The Iraq War is ten years old today

George W. Bush is the worst President in American history.  In less lucid moments (mostly when hopped-up on allergy medicine) I would write that Barack Obama has been far far worse.  But there would have not been Barack Obama in the White House had Bush the Lesser been a competent leader.

I spent more time than I cared to during the Bush years chronicling and commenting upon that maladministration's screw-ups, and I sure don't want to spend any more time on it than I absolutely must (some readers of this blog have commented that I'm too hard on Obama, even "hateful".  Where were they during this site's first several years?!).  All I will say for now is this: in regards to the Department of Homeland Security: I told y'all so.  Way back in 2001 even, I wrote in a few places that Bush was giving us something in Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Agency that we would soon come to regret and that in time it would become a tool of harassment by our own government.  Clearly when an active-duty Marine serving in spite of losing both legs to an IED gets humiliated by TSA agents, something is very very wrong.

I also thought that launching a war in Iraq would be unwise and inconsiderate of the larger ramifications.  Saddam Hussein was a grade-A asshole, no doubt about it.  But however evil the man was, the Hussein regime did keep Iraq - a nation cobbled together from remnants of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I - from tearing itself apart through internecine strife and tribal quarrels.  We can blame many of the western leaders, including Winston Churchill,  for setting up that particular board and its inevitable consequences, but I digress...

The country that we insisted be Iraq could - and can - only function when there is a "strongman" figure to keep the ethnicities and sects within its borders from killing each other.  That is the role that Marshal Tito had in Yugoslavia and that is the role that Saddam Hussein had in Iraq.  Just as Yugoslavia imploded into civil war a decade after Tito's death, so would Iraq in the absence of Hussein or a successor just as brutal.  As it is, the United States sought - and claimed - the mantle of strongman over that distant land.

The war itself has cost $1.7 trillion and climbing.  Medical and veterans' benefits will have it costing over $6 trillion across the next forty years.  $490 billion is already owed to veterans.  More than 134,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed.  More than four thousand American service personnel have died in Iraq.

Ten years ago we were told that Saddam Hussein was harboring chemical and biological weapons.  There were none.  Ten years ago we were told that Saddam Hussein had conspired with the 9/11 terrorists.  He had not (a theological improbability, that was: Hussein's Iraq was a largely secular state fully at odds with the goal of sharia law which Al-Qaida has sought).  Ten years ago we were told that a democratic Iraq would be the wellspring from which freedom and liberty would burst across the Middle East.

It did not do that either.  Ten years later and as the much-ballyhooed Arab Spring has demonstrated, the Mid-East has far less freedom than before.  Making matters worse is that following the departure of American forces from Iraq, that land will almost certainly become a territory of Iran.  In some ways it already is.

I understand that in this fallen realm of our temporal life that war is going to happen.  It is, after all, a product of human nature: something which beyond the mercy of higher authority is a vile and loathsome thing absent of all virtue.  My friends of more pacifist leanings are blessed with a grace to turn the cheek and look away from the strife of the realm completely.  I however do not have such grace.  Indeed, I am a historian by training: I gave up that grace a long time ago.

So it is that I am not ignorant of war and its place in this world.  But neither is war something which should be entered into on the most flimsy of rationales.  There is nothing glorious or magnificent about war.  Regardless of its cause, war is always... always... a failure on the part of those involved.  War means that a person or persons or even an entire nation can not or will not be persuaded that their actions are wrong and must be made to cease.  That the cost of their failure must now be either surrender or death.

More than 134,000 non-combatants in Iraq, men and women and children, who have died since we first attacked that country ten years ago tonight.  Perhaps it is easy for some to see the numbers and not think much about them. But every one of them was created by God and precious to Him.  Whether they perished at the hands of their own country's soldiers or inadvertently on our part, they deserve better than to be swept away as "collateral damage".

If that doesn't impinge on the conscience, consider the more than four thousand families across America who have lost a loved one in Iraq.  Those men and women, as all who serve in the armed forces of the United States, took a solemn oath to protect and defend this country and her people.  They chose to surrender years of their lives - years which could have been spent in school or starting careers or getting married and having children - to the service of others.

They did so fully aware that the possibility existed that they might be called upon to enter the theaters of war.  That doing so would place their lives in peril.  And yet they volunteered.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that this kind of personal sacrifice demands a lot more respect and even sanctity from our alleged leaders.  A man or woman who puts on the uniform and swears to serve this country is expecting that their time and effort and if need be their very lives will be utilized with deepest wisdom and utmost restraint.

That has not happened in the war with Iraq, ten years old today.  Four thousand of our best and brightest have perished halfway around the world and we've nothing to show for it.  Four thousand brilliant souls, extinguished forever from the Earth.

They deserved better.  We deserve better.

I've only heard one cause for war with Iraq that has had any scrap of fact-based rationale behind it.  It was when President George W. Bush told a crowd that Saddam Hussein "tried to kill my dad."  And yes, Hussein did attempt to do so when the elder Bush visited Kuwait in 1993.  But was that enough reason to commit billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of U.S. service personnel toward removing from power?

A few months after the invasion of Iraq, Bush the Lesser told the militants in Iraq that U.S. forces would not be dislodged.  That they were welcome to try though.  George W. Bush told them to "Bring 'em on."

This is what "Bring 'em on" looks like...

Again, maybe it's just me, but a war is too horrific a thing to justify with a personal vendetta or a temper tantrum.

The Iraq War is ten years old today.  We haven't gained a thing from it.  Lord only knows if we'll have learned anything from it either...

