Canon Cockers

 The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule 
--H.L. Mencken 

Shut up! Shut up you American. You always talk,
you Americans, you talk and you talk and say 
"Let me tell you something" and "I just wanna say this." 
Well you're dead now, so shut up 
--The Meaning of Life (the Grim Reaper), 
Monty Python (1983)
 _______________________

An important yet unspoken implication of the call for General Staff ethics training ("Ethics for Dummies") is this: Where is the ethics training for our Soldiers-cum-Warriors?  We don't talk about it, because warriors do not have ethics.

How can you have a cadre of hopefully ethical officers leading a group of killing warriors?  Answer: You can't; to imagine such a contradiction as effective is a joke.  The FOX news - Black Five contingent says, "Ranger stop spouting your high-falutin' sophistries," but Ranger is correct -- a democracy does not stand in name or reality if it adopts the Warrior Way in battle.

Warriors will do anything to win, versus Soldiers who are constrained in their activities by civilized norms recognized by our canon of common law.  You cannot expect ethical behavior from warriors, but you can from Soldiers.  Conforming to a body of ethics is the thing that allows Soldiers to return and enjoy a hopefully successful reintegration into their society. A warrior is condemned to living forever on the fringes.  While we may love our Kurosawa films, the actual life of a Samurai is not something most of us would relish.

Everyone calls our Soldiers "Warriors" today, but are loathe to consider the consequences of an actual transformation into warriorhood. Consider the Kandahar Massacre, in which Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales soldier methodically killed sixteen Afghan civilians and injured five others in Afghanistan 11 March 2012 on his own, in two separate actions (SSG Bales is currently being held at the Ft. Leavenworth correctional facility.)  SSG, Bales's actions were those of a warrior -- brutal, fierce, unforgiving, relentless, cruel ... lacking in humanity and devoid of adherence to any martial code.

SSG Bales behaved like the warrior he was, and we did not like it.  We may impose much onto our fighting men, but there are certain divide which we cannot brook because we know at heart that we are them -- we are both SSG Bales, and the villagers whom he slaughtered. 

We are aroused by the biblical story of Joshua fighting the Battle of Jericho, but we do not see ourselves as people who wreak such outright destruction.  We are people who, inasmuch as is possible, respect the elderly and the young; we respect that people wish to live a life, and work hard to cobble together a living best they can.  Their leaders may initiate wars and the people suffer and we understand all of this, and so endeavor to mitigate "collateral damage".  However, warriors do not take such considerations to heart. 

Flying planes into the Twin Towers is warrior behavior.  It is indiscriminate, violent and abides by no social norms.  It is doubly frightening both in its outright destruction and its disobedience of rules of civilized behavior.  We do not wish to be such warriors.  Moreover, we cannot fight that impulse if we ourselves display and abide by the same imperative.

Leon Panetta, who does not understand what it is to be a Soldier, cannot codify a body of ethics for Soldiers or for their leaders. 

Maybe the call to ethics training is a wake up call to return to Soldierly Values. 

Warriors Collect Booty

--Rape of the Sabine Women,
Peter Paul Rubens

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more! Yo!
--Fortunate Son,
Creedence Clearwater Revival

She poppin' she rollin', she rollin'
She climbin' that pole and
She trippin' she playin', she playin'
I'm not goin' nowhere girl, I'm stayin'
--I'm N Luv Wid a Stripper,
T Pain

You can't leave,
'cause your heart is there
But you can't stay,
'cause you been somewhere else!
--Family Affair,
Sly and the Family Stone
______________

The WPPA (West Point Protection Association) comes through again, rescuing Colonel James Johnson from the exploits of his johnson.

Colonel James H. Johnson III, former commander of the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, has pled guilty to 15 charges, including bigamy, adultery and fraud, stemming from an extramarital affair with an Iraqi woman Johnson met while on deployment in 2005. For this he has been slapped smartly on the wrist with a $300,000 fine by a court martial presided over by five Colonels:

"He had faced possible decades in prison and dismissal from the Army as a maximum sentence. The panel of five colonels who presided over the court-martial . . . did not explain their decision"(Colonel found guilty of fraud, fined $300K).

