That's not counting veterans and it's not counting "National Guard and reserve troops who were not on active duty when they committed suicide," according to this haunting piece of reporting in today's New York Times, entitled "Baffling Rise in Suicides Plagues U.S. Military." But make no mistake: Suicides among veterans have risen too. The number of veterans who kill themselves is an unbelievable 22 per day, according to the Department of Vetern Affairs.

As for the active-duty soldiers, a "dauntingly complex web of factors" figures into the data about why they commit suicide. While "troops with multiple concussions were significantly more likely to report having suicidal thoughts" than others, "deployment and combat by themselves cannot explain the spiking suicide rates."

Pentagon data show that in recent years about half of service members who committed suicide never deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. And more than 80 percent had never been in combat.

That doesn't fit the assumptions I had about military suicides. After reading the story I texted my brother—who was an officer in the Army for three years, ending in 2011, including a tour of duty in Iraq—to get his perspective. Why would the suicide rate be so high even among guys who'd never been in combat? My brother responded:

Because regardless of what they're called or what "stage" we're in, we're still at war. Being in a war zone for 9+ months is unbelievably stressful even if you're not in combat. Not to mention, you work 15 hours a day and get 0 days off, which is tough even in a regular job for that amount of time. You have no social life, and people are social beings. You just become numb mentally and emotionally. I was for months after I came back and my deployment wasn't that bad compared to some. One of my guys killed himself a week after we got back. He seemed fine.

If you've never seen the documentary about it, The Tillman Story, you must. As Schmader wrote in a 2010 review film:

What The Tillman Story exposes are the grotesque machinations undertaken by military officials to bamboozle Tillman's family and co-opt the tragedy for their own ass-covering ends. The engines of this exposé are the surviving Tillmans themselves—Pat Tillman's mother, father, brothers, and wife, whom we see being driven to obsession by the shameless prevarications of military officials and who present a portrait of their son/brother/husband that is shockingly at odds with so much of what's come before. Rather than a heavenly patriot or ego-driven sports star, Tillman was a well-read, intellectually curious atheist who grew to openly question the U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hoped only to make it out alive. He didn't, and The Tillman Story is the closest thing America has produced to a proper tribute, offering a maddening, heartbreaking, fittingly complicated portrait of a real-life American hero and the country that failed him.

As long as we're talking about drones and how the Obama administration has deliberately misled the American public about how and when they kill people with them, I thought I'd point to a 2012 Stanford/NYU study that dismantles the myth of the "surgical" strike.

Some commenters on yesterday's post say drones are great because they're more precise and less violent than invasions, so (they seem to infer) drones reduce the overall amount of violence in the world. This is flawed thinking for a few different reasons—not least because armies using drones are more likely to engage in deadly hostility because their risk is so minimized.

Furthermore, drones are obviously becoming weapons of psychological warfare. They hover noisily above villages, sometimes 24-7, and occasionally spit missiles that often kill unintended targets, including rescue workers. That's a pretty effective, if inadvertent, terrorist recruitment tool.

From the opening paragraphs of the 2012 NYU/Standford report:

In the United States, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling “targeted killing” of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts.

This narrative is false.

Following nine months of intensive research—including two investigations in Pakistan, more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and review of thousands of pages of documentation and media reporting—this report presents evidence of the damaging and counterproductive effects of current US drone strike policies. Based on extensive interviews with Pakistanis living in the regions directly affected, as well as humanitarian and medical workers, this report provides new and firsthand testimony about the negative impacts US policies are having on the civilians living under drones.

If you're going to argue for drones, at least understand that the "surgical strike" myth is just that—a myth. And that all kinds of unintended targets do die as a result, which might inspire more anti-US sentiment and action than the drones manage to deter.

From Salon:

Investigative reports and on-the-ground testimonies have made it public knowledge that far more people than al-Qaida leaders are killed by drone strikes. The U.K.’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) estimates that in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia over 1,o00 civilians may have been killed by U.S. drone strikes. The Obama administration has long maintained, however, that strikes are only ever authorized to target “specific senior operational leaders of al-Qaida and associated forces.” Documents obtained by McClatchy newspapers suggest that these claims are false.

From McClatchy, which apparently got a boatload of leaked documents:

In a response to questions from McClatchy, the White House defended its targeting policies, pointing to previous public statements by senior administration officials that the missile strikes are aimed at al Qaida and associated forces.

… The documents also show that drone operators weren’t always certain who they were killing despite the administration’s guarantees of the accuracy of the CIA’s targeting intelligence and its assertions that civilian casualties have been “exceedingly rare.”

… At least 265 of up to 482 people who the U.S. intelligence reports estimated the CIA killed during a 12-month period ending in September 2011 were not senior al Qaida leaders but instead were “assessed” as Afghan, Pakistani and unknown extremists. Drones killed only six top al Qaida leaders in those months, according to news media accounts. Forty-three of 95 drone strikes reviewed for that period hit groups other than al Qaida,

An obliquely related quote from David Graeber's new book The Democracy Project:

In 2008, young Americans preferred Obama to John McCain by a rate of 68 percent to 30 percent—again, an approximate two-thirds margin. It seems at the very least reasonable to assume that most young Americans who cast their votes for Obama expected a little more than what they got.

As parents have been saying to their children since time immemorial—it's bad enough that you did it, but what's really bad is that you lied about it.

On the back of an SUV:

On a Capitol Hill utility pole:

Continue reading »

The nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation has released hour-long audio and a transcript of Pfc. Bradley Manning, in his own words, to the world—about his time in the military, his dismay at the kill-and-capture attitude towards entire nations of people the US was ostensibly trying to "liberate," and why he decided to work with Wikileaks.

From Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald:

The court-martial proceeding of Bradley Manning has, rather ironically, been shrouded in extreme secrecy, often exceeding even that which prevails at Guantanamo military commissions. This secrecy prompted the Center for Constitutional Rights to commence formal legal action on behalf of several journalists and activists, including myself, to compel greater transparency. One particularly oppressive rule governing the Manning trial has barred not only all video or audio recordings of the proceedings, but also any photographs being taken of Manning or even transcripts made of what is said in court. Combined with the prohibition on all press interviews with him, this extraordinary secrecy regime has meant that, in the two-and-a-half years since his arrest, the world has been prevented, literally, from hearing Manning's voice.

Huh. Sounds similar to a certain legal situation in this week's news section.

Manning seems to disclose pretty much everything, including his rocky relationship with his boyfriend in the states ("he did not seem very excited about my return from Iraq"). Manning is human. And the government informant who turned him in claimed to be a journalist and a pastor who'd promised him confidentiality.

Talk about a chilling effect.

But more to the point, Manning talks about why he did what he did—after seeing videos of soldiers merrily shooting civilians and journalists, a lack of critical thinking about why certain people were on "target lists" (which might have had more to do with domestic beefs than terrorism), and how the American people were being kept in the dark about what the US was doing in these highly publicized wars.

Manning's tone is clinical but what he describes is damning—the US military working against democracy, against the exercise of speech and political dissent, against the purported reasons our military invaded in the first place.

Continue reading »

David Frum at Daily Beast:

Only half of Americans believe the United States is "No. 1 militarily," according to the National Gallup Poll. This news comes as the sequestration cuts hit the Department of Defense, the United States continues preparations to withdraw forces from Afghanistan, and a rising China invests in its own military.

Jane's Defence Forecasts in 2012 estimated that China's defense budget would increase from $119.80 billion to $238.20 billion between 2011 and 2015. This would make it larger than the defense budgets of all other major Asian nations combined. This is still smaller than the estimated United States defense budget of $525.40 billion for 2013.

Of course Cheney supports Obama's drone program. WaPo reports...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says the Obama administration’s policy of targeting terrorists abroad with unmanned drone strikes is “a good policy,” even though he disagrees with most of President Barack Obama’s views on national security.

In an interview that aired Tuesday on “CBS This Morning,” Cheney dismissed the need for “checks and balances” against the drone program. He says Obama “is getting paid to make difficult, difficult decisions.”

