Gains in Afghanistan

David Ignatius has a column in the Post today on the positive side of the war in Afghanistan.  Most notably:

"Life expectancy has increased from 44 years to 60 in the past decade; the maternal mortality rate has declined 80 percent; the under-5 mortality rate has dropped 44 percent. The number of primary health-care facilities has increased nearly fourfold."

I'm amazed the gains can be so great in such a short time.

Suicides and Combat Deaths

According to this military suicides exceeded the number of combat deaths in Afghanistan in 2012. We don't pay much attention to either these days but apparently suicides are up and combat deaths down.  There might even be a relationship: possibly combat creates meaning which is missing when based in the states?  I don't know.

Two Word Review of Little America

Mr. Chandrasekaran has written another book, Little America, on the war in Afghanistan, particularly since Obama was elected.  His first, Emerald City, was well-reviewed.

My review is simple: "oh sh*t", repeat at least once for each chapter.

[Updated: For a more considered reaction, see this from Foreign Policy ]

What We Used to Look Like

Here's a post by James Fallows with a photo from the 1940's showing what US children used to look like, or at least what we wanted to think they looked like (i.e., WASPs).  We watched Oliver Stone's "Born on the Fourth of July" Monday and the parade in Massapequa, NY and the scenes of the high school prom reminded me of this.  (What did I think of the movie: I think it stood up pretty well over the years, though Stone has something about him, maybe a bit of romanticism, with which I'm uncomfortable.)

The U.S. has changed.

"Heroes": The Devaluation of Standards

There's a kerfuffle over some guy on MSNBC voicing reservations over calling people "heroes", thinks it encourages war..  And Mitt Romney  has a video in which he says: " “But every woman and every man who has or now defends American liberty share in their heritage of greatness. Every veteran is the greatest of his generation.”

To all of which, I say b.s.  We're now living in Lake Woebegon, where all the women are good-looking, all the children above average, and all the veterans/military are heroes and the greatest.  It's also the country where the "gentleman's C" has become everyone's B.

In fact, some served, some did not. Some did their jobs, some did not.  Some were very brave on some days, some were not.  Some received medals, some did not.  Some were Americans, some were not. Some were Germans, Japanese, Russians, Vietnamese, some were not.  Draw a Venn diagram and the sets will overlap.  All were human. Read "The Red Badge of Courage", then read Audie Murphy's memoir.

[Update: Tom Ricks provides some backup to my position here. Conor Friedersdorf has a long post on the original MSNBC program and the reaction thereto.]

War Averted?

Apparently so, according to this post. 
See after the jump.

Haunted by Vietnam? Try Algeria

When I Google "haunted by Vietnam" I get 87,000 hits. Currently it seems that Obama and the military are the ones haunted. I think though that we're mostly over the Vietnam war, except perhaps as it gets wrapped up with the cultural war and what we call the "Sixties". If I'm right maybe the U.S. is a bit more mature than the French, or maybe the Algerian war was much more traumatic for the French than Vietnam was for us.

That's the conclusion I draw from reading Dirk Beauregarde's post, keyed to the 50th anniversary of the end of the Algerian war, including interviews with relatives of Algerian soldiers serving with the French army.  Lots of trauma there, perhaps somewhat parallel to the Loyalists after the American Revolution.

A sidenote: JFK first made his national mark as a liberal and policy  thinker (as opposed to a politico who tried to be the VP candidate in 1956) by a speech on Algeria attacking French colonialism.

Another sidenote: The Battle of Algiers is highly regarded.

When Is a War Not a War

When it is the "events".  A paragraph from Dirk Beauregarde's post on the 50th anniversary of the Algerian War:

We never hear much about the Algerian war in Britan. We never seem to talk much about it in France. Even 50 years on, the war is still very much a taboo subject. Until 1999, the conflict in Algeria wasn’t even called a « war » - politicians would officially refer to the eight years of bloody conflict as « The évents ». It took a parliamentary commission and a new law for the « military opérations in Algeria » (as they were referred to at the time) to be officially qualified as a « War ». The change in terminology was not born from an act of conscience – it was all because there was no money for Algerian war vétérans and war widows – you can’t be a war vétéran or a war widow if the war wasn’t called a war. For years there was a national outcry as widow and vétérans went without pensions or compensation. So i twas on 18th October 1999 in the new Service Pensions Law that the « évents » in Algeria became officially became the « Algerian War ». Wrapping it all up in an obscure pensions act – that illustrâtes the French attitude to the War in Algeria. [Spelling corrected]

Two Good Sentences From History

With apologies for the attitudes implicit here:

War aims, like a cat held up by the tail, have a way of clawing back at those who propose them....Women and war aims must be understood before they can be handled.

