Christian Leftist

Jared Hubbard and Jeremiah Baro were best friends who went to Iraq. They lived together, laughed together, and died together as snipers during the second year of the second Iraq War. Their families thought it fitting that they be buried together as well.

Now their Central California town is mourning the loss of Jared’s younger brother Nathan, only 24, who enlisted after Jared’s death with their older brother Jason. Nathan was one of 14 soldiers to die when his Blackhawk helicopter crashed due to mechanical failure; Jason arrived on the scene as a rescuer in time to discover that he was the last surviving son.

In a harrowing twist not unlike the plot of Saving Private Ryan, the military has ordered Jason to return home to his family to grieve, before some unseen, violent catastrophe takes the eldest Hubbard son from this earth.

It’s hard to imagine the odds of this kind of event happening more than once. I would think losing one son would have been sufficient service to this country, but the Hubbard brothers felt called to serve, and it’s far better to have people serving who want to be in a war than drafting those who don’t. Still, every tragic loss of life in Iraq seems so empty, so damning an indictment. What is it going to take to convince the rest of the country that we can no longer afford to spend people’s lives in this doomed pursuit?

At least if Bush is too stubborn to withdraw troops from the Middle East, he could consider pouring help into Afghanistan. At least there our military protection has some measure of public support. It’s not too late to save Karzai’s fledgling administration from the resurgence of the Taliban.

It’s cognitive dissidence at its worst. You say a story like this is a pointless loss of life, and conservatives jump on you for saying that ‘a soldier’s death was for nothing.’ It’s not so simple as that. Soldiers die serving their country; the administration that send them on a foolhardy assignment have made the specific outcomes of that task a waste of human life.

I wonder about all of the numerous lives the Hubbard brothers could have helped has they served in a mission that didn’t send them off to die.

Normally I don’t just link to interesting articles without saying something of substance about them, but this is Nicholas Kristof, and the title says it all, really.

Poor ol’ Rummy. He’s just not getting a break, is he? He signed up for absolute power, but all he gets is absolute chaos. To top it off, his office is only three downs down from the janitor’s. Now he knows how Colin Powell felt.

In the latest NYT article about the Secretary of Defense, Pentagon Memo Aims to Counter Rumsfeld Critics,General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tries to paint a rosier picture of the man five retired and active generals want to see resign. I’m willing to be reasonable when it comes to the criticism of GOP members, but Rumsfeld is the BIG excetion to that rule (Well, maybe him and John Ashcroft, who has faded in the twilight). Most of Rummy’s behavior, both verbal and otherwise, indicates a complete ineptitude so profound that it approaches archetypal Orwell-Meets-Dr.-Strangelove-trigger-happy images. Here’s a snippet/summary:

The memorandum begins by stating, “U.S. senior military leaders are involved to an unprecedented degree in every decision-making process in the Department of Defense.” It says Mr. Rumsfeld has had 139 meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff since the start of 2005 and 208 meetings with the senior field commanders.
Seeking to put the criticism of the relatively small number of retired generals into context, the e-mail message also notes that there are more than 8,000 active-duty and retired general officers alive today.
The message was released Friday by the Pentagon’s office of the Directorate for Programs and Community Relations and Public Liaison, but it was unclear who wrote it.

Wow. That’s a lot of meetings. I wonder how many trees his poor assistant kills transcribing all of the text he claims he never reads?

…So, that’s (139 meetings + 208 meetings) x (3 handmade flip-books for entertainment per meeting) x (150 mini-pages per flip-book) / (16 mini-pages per piece of paper) = 9,759.375 pp.

They must have really, really long filing cabinets at the DoD.