortcomings of Washington’s “infinite war,” one that has afflicted every level of the U.S. establishment from the White House and the Pentagon to the special ops community: a failure of imagination. After acknowledging that the war in Afghanistan — the one he has been fighting on and off for almost two — was “generational,” the four-star general admitted what he had failed to consider 17 years before as a lieutenant colonel.

“This young guy sitting behind me,” he said, referring to his uniformed son, “I never anticipated that his cohort would be in a position to deploy as I sat there in 2001.”

http://www.salon.com/2018/08/11/a-grim-inheritance-the-legacy-of-infinite-war_partner/

debeda

Good and interesting read. Thank you for the information

buffalo Loc: Texas

I think it was super dave that chastised me for constantly posting about the US' continual, illegal, unConstitutional, immoral warmongering mostly for the protection and benefit of some giant corporations to continue to plunder another sovereign nations resources for their profits. Of course, they LIE to the US sheople that it is to spread democracy, fight terrorism or some other bulls**t.

Viet Nam accomplished nothing but to get 58,000 patriotic young men k**led and many more wounded and mangled. The war in Iraq in 15 years has accomplished nothing except getting nearly 5,000 soldiers k**l, many thousands more wounded and making a whole slew of private corporations billions all to preserve the hegemony of the petrodollar.

!7 years in Afghanistan has done the same only worse and there is NO END in site.

Look at the mess the US created in Libya all to preserve the petrodollar by letting terrorist murder Gadahfi becuse he was woking to unite the oil producing countries of Africa into trading oil only for the gold backed dinar and because he was selling oil to Russia and China.

As General Smedley Butler said in his 1935 book by the same title that War is a Racket. He was dead on.