He might have faced 54 years, a dismissal from the service, total forfeiture of pay and allowances and a fine . . . but we are talking a West Point graduate with a pedigree, here. Was Col. Johnson a war-fighter, a nation-builder, or a politico-military hybrid? Since hearts and minds were the mantra of the wars, can we really blame the Colonel for taking it to heart, and trying to nail a little Iraqi heart and mind for himself?

Why do we hold soldiers to a higher code of sexual conduct than that which apply to our political leaders? An officer is sworn to be a gentlemen, but what constitutes that designator? Does a gentlemen do the dirty work of using his body to invade and fuck nations, but may not use that same body to fuck another person? What about a warrior? Can a warrior be a gentleman, too, and can it be concurrent with his term of service?

Interesting that these same charges were leveled at the man currently being vetted for the ambassadorship of Iraq and few raise an eye. Brett McGurk committed adultery with Wall Street Journal reporter Gina Chon while posted in Iraq during George W. Bush's second term, with Chon trading sex for access to classified materials from McGurk. Yet McGurk is considered appropriate high-level State Department material, while Johnson's career has ended.

Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2012/06/14/2060411/us-army-col-found-guilty-of-fraud.html#storylink=cpRanger suggests double standards, and more importantly, a misunderstanding of a KEY TERM: Warrior. Warriors have a different ethos than do soldiers: They are NOT gentlemen; they DO collect booty. Warriors have historically taken concubines while on campaign. Warriors interbreed with captured females. They have always declared privileges denied the common man.

If we are truly warriors then let our warriors have concubines (or, "forest wives" -- "dessert wives" (?) -- as the Bielsky partisans took); such is the privilege of the warrior. If we are warriors, we must accept behavior that goes beyond the boundaries of soldierly conduct. Yes, bigamy and adultery are the accepted charges, and they are illegal behaviors in the U.S. -- but maybe warriors should get a pass?


Johnson is also charged with paying tens of thousands of dollars of contracts to his mistress's father for things that "were neither produced nor received." The panel also found him guilty of giving the family an Army cell phone on which they ran up more than $80,000 in charges. But all of these things are stuff that warriors do: They knock a little off the tops for themselves and their nearest and dearest, including their New Best Friends and her family.

It is more than a bit galling for Ranger to find himself effectively arguing for Johnson's behavior; clearly, his privilege of having a proxy marriage in Montana and house plans for his new honey is beyond the grasp of most ordinary fighting men. But he is using it to bring the question of warriorhood vs. soldiering to the fore.

Is warriorhood the devolution of soldiering? Until we decide the answers, it is best to keep our dicks under strict control.

After reasoning this out, a part of Ranger now secretly wishes he had been a "warrior", too (if we decide there will be no repercussions, that is.)

Are You a Warrior, Too?

--Unstable Yellow Pigs,
Olaf Breuning

All life is a blur of Republicans and meat!
--Zippy the Pinhead

I am a sick man . . .
I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man.
I think there is something wrong with my liver
--Notes from the Underground,
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets.
The wars of peoples will be more terrible
than the wars of kings
--Winston Churchill

Fuck my shit.
That's what war adds up to
--Ernie Pyle
_________________

Warriorhood has been establishing itself in our pleasant democracy lately, both in military and entertainment circles.

Michael Hastings writes in his recent book "The Operators", General McChrystal "appeared to represent a new kind of military elite, a member of a warrior class that had lost touch with the civilian world" (and vice versa, p. 74). Yet less than a lifetime ago, keen Infantry observer Ernie Pyle wrote, "They were really the hunters, but they looked like the hunted. They weren't warriors. They were American boys who by mere chance of fate had wound up with guns in their hands, sneaking up a death-laden street in a strange and shattered city in a faraway country in a driving rain. They were afraid but it was beyond their power to quit. They had no choice."