The NRA is right: Barack Obama is a total fucking elitist. The fact that his kids get armed guards wherever they go while he opposes armed guards in schools for all the rest of us little, non-presidential people is just the tip of the iceberg.

*He lives in the White House. I live in a beige apartment. ELITIST!

*When he goes to Canada, a prime minister shakes his hand. But when I go, no handshake for me. ELITIST!

*If he hates a new piece of legislation, he can veto it. But I cannot. ELITIST!

*He gets to fuck Michelle Obama all the time and I get to get fuck her never! ELITIST!

Now you try!

That's the latest news in the case of Sergeant Bales, who is stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (just south of Tacoma). As you have probably heard, he is accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan:

The Army has charged that Sergeant Bales, 39, who was serving his fourth combat tour, walked away from a remote outpost in southern Afghanistan and shot and stabbed members of several families in an ambush in two villages in the early morning hours of March 11. At least nine of the people he is accused of killing were children.

Sergeant Bales has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have cited post-traumatic stress and a head injury. (Also note: four combat tours.) For the death penalty to be imposed, "the court-martial panel must unanimously find Sergeant Bales guilty" and then the death sentence must "be approved by the president to be carried out."

CNN:

Ten girls were killed in eastern Afghanistan on Monday when a landmine exploded as they were out collecting firewood — the latest casualties in one of the most mined countries in the world.

The Free Bradley Manning support network is encouraging supporters to send him letters for his birthday. The military whistleblower turns 25 on December 17. He is the reason we have all seen that "Collateral Murder" video from Iraq, of civilians being gunned down. He plans to plead guilty to releasing that video. But he's also just a kid who fucked up while trying to do good, and he has had a hell of a time in detainment. He has been "subjected to forced nudity, 24-hour camera surveillance, harassment under the guise of concern for his well-being, and months long solitary confinement, despite model behavior," as Jake Blumgart wrote in The Stranger back in August. Blumgart visited a pretrial hearing and pointed out: "Manning's case has struggled to maintain sustained public interest since day one." He added:

Whether Manning is guilty or not, whether he should be prosecuted or lauded, whether he is a whistle-blower or an indiscriminate dumper of information, it is clear that Manning's case is an example of a larger trend in American society: The powerless and economically vulnerable are held to punishingly harsh standards, while the rich and powerful get away with a slap on the wrist (if that). Steal $100 of food from the grocery store? You go to jail. Steal $10,000 from your employees through shady employment practices? Worst thing that happens is you might have to pay them back (but probably not). If an antipoverty organization is involved in a scandal, Congress cuts off its funding. But if a big bank indulges in racist lending practices to line the pockets of its executives, it gets a stipulation-free bailout.

According to Manning's lawyer, "his dream would be to go to college, go into public service, and perhaps one day, run for public office. And I asked Brad, why would he want to do that? And he said, ‘I want to make a difference. I want to make a difference in this world.'"

If you feel like writing to Manning, here is the address:

Commander, HHC USAG
Attn: PFC Bradley Manning
239 Sheridan Ave, Bldg 417
JBM-HH, VA 22211

His court martial is scheduled for March.

To clarify: I'm not saying he deserves to be free. I'm saying he sacrificed his life to sound the alarm with "Collateral Muder," and he deserves respect.

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. This is a holiday disaster. This is worse than the botched New Year's Eve fireworks show of 2008!

A Christmas tree that does not light up at night? Who is in charge here? THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS IS REAL.

CNN:

The Israeli government on Sunday said it has been hit with more than 44 million cyberattacks since it began aerial strikes on Gaza last week. Anonymous, the hacker collective, claimed responsibility for taking down some sites and leaking passwords because of what it calls Israel's "barbaric, brutal and despicable treatment" of Palestinians.
"The war is being fought on three fronts," Carmela Avner, Israel's chief information officer, said on Sunday in a press release. "The first is physical, the second is the world of social networks and the third is cyberattacks.

...A page associated with Anonymous also posted a new threat: "November 2012 will be a month to remember for the (Israel Defense Forces) and Internet security forces. Israeli Gov. this is/will turn into a cyberwar.