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February 3rd, 1943: The Four Chaplains

It was cold as it gets, that early February morning on the North Atlantic. The USAT Dorchester was en route to Greenland, carrying nearly nine hundred U.S. soldiers on their way to the European theater. The Dorchester was part of a convoy of Navy and Coast Guard vessels: necessity for the grim threat of the German U-boats.

The Dorchester was struck by torpedo just before 1 in the morning. The ship began to take on water fast, and a frantic chaos ensued in the desperation to escape.

Among those aboard were four United States Army chaplains. George L. Fox was a Methodist minister. Alexander D. Goode was a Jewish rabbi. Carl V. Poling had served as a Baptist and Church of Christ minister before being ordained in the Reformed Church of America. John P. Washington was a Roman Catholic priest.

As the Dorchester descended into the frigid waters, the four chaplains - Fox, Goode, Poling, and Washington - did what they could to evacuate the men in a calm and orderly fashion. Unfortunately there were not enough life jackets immediately available.

The four chaplains each gave up his own life jacket. The four continued to help soldiers and sailors into the lifeboats. Of the 903 personnel aboard the Dorchester, 230 were rescued.

Fox, Goode, Poling, and Washington remained aboard the ship.

The last that anyone saw of the Four Chaplains, they had joined arms with each other. Those in the lifeboats heard the singing of hymns and joyous praise from the four men. In the final moments of the Dorchester those who made it off the doomed ship reported hearing prayers - in English and in Hebrew - from where the Four Chaplains stood.

Moments later, the Dorchester disappeared below the waves. The Four Chaplains went down with her.

The Four Chaplains, depicted in a stained-glass window of Memorial Chapel, United States Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

And that was seventy years ago today: February 3rd, 1943.

In 1988, this day was recognized by Congress as Four Chaplains Day. The bravery, honor, and filial love across the bounds of mere "religion" that Fox, Goode, Poling, and Washington demonstrated on the decks of the Dorchester would be remembered always. As well it should.

You can read more about the Four Chaplains, their lives and their story at The Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation website.

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Report: U.S. Navy sub crashed 'cuz navigator was listening to iPod

Awright, let's be clear about something: the navigator was not listening to his iPod while at his station. But he was in his cabin listening to his iPod when he was supposed to have been at his station. Which in some ways is indicative of plenty more that was wrong on this sub.

"iPranged a submarine" screams the The Sun in the United Kingdom (gotta love those wacky British headlines). It's now come to light that the collision between the United States Navy's nuclear submarine USS Hartford and the transport ship USS New Orleans in the Persian Gulf a year ago was caused by the Hartford's navigational officer off on his own "revising for an exam" while listening to tunes from his iPod when he should have been uhhh... navigating.

But wait, that's not all! Crewmen had also set up loudspeakers so that they could listen to music (presumably from their iPods) while on duty! Which as anyone who has even seen The Hunt for Red October (or better yet read the original novel) could tell you, is an act of insanity aboard a submarine dependent on multi-million dollar sonar arrays that can pick out opera singing from clear across the Pacific Ocean. The report also said that "sonar operators and radio men were missing from their posts. Others drove the attack sub while 'with one hand on the controls and their shoes off'". The Hartford's captain, Commander Ryan Brookhart, has now been relieved of duty after investigators cited more than 30 infractions which led to "an informal atmosphere" and "a weak command".

Anyone else hearing the Village People singing "In The Navy" after reading this story?

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Ballard: Titanic search was cover-up for U.S. Government mission

Robert Ballard has come forward with something very interesting: his successful 1985 search for the Titanic was only a cover story for a mission from the United States Government.

The deal was: Ballard would assist the U.S. Navy in examining the wreckage of two American nuclear submarines - the Thresher and the Scorpion - that were lost at sea in the Atlantic during the 1960s. At the time, there was concern that the Soviet Union might somehow find and exploit the sunken subs. The expedition was funded by the government and upon completion, Ballard would be free to continue his quest for the Titanic. All fine and dandy... except few people expected him to find the thing! Some in the Navy were alarmed that Ballard's discovery might arouse suspicion, but because of all the publicity about the Titanic itself nobody dared question the purpose of Ballard's mission.

Head over to the National Geographic website for more on the story.

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World War II sub found 65 years after disappearance

The U.S.S. Grunion, a submarine that was last heard from on July 30th, 1942, has been discovered on the floor of the Bering Sea.

From the story...

The mangled remains of a World War II submarine were found in the Bering Sea on Wednesday night, more than six decades after the U.S. Navy vessel disappeared with a crew of 70 off the Aleutian Island of Kiska.

The discovery of the USS Grunion culminates a five-year search led by the sons of its commander, Mannert Abele, and may finally shine a light on the mysterious last moments of the vessel.

"Obviously, this is a very big thing," the oldest son, Bruce Abele, said Thursday from his home in Newton, Mass. "I told my wife about it when she was still in bed and she practically went up to the ceiling."

A remotely operated vehicle snapped pictures and captured three hours of video footage of the Grunion on a rocky underwater slope north of the volcanic island, according to John Abele, who was in Kiska Harbor with the search team on Thursday.

The submarine lies 1,000 feet from the surface and had been crushed by water pressure, Abele said. He is director and co-founder of the medical equipment company Boston Scientific Corp. and the youngest of the three brothers.

"The most surprising thing was the damage," Abele said. "It was much more than we or anyone else imagined. Initially it was very hard to recognize as a ship."

The hull had imploded so severely that the interior, including bunks and a dive wheel, are clearly visible, Abele said. No human remains were found.

Click here for the search team's official website and they've just started posting some photos from their underwater cameras, too!

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