Archaeology Magazine ("The Gladiator Diet,"April 2012) mentions that gladiators were called "warriors", though they had no war-fighting functions. (Though often captured warriors, their actions were now constricted by the rink for entertainment purposes alone.) Gladiators fought for no higher good than to do the bidding of their masters and to amuse the crowds. Their deaths were gore fests, with tools of brutality often exclusive to the fighting ring. Among various gladiatorial weapons used only in the arena was the trident -- now a symbol on the elite Navy SEALs badge.

Have we morphed our soldiers into warriors because we see them as providing us gladiatorial entertainment? How do we benefit as a society by calling our soldiers "warriors"?

Does this indicated a regression to a more primitive state?

_______________

And a Monday poem:

Ready to Kill

by Carl Sandburg

TEN minutes now I have been looking at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver
on him.

I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be
hauled away to the scrap yard.

I put it straight to you,

After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory
hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,

When they stack a few silhouettes
Against the sky
Here in the park,
And show the real huskies that are doing the work of
the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them,

Then maybe I will stand here
And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag
in the air,
And riding like hell on horseback
Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men
all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.

Overkill

--Fit for Active Service (1916-17),
George Grosz

Why are the Americans sending
mentally unfit people to war?
--Taliban press release

--They say that I am the lord of war,
but perhaps it is you.
--I believe it's "warlord."
-- Thank you, but I prefer it my way.
--Lord of War (2005)

For days and nights they battled
the Bantu to their knees
They killed to earn their living
and to help out the Congolese
--Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,
Warren Zevon
___________________

The most common propaganda statement from the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) is that our soldiers are fighting for our freedoms. These freedoms presumably include the right of free press and the knowledge of what our troops are doing or not doing, in a general and non-sabotaging way.

After an extraordinary six-day blackout of public information by the Pentagon, Reuters and Fox News reported the name of the soldier who killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan, SSG Robert Bales.

After SSG Bales's identity was revealed on 16 March, various news outlets have tried to fill in the blanks regarding what happened. From Small Town Ohio to Afghanistan (18 Mar 12) was a good personal interest story on SSG Bales from the New York Times; Voice of America did another profile HERE and Army Times reports today that Bales's attorney says his client, now being held in Ft. Leavenworth, recalls little of shooting spree.

Bales had been diagnosed with "mild" Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and possible Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by Joint Base Lewis-McChord, "The most troubled base in the U.S. military" according to Stars and Stripes magazine. But Lewis-McChord has been accused in the past of downgrading and dismissing probable PTSD diagnoses in order to facilitate troops return to active duty. The Times also reports that during his deployments, Bales lost part of a foot

SSG Bales, 38, had been injured twice in combat over the course of four deployments, three in Iraq and the latest in the dangerous Panjwai district of Kandahar Province, long a hotbed of Taliban activity. The NYT reports the day before his killing rampage, Bales saw his buddy's leg blown off by a buried land mine. Bales' lawyer, John Henry Browne, said Bales considered his current posting “'grueling,' noting that the soldiers lived in metal cargo containers."

If SSG Bales had TBI, then why was he redeployed and carrying a combat MOS with rifle attached? Are we so desperate for deployable bodies that we send people into combat with psychological problems? More than the events of the early morning of 11 Mar, Ranger questions the chain or command that would send wounded personnel back into the breach, and that without proper oversight.

At the lowest level of leadership Ranger has always stressed the "buddy system" in which every soldier has a habitual partner with whom to team up. This might have prevented a scenario such as that of SSG Bales, but it presumes that the "buddies" are sane and sound, as well. The recent Marine pissing episode and the SS banner insignia suggest a negative leadership versus a negligent leadership environment.

A core question: Why are non-elite units tasked to provide support to Special Operations Forces (SOF)? Since the advent of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and their $6 Billion unclassified budget that also funds gray and black operations, this is a serious concern.

The entire purpose of JSOC/SOCOM is to create a separate command structure for shooters and support, so why are guys like SSG Bales thrown into the mix? This problem far outstrips the actions of Bales alone.

Why was the shooter not spotted before he committed his alleged activities? The Army is a culture of violence that is restrained only with soldierly values developed over the last 500 years, values which include a respect for life. The rules of war respect these strictures and guide soldiers both in their individual and institutional lives.

