- BrutalistMcDonalds
- Oct 4, 2012
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Lipstick Apathy
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No, I'm reading King Leopold's Ghost right now and sometimes I have to stop because people suck sometimes.
I have a media job (writing and editing) involving military/defense/national security issues. I don't think the subject has ever made me depressed, but it's possible I haven't been doing it long enough. I've certainly been outraged by some things, and I've grown more sensitive to violence and particularly violent images.
It happened. We might as well try to sort out the hows and whys. Do you not watch tv or anything, because it's not like this stuff has EVER stopped.
In my opinion, not in the way I think you mean. On occasion I'll run across an individual event that serves as a downer, but as far as the subject as a whole, no.
Yes. Although as a military historian I like to think that writing about this stuff might make a difference in whether there's more or less of it in the future.
Well, it might be different with military historians since they do a great job of dispelling myths. James McPherson (and others, he's just an example) has helped demolish the Lost Cause, which I hope has helped America become a more inclusive place. I'm not sure it's true of journalism.
Ta-Nehisi Coates had a great post recently about post-war Europe, Tony Judt, civil rights, etc. He wrote this:
quote:Postwar is a rejection of the kind of moralizing tidiness which marked my own early education about Europe, World War II and its aftermath. Judt has the courage to look dead-eyed at ideology and all its limitations without lapsing into nostalgia or cynicism. The writer Jake Lamar once called this "ice-water vision." If I could cultivate any intellectual quality, outside of curiosity, it would be Judt's "ice-water vision." I am often asked for solutions to many of the problems I raise. Almost as often I demur. That is because I am increasingly convinced that my particular great problems don't actually have solutions, that the ultimate answer is "Game Over: You Lose" or more specifically "Race War: Whites Win. Again."
This is not an inducement to anarchy. If I am not convinced that there is a "solution," I am even less convinced that the only reason to live one's life honorably is to contribute to a "solution." I will not determine my ultimate worth by the direction of people whom I do not know. Whatever happens to my people, whom I hope rise, prosper and then promptly disappear into America, whatever happens to white supremacy, which I hope falls, perishes and then is ever etched as a warning to the world, these explorations and efforts were worth it because they were mine.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/in-a-starving-bleeding-captive-land/280723/
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Nov 14, 2013 05:19
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May 5, 2024 10:59
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- BrutalistMcDonalds
- Oct 4, 2012
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Lipstick Apathy
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Interesting article on Japanese war dogs and military propaganda:
quote:As artillery thundered on Peitaying Barracks on the night of Sept. 18, Meri, Nachi and Kongo put their skills to work.
From 11 p.m. to 4 a.m., the handlers dispatched the dogs to and from battalion headquarters carrying messages from 1st Company out in the field. Despite being outnumbered, the Japanese soldiers quickly seized the upper hand, because the Chinese soldiers were under orders not to retaliate. But under relentless artillery fire, the Chinese soldiers couldn’t help but try to protect themselves.
According to Kume, Meri was with his handler Pvt. Ueno as he joined the assault on the barracks. As Ueno’s squad closed on one of the buildings, a hand grenade exploded and Chinese soldiers leaped up, forcing the Japanese into close-quarters combat.
Shrapnel gashed Ueno’s leg. Through the pain, he desperately tried to hold onto Meri, but the dog slipped away and dashed inside the barracks. Ueno attempted to run after him but Meri vanished into the smoke and dust. Elsewhere, Kongo and Nachi had also been cut off from their handlers and were also missing.
The Chinese retreated in the morning. Peitaying Barracks was in Japanese hands, but the three dogs were nowhere to be found. Even when Itakura went out whistling for them to come back, they did not return.
Three days later the bodies of siblings Nachi and Kongo were found covered in wounds and lying in blood-stained snow. According to Kume, the pups had been forced into the snowy wastes outside. There they had made an impassioned last stand—evident from the bitten-off scraps of enemy uniforms still clenched between their teeth and the nearby mauled bodies of Chinese soldiers. quote:There were some 10,000 dogs in service with the Imperial Army as messengers, sentries, trackers and sled teams at time and, as Japan marched across Manchuria and later China, the military recognized the need to ensure a steady supply of animals. It asked the citizens of the empire to donate their pets to the military for use in Manchuria, which officials described as a “working dog’s heaven.”
How do you convince families to give up their household pets to serve on the front lines? Through propaganda—particularly aimed at children. It was in this fashion that Itakura’s story became a popular tale, one taught to children as a prime example of “acts of loyalty, bravery and martial passion,” to borrow a wartime government phrasing.
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The donation of dogs to the military was a primary source of canine recruitment, as Aaron Herald Skabelund recounts in his book Empire of Dogs. Just as parents watched their children march off to war, waving flags emblazoned with the rising sun insignia, so too were pet owners expected to sacrifice their beloved dogs for the good of nation.
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Feb 6, 2014 06:48
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- BrutalistMcDonalds
- Oct 4, 2012
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Lipstick Apathy
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I can't remember if this thread was discussing the last time a political leader led troops into battle, but there's an interesting anecdote in this piece (from today) about Nouri Al Maliki from Ali Khedery, one of the top American intermediaries in Iraq during the occupation:
quote:Prone to conspiracy theories after decades of being hunted by Hussein’s intelligence services, he was convinced that his Shiite Islamist rival Moqtada al-Sadr was seeking to undermine him. So in March 2008, Maliki hopped into his motorcade and led an Iraqi army charge against Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra. With no planning, logistics, intelligence, air cover or political support from Iraq’s other leaders, Maliki picked a fight with an Iranian-backed militia that had stymied the U.S. military since 2003.
Locked in the ambassador’s office for several hours, Crocker, Petraeus, the general’s aide and I pored over the political and military options and worked the phones with Maliki and his ministers in Basra. We feared that Maliki’s field headquarters would be overrun and he’d be killed, an Iraqi tradition for seizing power. I dialed up Iraq’s Sunni Arab, Shiite Arab and Kurdish leaders so Crocker could urge them to publicly stand behind Maliki. Petraeus ordered an admiral to Basra to lead U.S. Special Operations forces against the Mahdi Army. For days, I received calls from Maliki’s special assistant, Gatah al-Rikabi, urging American airstrikes to level entire city blocks in Basra; I had to remind him that the U.S. military is not as indiscriminate with force as Maliki’s army is.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...ry.html?hpid=z1
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Jul 4, 2014 02:46
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Nov 14, 2013 05:19
