Tuesday, July 21, 2009

WIngnut colonels, PoWs, and recurrent themes

(h/t RT)
Supporting the troops, US wingnut style (and this, from one their own!):


Wow. Let's unpack this: Retired US Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, citing unverifiable hearsay gossip has essentially disowned and advocated the murder of Private Bergdahl because by the enemy 1) the soldier a p p a r e n t l y just wandered off base and this somehow equates to desertion, 2) got his weak self captured, 3) didn't follow a Hollywood script of defiance or the standard name-rank-service number-DoB when he found himself before a Taliban camera, and 4) was probably some sort of commie pinko queer anyway. Further, I can't seem to find anything that suggests Peters has ever seen a shot fired in anger, let alone spent times in the custody of a wartime enemy. However, I'm sure his armchair must feel like Colditz some days, so he clearly knows what life is like as a prisoner.

A bit of googling finds this man is something a violence afficionado and logic pretzler:
The paradox is that our humane approach to warfare results in unnecessary bloodshed. Had we been ruthless in the use of our overwhelming power in the early days of conflict in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the ultimate human toll—on all sides—would have been far lower. In warfare of every kind, there is an immutable law: If you are unwilling to pay the butcher’s bill up front, you will pay it with compound interest in the end. Iraq was not hard; we made it so.
Hmm, I thought that whole "shock and awe" thing was about "overwhelming power"... Anyway, moving along, Peters' likes lots of violence against the enemy real quick like, got that. He even takes this thinking beyond the realm of the battlefield, and feels the military should also attack domestic media:
Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.
So I guess it is no surprise he feels, it seems through his somewhat paradoxic and twisted logic, that the enemy should be used to cull friendly soldiers who fall into their hands because these troops are too weak and/or stupid and their loss will only harden the rest of the army who must then go on to smash that same enemy with as much violence and blood as possible. Perhaps here is a good spot to introduce this juicy little morsel:
After graduating from Penn State University, he enlisted, at age 23, as a private with two flat feet, curved spine, and intermittent asthma. "The military was so desperate in 1976, that's why I got in."

I'll let the psychologists in the audience do the sums here.

Of course the lighter- than-air-colonel Peters, is being entirely consistent with the mission of what I can only assume is some form of Wingnut Internationale. I mean, if you look at the behaviour of our governing sadists up here, if you get yourself in trouble, they'll just make it worse, or if you aren't in trouble already but happen to belong to a cohort they don't like for political reasons, personal life-philosophy, or just plain old bigotry, they'll find some trouble for you.

And just so we're clear, if there is any doubt about the utter bollocks of Fox/Ralph Peters' sick, twisted, macho shitpumping, identical situations occurred in the first Gulf War with captured British and American aircrew and a completely different (ie "normal" or "sane") reaction from the media - watch the footage below:


AFTERTHOUGHT: As I mentioned at JJ's deserting in a theatre like Afghanistan sems a bit like deciding to exit an airliner in flight. The notion is absurd. However, if not deserting in a combat zone on the other side of the planet might be more of a sign of mental health or deeper contextual problems.

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