However, in recent years these soldierly values have been subsumed and subverted by a lizard-brained warrior concept anchored in behaviors of distant pasts. When we institutionally convert our soldiers into warriors, why are surprised when they act as such? Massacring 16 people was a warrior event, yet we hypocritically act surprised when it happens.

The military and a collusive press and citizenry can assume responsibility for SSG Bales's murders, since "going tribal" is what warriors do.

If our soldiers are warriors than our President is a warlord, and he should rescind his Nobel Peace Prize. (The arch Republicans should enjoy the analogizing of Obama to people like Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, whom the war crimes court at The Hague recently found found guilty of using child soldiers, a charge not too far off the mark.) Warrior kings do not wear peace medallions.

Everybody in the chain of command, from the President to the FNG (fucking new guy) to the PFC (Private First Class) is a part of this travesty.

Warriorhood is a losing concept unless one is a fascist or national socialist; the term did not work very well for them, anyway. Maybe we have adopted the term warrior as a kind of overkill, cover-up label, since the since the PWOT © is not aimed at military threats, after all.

Just call me an old soldier, since I never was and never would answer to the term, warrior.

Guys Gone Wild!

Look me in the eye, GI,
and tell me you're not tired
I'm tired to death sir,
I'm tired till it hurts
This s.... couldn't get much worse
--Starship Troopers (redux),
The Herd

Come on. Spring Break.
Spring Break!
--Girls Gone Wild (2005)

The compassionate warrior will be the winner,
and if compassion is your defense you
will be secure
--Tao Te Ching, Verse 67
_____________________

The day would never come that Ranger would call himself a warrior, so the current "warrior" fervor rankles. I have more self-respect than that. My soldiering days had a dignity beyond the violence.

The trial of Lance Corporal Harry Lew is making its way through the legal system with as little fanfare as possible. Lew committed suicide after alleged hazing by his fellow Marines:

The prosecution claims Lance Cpl. Carlos Orozco III put his foot on the back of Lance Cpl. Harry Lew, 21, ordered him to do push- ups, and poured sand into Lew’s face. Orozco has been charged with assault, humiliating Lew, and cruelty and maltreatment. A lance corporal pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to 30 days in jail and demoted to private first class; Sgt. Benjamin Johns was acquitted by a court- martial jury (USA Today).

Imagine a Lance Cpl. ordering another to perform pushups. Strange in itself since this was at unit level and not a training scenario. Is this how warriors treat their own? Is the loss of a stripe and 30 days in jail correct punishment for this behavior? The Sergeant involved was acquitted; where were the officers?

In the other loo case, the Marines who urinated on recently killed bodies demonstrated the desire to inflict extreme humiliation, but they have not been indicted because boys (=warriors) will be boys. When we revel in treating others this way, we have lost our basic goodness.

Warriorhood allows for this desensitization. Ranger understands Marines are not following Emily Post, but the recent violations getting press are opposed to the collegiality shared by older veterans.

The U. S. Marine Corps history in World War II is that of fighting on brutal, isolated Pacific battlefields. Today, we are not fighting on constricted battlefields or aboard ships; the days of fighting slug-fests on remote rocky outcroppings are gone.

Men like those Marines, or like my father who fought on discrete battlefields (aboard ships), were only fighting enemy soldiers intent on killing them. This is just and fair for both sides. But bombing a ridge line on Iwo is different from destroying Fallujah, or any other target in-theatre today. We no longer have isolated battlefields. Because of this, today's military efforts require more humanity, not less.

As unimaginably horrible as their fighting was, even on Okinawa the Marines attempted to save civilians intent upon suicide. Their humanity was intact; that is what is in danger in today's warrior world.

For the men who returned from those constricted battlefields, fighting had a certain clarity (if not always sense). Today's warrior mindset does not allow for the discrimination needed when dealing in a more ambiguous terrain.