Via Brad DeLong's blog, the Harvard Crimson of Nov. 10, 1941 wrote on war aims (think Atlantic Charter and the Versailles peace conference).

One can only think of the long and extensive discussion of our war aims which occurred before the second Iraq war.

It All Depends on Whose Ox Is Gored

Or James Fallows wrote a famous Washington Monthly article many years ago saying the same thing as reported in this Monkey Cage post by John Sides on scholarly research: if you were subject to the draft and going to Vietnam, there was a (slight) tendency to make you more liberal and more anti-war.

A Form for Everything

That's the motto of the bureaucrat: if something happens more than once, you need a form. 

Tom Ricks at the Best Defense passes on an example of one.

Having just watched the DVD No End in Sight (which I liked better than his more recent documentary) I'm not sure the form should be called a parody.  See for yourself.  BTW, I think "COA" is military for "course of action".

Harshaw Observes Memorial Day

As recorded in this.  (The town was named after a Union veteran who became a politician after the war, holding an office in the Wisconsin state government and running afoul of Robert LaFollette.  No known relation to me.)

Personally, I'd like to express Memorial Day wishes to those who were left behind, the mothers and wives who cooked farewell dinners especially.

Palin and Rolling Thunder

As far as I'm concerned, they deserve each other.  As I've said in the past, Rolling Thunder's claims for participation are incredible.  They've gotten a pass over the years because who could challenge veterans with a good cause?  (Although in my mind, the cause of MIA's in Vietnam was always on a par with the birthers and the truthers,) Both deal more with emotion than with truth. Both claim to be patriotic, but I try to be leary of windbags.

A Haircut and Morality: Vietnam and Daily Life

Got my hair cut today.  Two old self-proclaimed Nam vets were bloviating (I've a strong memory of sitting around the tent and talking about the old f--ts who talked big at the VFW or Legion post; we agreed we'd never do that.)  One was boasting about the number of water buffaloes "they'd" shot.

Then I read this great post at The Best Defense. Mr. Ricks has a quotation from a contributor to a book on My Lai: Evil doesn't come like Darth Vader dressed in black, hissing. Evil comes as a little bird whispering in your ear: 'Think about your career. I'm not sure what's going on. We'll muddle through for the next couple of hours. We'll get over the hill, and we'll go on. I mean, after all, I can't call people in and admit that I can't control, I can't do some other thing.' In my judgment, the evil comes from that point of view.

After hearing the vets, I might just quarrel with the quote: evil really comes as a narrower and narrower focus on the nearby, so there's no awareness of a moral issue at all.  As in, was it right to kill someone's property and means of livelihood; did it advance the idea of winning the" hearts and minds." 

Best Sentence of Mar 29

Comes from Tom Rick's The Best Defense, a pilot explaining the deficiencies of the F-22 for ground support.

"The Raptor also lacks the armor and the price tag required for fecklessly dueling Grunts who own automatic weapons and hate pilots who make more money and look better than they do."

Hybrid Generators

Technology Review has this piece on hybrid generators for the Marines. Instead of sizing a diesel generator to meet peak power demand, the idea is to use batteries capable of meeting the peak demand, recharging them by running a smaller generator when they're drawn down. My Army career ended by running 45KW diesels supporting telecommunications trailers. As I remember it, we ran them at roughly 30KW much of the time, though it varied. The new concept sounds good, though the equipment is significantly more complex, both the batteries and the charging and control software.  That may be a problem: though I was obviously a great operator, the Army didn't expect us to do much. We could start them, shut them down and change the oil and not much more.

Afghanistan

I recommend this article in the Post focused on the now deceased son of Lt. Gen. Kelly.

Rummy: Bush Was a Bad Bureaucrat

That's what I get from this Politico piece, based on a Wall Street Journal interview, arguing Donald Rumsfeld critiques Bush and his administration for being bad bureaucrats. 

True Sentence of the Day

From Yglesias: " But the fact of the matter is that it’s inherently difficult for a bunch of well-armed foreigners to obtain accurate information about what people think of the well-armed foreigner they’re talking to at the moment."

Men and Machines

Confirming what I said in a recent post about the difference in cultures::
Dana Milbank talks about Israeli security using people versus US security using machines:  their version costs about 8 times per passenger what ours does.  And the NYTimes runs a piece on the many robots being developed for our armed forces.