Mission Impossible

 --The bloom's off the rose 

 His stop-loss odyssey 
went Kabul, morphine, 
   Ramstein, Stateside, 
and back—round-robin   
desert wrestling,
tag out, tag in 
--Welcome Home, Troops! 
 Amit Majmudar

 Cause I gonna make you see 
There's nobody else here 
No one like me
 I'm special, so special
--Brass in Pocket,
The Pretenders

One step forward and two steps back
 Nobody gets too far like that
 One step forward and two steps back 
This kind of dance can never last 
--One Step Forward, 
The Desert Rose Band    
___________________

Let us do a check-in on the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) at lucky year 13, as President Obama sends more advisers to Syria in what looks very much like JFK's adviser gambit in the early years of the Vietnam War, the poster child counterinsurgency (COIN) failure.

First, a review: After the initial conventional invasion stage, the PWOT© became a COIN war, for lack of a better term. General Petraeus and his post-Vietnam thesis guided our participation, as if this time, we would really nation-build and win hearts and minds.

Hearts and minds, as if Vietnam could be redeemed and made into something of worth. COIN theory redux would modernize Galula, make what they tried to bury count, make it relevant for a new day.

But then the New COIN started looking like its own danse macbre. We forgot that it wasn't a war, and we were fighting the very people we came to democratize. COIN  really isn't a very good way for the U.S. to win a war, or to help a people.

You cannot both fight people and nation build concurrently. Probably, we still do not realize that it is possible to nation build and to fight insurgents, but the process must occur consecutively. It is impossible to fight, kill and destroy while also attempting to build; the concepts are mutually exclusive.

The luster fell away from the erstwhile Golden Boy, General Petraeus, and his vaunted COIN theory has been folded and put back under the trundle bed, like an old Mission Impossible VHS tape. So where does that leave hearts and minds and nation building, as the United States trudges on in the quagmire that is the Not-Arab Spring?

The mask of nation-building has fallen away, as the U.S. realizes that was merely pretense for our frenzied occupation of places in which the U.S. had no legitimate reason to be. "Asymmetrical warfare" has also died a protracted death on the trash heap of a failed policy.

The U.S. is currently yoked to a slug-fest that makes less sense than did the tarted-up, new-and-improved COIN of once-wonder boy, Vietnam vet-manque, Mr. Petraeus.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Ethics for Dummies

eth·ics[eth-iks], plural noun 

1.a system of moral principles: the ethics of a culture. 

2. the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a 
particular class of human actions or a particular group, 
culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics. 

3.moral principles, as of an individual

    
4.That branch of philosophy dealing with values 
relating to human conduct, with respect to the
 rightness and wrongness of certain actions    
and to the goodness and badness 
of the motives and ends of such actions 
--Dictionary.com
__________________

Doing mop up after General Petraeus got busted last year for putting his John Thomas somewhere he oughtn't have (being the Good Calvinists that we, in the United States, are), Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called for an ethics training review by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for General Officers.

Doesn't it appear a teeny wienie bit too late to wait until a person reaches General Officer rank before they get ethics training?  I mean, once wee willie is out of the barn, what is the use in shutting the fly trap door?

It also seems somewhat hypocritical that a former Central Intelligence Agency Chief espouses this ethics review when his agency oversaw illegal renditions, secret prions and torture, none of which fall under the rubric "ethical". Further, why not ethics training for civilian Department of Defense appointees, to include their shill well-paid loyal attorneys?

How about ethics training for our political leaders and the folks over at State Department and Homeland Security (DHS)?  What about the Department of Justice (DoJ)?  The National Security Counsel (NSC) and the National Security Agency (NSA)?  Treasury Department?

Who cares about ethics today?  Who questioned the legality of elective and aggressive preemptive invasions, and the ethics of Long Wars?  What has happened to the people who have questioned the incarceration and detainment of people snatched up during these illegal, protracted aggressions? Hint:  They did not get the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Marital infidelity ain't good, but it may pale next to transgressions of the murderous sort.  Message: No fuck whores, but fucking nations is o.k.  This belated consideration of ethics -- the latest installation of ass-covering as an art-form -- indicts our entire structure of education and military training, including our conception of liberal thought and what constitutes humanistic behavior.

We need more than a remediation course on ethics.

Men and Their Bitches

I've waited so long for school to be through
Paula, I can't wait no more for you
My love, my love 
--Hey, Hey Paula, Paul and Paula

Now your vict'ry is complete
And your battles are all won.
Your enemies and foes are all stacked up in rows,
Eliminated one by one 
--Mr. Big Man, The Kinks 

You hiss and groan and you constantly moan
But you don't ever go away
That's because
All you need is me 
--All You Need Is Me, Morrissey 

___________________

It is said that people often choose their dogs based upon their likeness in appearance and personality.  Perhaps this egotism manifests in many life choices.

A trifle, but mentioning Tarantino's "Kill Bill" in the previous piece (Totenkopf) brought to mind the complete egoism of its director, Tarantino, in the selection of his muse, Uma Thurman.  Note the shared wide-set eyes, brow ridge, nose, lips ... Though Thurman is a better-looking woman than he is a man, it would take little digital manipulation to morph Tarantino into her.

Tarantino, successful B-movie aficionado, has done as much as any director to socialize us to bloody gore-fests and we pay handsomely for the onslaught, but all in good fun as it's only pulp fiction dontcha know?  And we are all well-balanced adults feeding on that dross, right?  Kind of like living on Pepsi and Doritos won't harm your body, a mental diet of dreck will not affect your brain, eh?

And then thoughts of the ill-fated lovers General David Petraeus and Paul Broadwell came to mind, because of the same general facial symmetry and probable self-love -- note the forehead, skin tone, eyes, pecs, deltoids ... Sans Paula's liberal dosing of the pancake and 20 years off Mr. Petraeus, you have forbidden brother-sister love. But you be the judge: