The Wisdom of Soldiers
Scrapbook The Wisdom of Soldiers Among the many intelligent and forceful criticisms of the meretricious Baker-Hamilton report, The Scrapbook's favorites have been from soldiers, ranging from...
...Tribune last week and reached for our smelling salts: Holy smokes, we thought, they finally realize we're at war...
...Then we kept reading: "Spam is back—in our inboxes and on everyone's minds...
...True, they don't offer 79 recommendations, but we'll stack the wisdom of these two up against any number of Washington eminences...
...These clowns, especially Hamilton, are clueless...
...Boggs, a 24-year-old sergeant in the Army Reserves, back home from his second deployment to Iraq: "After watching the Iraq Study Group press conference today, I am a firm believer that all politicians are idiots...
...You gotta love the elitism dripping from asides like "it's different for support and maintenance staff...
...Syria's full cooperation with all investigations into political assassinations in Lebanon, especially those of Rafik Hariri and Pierre Gemayel...
...One of the main recommendations of the ISG is to send more troops to Iraq in order to train Iraqis so they can secure their own country...
...It's a shame to think that after all the blood and effort here, we're going to walk away with our tails between our legs, just so that the Dems can say 'I told you so,' and get their man/woman in the White House in '08...
...But they don't feel that we are doing a good job of that right now because training Iraqis isn't an attractive job for soldiers to do because it isn't a 'career advancing' job...
...Boggs can be found at his blog, www.boredsoldier...
...Delbanco is a graceful writer, and some of the texts he uses in his class, like Max Weber's "Politics as a Vocation" and John Keegan's The Face of Battle, deserve to be read and studied...
...Either we stay and fight, or we leave with everyone...
...blogspot.com...
...I feel like all of my efforts (30 months of deployment time) and the efforts of all my brothers in arms are all for naught...
...Somebody better alert the jihad-ists not to start sending junk emails —because if they did that, the media might finally roll up their sleeves and join the fight...
...Sure would hate to be one of these 'embedded' trainers in an Iraqi unit when the support of U.S...
...Saw the Iraq Group's recommendations...
...We lose Marines everyday...
...To completely change a country for the first time in its entire history takes time, and when I say time I don't mean four years...
...Curiously, the issue features on its cover . . . a full-length exclusive Newsweek photo portrait of Baker and his Iraq Study Group co-chairman, former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, to whom, Thomas writes, Baker is "very deferential," for example refusing "to be photographed" without Hamilton present...
...The brainpower of the ISG has come up with a new direction for our country and that includes negotiating with countries whose people chant 'Death to America' and whose leaders deny the Holocaust and call for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth...
...I see only a small slice of the war, but for my money, more troops is the answer...
...This step would do much to solve Israel's problem with Hezbollah...
...Then there were these thoughts emailed to a friend from an active-duty Marine lieutenant colonel now serving in Iraq: "From what I see here in Iraq, the rats are abandoning a sinking ship...
...As someone who trained Iraqis from time to time I take personal offense to this remark...
...Bad Guys Are Winning" We saw the above headline in the International Herald...
...Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 2006, which provides the framework for Lebanon to regain sovereign control over its territory...
...Syria's use of its influence with Hamas and Hezbollah for the release of the captured Israeli Defense Force soldiers...
...forces leave...
...I thought old people were supposed to be more patient than a 24-year-old, but apparently I have more patience for our victory to unfold in Iraq than 99.9 percent of Americans...
...Talking doesn't solve anything with a crazed people, bullets do, and we need to be given a chance to work our military magic...
...And as recently as May 2005, Columbia's Senate (an advisory panel of faculty and students) voted 53-10 to keep Morningside Heights pristinely military free...
...Still, though, Delbanco is right...
...Oh...
...First, listen to T.F...
...Not only are the findings of the ISG a joke but the people who led the group (Baker and Hamilton) treat soldiers like they are a joke...
...A verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah and the use of Syrian territory for transshipment of Iranian weapons and aid to Hezbollah...
...In my experience soldiers clamored for the chance to train Iraqis...
...The academy is isolated from war and the warrior culture...
...This and more from Sgt...
...Columbia banned the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) from its campus in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam war...
...Invisible James Baker "likes to be the man behind the scenes," writes Evan Thomas in the December 11 issue of Newsweek...
...Okay well not all of them but they all have a problem understanding reality...
...Rummy has cut/run, and us slobs out here are on our own...
...Scrapbook The Wisdom of Soldiers Among the many intelligent and forceful criticisms of the meretricious Baker-Hamilton report, The Scrapbook's favorites have been from soldiers, ranging from lieutenant colonels to sergeants (The Scrapbook, a former private first class, has a soft spot for sergeants...
...Baker and Hamilton want us to get terrorist-supporting countries involved in fighting terrorism...
...Iraq isn't fast food—you can't have what you want and have it now...
...All conducted under the watchful eyes of unicorns, of course," concluded Lileks...
...The Iraq Study Group's findings or rather, recommendations are a joke and could have only come from a group of old people who have been stuck in Washington for too long...
...But here's the thing: Delbanco never mentions in his essay that in Columbia's case (as with many other elite universities) there is a simpler explanation than social class for the situation he laments...
...But what struck us about Delbanco's essay was his complaint that most of the students and professors at Columbia, and at our elite universities in general, are insulated from the realities of war: "For the vast majority of students and faculty in places like Columbia— it's different for support and maintenance staff, who are more likely to have friends or family in the line of fire— war is an utter abstraction rather than an imaginable fact...
...Like I told a reporter buddy of mine: War sucks but a world run by Islamofascists sucks more...
...Last Word on Baker-Hamilton Among other things called for by the Iraq Study Group, noted columnist James Lileks last week, was this list of desiderata: • Syria's full adherence to U.N...
...If I am the only one who finds something wrong with that, then please let me know because right now I feel like I am the only person who feels this way...
...It sucks...
...But we're kicking the sh— out of the Muj when it comes to combat...
...A verifiable cessation of Syrian efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Lebanon...
...They don't have a chance if they stand and fight...
...Utter Abstractions at Columbia The December 11 issue of the New Republic contains an essay by Andrew Delbanco, a professor at Columbia University and biographer of Herman Melville, on a recent course he taught on "war...
...IED's are their only real hope...
...Can you say POW...
Vol. 12 • December 2006 • No. 14