WWW, or World Wide Warriors

--fr. Maus, A Survivor's Tale,
Art Spiegelman

And anything that happened
to me afterwards,
I never felt the same about again
--Guests of the Nation,
Frank O'Connor

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love
--An Irish Airman Forsees His Death,
W. B. Yeats

Save my soul from evil, Lord
And heal this soldier's heart
--I'm Done with Bonaparte,
Mark Knopfler
__________________

We as a society have crossed a frontier fraught with tanglefoot and minefields aplenty when we are comfortable with the concept of Long Wars and being called a "warrior" nation.

Soldiers -- even Reserve Forces -- have morphed into warriors, while the concept of the citizen soldier has been relegated to the dung heap of history, or so it seems. The acceptance of hatred as a basis of and motivator for war fighting was one of the first indications of the change.

Along with hatred comes the inevitable dehumanization of our adversaries, and the choice of vindictive and punitive war blithely as a first response. Soldiers need not act humanely if their opponent is not human. Opponents in past wars were seen as men; today, they are vilified and vermin-ized.

Can we define what we are or are becoming, as a society?

• How do we define "warrior hood?"

• How do we define "soldier"?

• Is warrior hood a valid designator for the soldiers of a liberal democratic nation?

• If we are a warrior nation, why not create a mercenary Foreign Legion?

• Is the warrior's code of conduct the same as that for a soldier?

• Is warrior hood compatible with the 21th century?

What are your thoughts on the matter?


NEXT: Sin, Sin, Sin!

Memorial Day Reflections, 2011

--Corregidor

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You snug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go
--Suicide in the Trenches, Sigfried Sassoon

I woke up this morning,
and I just hated everything!
--Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
__________________

Another Memorial Day and another big picnic and day of shopping. But everyone -- both those who carried the burden and those who didn't -- should humbly and reverentially consider what underlies the day of leisure for so many.

It is difficult to discuss Memorial Day without discussing living veterans. Veterans Day and Memorial day are two sides of the same coin; the continuum is brief, and we the living march to death much too quickly. It is but one breath or one bullet that separates the two.

All who served, whether volunteer or inductee, made the conscious decision to go forward and do what was required. Some of us were hurt or wounded, but all dedicated precious days in our young lives to a cause larger than ourselves. All of us relinquished our individual concerns to the greater good, which we believed was our duty as responsible citizens. We recognized that the rights of a free society were insured by the obligations of harsh duties.

Soldiers were not all born in the U.S.A. When speaking of immigrants today we forget that it was they who often carried America's wars. These immigrants, tempered by war, earned their rights to be called Americans, as was the case in Ranger's family.

As 1st and 2nd generation Americans, both Ranger's father and he served in wartime uniformed service, as did several of his cousins. (Ditto for male members of Lisa's maternal family.) However, the present generation has seen fit not to serve, as the draft has not compelled them to do so. Neither of my nephews wore a uniform, though both of their fathers did. This is a common pattern now since we are content to say we have a professional class of warriors and service can be passed by as something someone else will do.

It is our national shame that we men have also passed this obligation onto a female class of warriorettes, calling it business as usual. Contrary to the official p.c. version, combat is no place for a woman since they are incapable of the extreme hardships of the physical reality of ground combat. We accept women because we have not fought a real war since Vietnam, and what we now call combat is naught but a shadow of the reality.

Can anyone envision women in the defense of Corregidor, or on the Bataan Death March? What about the Battle of the Bulge or storming the heights of Pointe du Hoc? How about the retrograde from the Chosin Reservoir? So why do we persist in the fiction that we can function as a combat entity? This is nothing but an official snow job. It's Ranger-simple: Defending the U.S. in combat is a man's job, despite any Lara Croftian hype to the contrary.

Ranger is thankful his fate never took him on a death march, before a wave of human attacks or to combat in frozen countries. The courage of those that carried those actions was so daunting that it is difficult to even weigh one's more recent service against the gravity of their campaigns.

It is unimaginable the indignities and sacrifices of our former POW's or the desperation of their service in far-flung battlefields. Whether opposed to or favorable towards our present wars, we must humbly bow our heads for those that have passed before in the inexorable march of history.

The survival of the U.S. has been carried on the backs of Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors. Hopefully some day war will be a memory of a fighterly species evolved.

Hopefully.

[cross-posted @ milpub]