Taibbi: 'American Sniper' too dumb to criticize

No comment here except to kind of echo Michael Moore's comment... At least in my youth we had movie war "heroes" like Stallone and Schwarzenegger who actually got their hands dirty and (sort of) risked death, as opposed to a covered sniper on a roof shooting women and children. 

Sean Hannity went nuts over this movie before it was even released, which instantly made me suspicious. I haven't seen it yet but feel like I have. 

'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize

By Matt Taibbi

January 21, 2015 | Rolling Stone

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/american-sniper-is-almost-too-dumb-to-criticize-20150121#ixzz3PWZ0AHY0

Barack W. O'Bush: 'Assad has WMD!'

I predict this will become Obama's equivalent of Dubya's "Saddam had WMD" -- if not now, then after his second term.  We'll all look back on this and acknowledge it for the lame pretext it obviously was, and Obama will go down in history for lying America into another war of choice, just like President Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam, George Bush, Sr. did in the Iraq I, and Dubya did in Iraq II.  (Some would argue President Bill Clinton also used a "fraudulent" Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia as a pretext to attack Serbia; I'm still on the fence on that one.)

Just to show how lame and half-hearted a fake-out this is, the White House is already saying that it made the decision to arm Syria's rebels weeks ago, but that finding out Assad used chemical just provided fresh justification to to arm Syria's rebels, according to the Washington Post.  Mm-hm.  Right.  

This guy Joshi is correct: if Obama doesn't want to go down in history as a lamer liar than Dubya, he has to show us the evidence that Syria's President Assad used sarin gas and other chemical weapons "on a small scale" against his own people.  It can be done without compromising U.S. intelligence sources.

The US must show evidence of Syria's use of chemical weapons

By Shashank Joshi

June 14, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3gtdv

Absurd, terrifying history of counter-insurgencies

This is a fascinating brief history (complete with embedded film clips) of the absurd and terrifying results of Western "counter-insurgency" warfare, from Algiers to Vietnam to Iraq.

Personally I was shocked to learn that Gen. David "Surge" Petraeus found his inspiration in 2006 in none other than French military expert David Galula who advised the RAND Corp. and the U.S. military how to fight the Viet Cong.  Said Galula:

"Revolutionary warfare requires a revolutionary approach on both sides in the struggle.  Whereas in ordinary war the objective is to destroy the enemy and occupy his territory, the guerrilla's aim is to control the population.

"This, therefore, must be the aim of the counter-guerrilla as well."

HOWEVER,

"One basic difference between insurgency and counterinsurgency is that the insurgent starts out with nothing but a cause and grows to strength, while counterinsurgent often starts with everything but a cause and gradually declines in strength to the point of weakness."

And we all know how well Vietnam went for the U.S.

The point is that counter-insurgency, without any real cultural understanding of the native people, in the end always resorts to indiscriminate torture and killing.  First we westerners train our local "allies" in new, aggressive guerrilla-like tactics; then our "allies" lead us, their "masters," by the nose to wreak havoc on their personal enemies and/or rival sects and tribes, until the violence becomes criminal, absurd, and seemingly indiscriminate.  We kid ourselves into thinking we can sort the good guys from the bad.

How To Kill A Rational Peasant

By Adam Curtis 

June 16, 2012 | BBC

URL:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/06/how_to_kill_a_rational_peasant.html

Spiegel: Sy Hersh on war with Iran, Iraq

'The President Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing'
Interview by Charles Hawley and David Gordon Smith
Spiegel Online International | September 28, 2007

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has consistently led the way in telling the story of what's really going on in Iraq and Iran. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke to him about America's Hitler, Bush's Vietnam, and how the US press failed the First Amendment.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was just in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Once again, he said that he is only interested in civilian nuclear power instead of atomic weapons. How much does the West really know about the nuclear program in Iran?

Seymour Hersh: A lot. And it's been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what (IAEA head Mohamed) ElBaradei and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA's best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they've been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn't enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is this just another case of exaggerating the danger in preparation for an invasion like we saw in 2002 and 2003 prior to the Iraq War?

Hersh: We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler. And now we have this guy Ahmadinejad. The reality is, he's not nearly as powerful inside the country as we like to think he is. The Revolutionary Guards have direct control over the missile program and if there is a weapons program, they would be the ones running it. Not Ahmadinejad.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Where does this feeling of urgency that the US has with Iran come from?

Hersh: Pressure from the White House. That's just their game.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What interest does the White House have in moving us to the brink with Tehran?

Hersh: You have to ask yourself what interest we had 40 years ago for going to war in Vietnam. You'd think that in this country with so many smart people, that we can't possibly do the same dumb thing again. I have this theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Even after Iraq? Aren't there strategic reasons for getting so deeply involved in the Middle East?

Hersh: Oh no. We're going to build democracy. The real thing in the mind of this president is he wants to reshape the Middle East and make it a model. He absolutely believes it. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can't have that in public life. But if it were Kissinger this time around, I'd actually be relieved because I'd know that the madness would be tied to some oil deal. But in this case, what you see is what you get. This guy believes he's doing God's work.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what are the options in Iraq?

Hersh: There are two very clear options: Option A) Get everybody out by midnight tonight. Option B) Get everybody out by midnight tomorrow. The fuel that keeps the war going is us.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot of people have been saying that the US presence there is a big part of the problem. Is anyone in the White House listening?

Hersh: No. The president is still talking about the "Surge" (eds. The "Surge" refers to President Bush's commitment of 20,000 additional troops to Iraq in the spring of 2007 in an attempt to improve security in the country.) as if it's going to unite the country. But the Surge was a con game of putting additional troops in there. We've basically Balkanized the place, building walls and walling off Sunnis from Shiites. And in Anbar Province, where there has been success, all of the Shiites are gone. They've simply split.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is that why there has been a drop in violence there?

Hersh: I think that's a much better reason than the fact that there are a couple more soldiers on the ground.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what are the lessons of the Surge?

Hersh: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he's talking about it or not. When he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties together. He's not saying that any more. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You're going to have a Kurdistan. You're going to have a Sunni area that we're going to have to support forever. And you're going to have the Shiites in the South.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the US is over four years into a war that is likely going to end in a disaster. How valid are the comparisons with Vietnam?

Hersh: The validity is that the US is fighting a guerrilla war and doesn't know the culture. But the difference is that at a certain point, because of Congressional and public opposition, the Vietnam War was no longer tenable. But these guys now don't care. They see it but they don't care.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: If the Iraq war does end up as a defeat for the US, will it leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did?

Hersh: Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is strategic. How do you repair damages with whole cultures? On the home front, though, we'll rationalize it away. Don't worry about that. Again, there's no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We'll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of course, preventing that is partially the job of the media. Have reporters been doing a better job recently than they did in the run-up to the Iraq War?

Hersh: Oh yeah. They've done a better job since. But back then, they blew it. When you have a guy like Bush who's going to move the infamous Doomsday Clock forward, and he's going to put everybody in jeopardy and he's secretive and he doesn't tell Congress anything and he's inured to what we write. In such a case, we (journalists) become more important. The First Amendment failed and the American press failed the Constitution. We were jingoistic. And that was a terrible failing. I'm asked the question all the time: What happened to my old paper, the New York Times? And I now say, they stink. They missed it. They missed the biggest story of the time and they're going to have to live with it.