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Max Boot Thinks Correcting An Obvious Error is Heroism
Max Boot is lauding U.S. Marines in Helmand province, Afghanistan:
It is impossible to offer enough praise or admiration for the grueling, dangerous patrols that these leathernecks are undertaking day in, day out. The Greatest Generation had nothing on them in terms of heroism — especially when one considers that all the Marines in Sangin are volunteers.
One problem with such over the top idolization is that the situation Boot refers to would not have happened if the Marines had not screwed up in the first place.
The NYT piece Boot references says:
Hemmed in at nearby Forward Operating Base Jackson at the beginning of their tour, the Marines of Company I fought fierce, almost daily battles through the months of October and November.
On Dec. 6, they fought their way up Route 611, blowing up scores of I.E.D.’s along the way and taking over an abandoned and booby-trapped British Army base, Patrol Base Bariolai, on a barren hilltop here.
The Marines are now reoccupying a patrol base which the British had used before. But why was the British base abandoned in the first place? That happened last year when the Marines took over in Helmand from the Brits:
[O]ne of the first things the Marines did when they took over Sangin was close roughly half the 22 patrol bases the British set up throughout the district — a clear rejection of the main pillar of Britain’s strategy, which was based on neighborhood policing tactics used in Northern Ireland.
The bases were meant to improve security in Sangin, but the British ended up allocating a large percentage of their soldiers to protect them from being overrun by the Taliban. That gave the insurgents almost total freedom of movement in the district.
“The fact that a lot of those patrol bases were closed down frees up maneuver forces so that you can go out and take the fight to the enemy,” Morris said during an interview at the battalion’s main base in the district center, Forward Operating Base Jackson.
At that time the British were not amused:
"We were all pretty pissed off when we heard," says a British veteran. "To say that we had no success is both ignorant and short-sighted. We were there for four years and we'd already tried what they are now trying, which is obviously not working judging by the casualties."
Just as US commanders questioned the effectiveness of British tactics in Sangin, so British soldiers have begun to challenge the wisdom of closing down the patrol bases they spilt blood to keep.
The bases were designed to protect Sangin's bazaar from Taliban attack and encourage economic development in the town. British officers believe the closures will allow the Taliban to move through the district undetected.
And that is indeed what happened. So the Marines screwed up by abandoning the British bases in the first place and they are now fighting to reoccupy them for just the same purpose the British used them for. From the NYT piece:
They sleep in the frigid cold and go weeks without showers, but they are keeping the nearby Taliban on the defensive.
The Marines can now patrol throughout the surrounding village every day, Sergeant Beckett said. And he has been encouraged by the increasing trust that local villagers are showing, sometimes offering the Marines information that has tipped them off to I.E.D.’s or potential ambushes.
This screwing up by not taking seriously lessons an ally learned has cost the live of Afghans and of Marines. The Marines are now correcting their own error and are losing more lives over it. These Marines ain't the "Greatest Generation, in Afghanistan" as Max Boot headlines. They are arrogant idiots.
Here we go again, peeps allowing distractions based on the logical fallacy of: “conspiracy theory A which is denied by the institutions of the status quo, has been proven to be correct, ergo conspiracy theories b thru z must also be on the money” – to move attention away from the point which in this case is Seymour Hersh, a man whose journalism has got it completely right sometimes and wrong once or twice.
Ya see -most importantly Hersh retains credibility with some of those in positions of influence who haven’t been 100% suborned and he made a speech designed to alert those peeps to a reality many have been trying really hard to avoid. That is, that oblamblam is not a victim; he is not some honest black fellow whose best effort to make things better for amerikans has been foiled by the meanies in power. Rather that oblamblam is a paid-up, fully cognisant member of the “lets follow the amerikan dream by shitting on the weak to make myself strong”, crowd. His only interest in Africa is to screw as much of Africans resources outta the hands of Africans, and into the hands of amerikan engendered corporate capitalists, before they (the Africans) work out what is happening. In other words exactly the same as how oblamblam views everyone – including his “fellow amerikans”.
This message (the truth about oblamblam) isn’t news to most that drink at this bar, but it is to many amerikans, in particular the so-called left who have been assiduously attempting to avoid thinking such evil thoughts, by telling anyone who will listen, especially themselves, that thinking such unkind thoughts about oblamblam is racist.
Like Uncle I can remember some pronouncements by Hersh (Last one I think may have been about Iran but my memory doesn’t serve well on this) which appeared to be supportive of some imperial project, both in content and in timing. I’m not gonna debate that here and now, even if I can remember them because imo to do so would be to miss the point. Opponents of the empire don’t have a whole helluva a lot of tools at their disposal starting the second decade of the 21st century, so we should grab the ones that do become available, for at least as long as the tool is useful.
The assholes in charge have no compunction about using humanist loathing of racism against humanists, so we need to smarten our act up in situations where we can do so without compromising larger principles. If we don’t we may as well go back to grafittying the walls in our unlit cellars, because that will be about how much notice our efforts are likely to generate.
Instead of kicking Seymour and only then kicking bbbrrraaaack oblamblam, we should be using the text of the original Hersh speech to bring the pseudo-left onside.
There are any number of reasons why oblamblam losing in ’12 would be a better long term outcome for humanity & without going into the ins & outs of that, those who do accept that contention need to be working other humans now and not waiting till june ’12.
From some comments on the link we can see the bullshit the dem hacks intend to float next year.
The first is titled Sounds believable to me and rounds off a watering down of Hersh’s contention that the empire’s soldiers are evangelical xtians with the following cop out:
I would also say that Obama is unwilling to change Bush policies because he doesn’t want to pick a fight with the security establishment, but that’s just my suspicion.”
The next is prolly closer to the fantasies the party line intends using to deceive the majority of voters, that is the ‘short on facts so will accept anything that makes it sound as though they, i.e. amerika and by extension themselves, are the most decent peeps in the whole wide world crowd’, just by replacing rational thought with emotional tugs at the sensibilities with the following fantastic piece of demagoguery titled:
gobsmack credit due to Obama:
less than 2 years after the inauguration of President Obama , we see a very different Arab street, one where unarmed civilians, led by young people, ousted their autocratic leader of 23 years; an Arab street where I spotted a sign that said, in English YES WE CAN on one side, along w twitter # and on the other, in Arabic, thanks to al Jazeera for coverage of events. If that’s not change, what is?
/gobsmack.
(N.B. Anyone who may feel Obama policies/ strategies/ principles had anything at all to do with the success of stage 1 of the “strategy to liberate Tunisia” is advised to read ESAM AL-AMIN’s excellent piece The Fall of the West’s Little Dictator in today’s Counterpunch.)
I have no doubt that oblamblam and his employers/friends/confidantes, – the creepiest men in amerika, will take delight in deceiving their supporters with BS such as “oblamblam is the lone voice”. That Oblamblam is committed to secretly liberating Africa from those mean old dictators who got in power because of the endemic corruption and tribalism of African politics, which ‘decent’ amerikans are busy trying remedy. That any suggestion Ben Ali was an amerikan intelligence asset long before NATO put him into power, is frankly outrageous.
Anything Seymour Hersh says or writes that may help counter this outrageous meme should be grabbed with both hands, despite any reservations anyone feels about the author/speaker; simply because there just aren’t many people prepared to say this who the fuckwits still listen to.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 21 2011 1:09 utc | 22
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