BROCK MCINTOSH - having brought themselves or "been brought" to become "warriors" for Empire --

are at least trying to accomplish what their fellow soldier that died in iraq IMPLORED them and others :

"accomplish what I could not".......

this excerpt is from a long-ago article - in 2004 about "john" the "warrior" who saw the futility and evil of war:

===================

"With chilling foresight, John predicted that much could go wrong in a war with Iraq, saying the outcomes outlined by the administration were based on highly optimistic and rosy scenarios. He said it was unlikely that Iraqis would cheer the arrival of a U.S. occupying force, and that long-term urban combat could be a likely outcome.

Yet he went to Iraq, believing it to be his duty. And continued, even in the midst of combat, to exercise his belief in nonviolent resolution. One of his commanders wrote a letter after his death explaining a situation in which John negotiated a peaceful settlement to a potentially deadly situation. A group of Baath Party officials were found inside a house. Because he spoke Arabic, John entered the house and talked with the officials until he negotiated a surrender. His actions potentially saved the lives of both U.S. soldiers and Iraqis.

In letters home, John described the peace movement as "awesome," and said he hoped it would grow larger, never relent against the Bush administration, and help bring an end to the war."

Let's all do what we can to honor this fine young man and serve justice to those who betrayed him.

his last will reads:

""That I have died means I have failed to achieve the one thing in life I truly longed to give the world -- peace," the letter reads.

"The plight of human suffering CONSUMED ME and I dedicated much to trying to find the ideas that might lead humankind toward alleviating it for all.

"It was a quest which was inextricably intertwined with my quest for freedom. If you know anything about me you know that.

"Understand it and come to understand how the SUFFERING OF OTHERS TORMENTED MY SOUL. THEN SEEK TO HONOR MY MEMORY BY TRYING TO ACHIEVE WHAT I COULD NOT."

============

this is really a call by a dead american soldier to his fellow soldiers and all americans:

"that the suffering of others tormented my soul...then seek to honor my memory by trying to achieve what I could not...peace".

Afghan war veterans debate merits of troop surge
Posted: 10:14 AM ET
John Roberts - Anchor, CNN's American Morning
Filed under: Afghanistan • Opinion

President Obama is expected to make a decision on troop levels in Afghanistan in the coming weeks. His top commander in Afghanistan wants at least 40,000 more soldiers. Is that the right number? Should we be sending more troops at all?
Veterans Thomas Cotton and Jake Diliberto debate opposite sides of the troop surge divide.
Veterans Thomas Cotton and Jake Diliberto debate opposite sides of the troop surge divide.

Two veterans of the war, Thomas Cotton and Jake Diliberto, will be lobbying Congress on opposite sides of the troop surge divide. They spoke to John Roberts on CNN’s “American Morning” Monday. Below is an edited transcript of that interview.

John Roberts: Thomas, let's start with you. What's the pitch that you're going to make in favor of General Stanley McChrystal's call for some 40,000 additional troops in Afghanistan?

Thomas Cotton: I'm going to tell Congress that we need every last one of those troops. That's based not only on my experience over the last year in Afghanistan, but also on General McChrystal's reputation and expertise. He has spent a career in the Army Special Operations community and he's looked at this situation carefully and knows that we can't win with a counterterrorism strategy only.

We need a full-spectrum counterinsurgency that can secure the south and the east while mentoring and training the Afghan national army. And 40,000 troops is the absolute minimum with which he can accomplish that mission.

Roberts: Jake, you heard Thomas' argument. What's your argument against the surge in troops in Afghanistan?

Jake Diliberto: Well, Tom's right – if you want to do a counterinsurgency campaign, you absolutely need 40,000 troops. But that's not enough. You're going to need another 100,000 troops on top of that. And all counterinsurgency experts will pretty much agree that another year is going to look like another 15 years. And so the idea that another counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan is in our best interest as Americans, I don't think, is the right answer.

Roberts: So Jake, what do you do instead?

Diliberto: The inclination that somehow we need to be in Afghanistan to keep America safe is not the complete answer. Al Qaeda is a 5,000 to 7,000 operative force that is across the world. They are in Germany, they're in the United States, they're in Mexico, they're all over the place. And you need to do the good things to find these criminals and put them in jail, which is – looks like a worldwide collaborative intelligence effort to find them and root them out.

Roberts: So Jake, do you not buy the argument that Afghanistan is the central front in the war on terror and that as General Stanley McChrystal says, if U.S. troops were to leave and it were to fall back in the hands of the Taliban that it could provide safe haven for al Qaeda again?

Diliberto: Even if you could prevent the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, you could not guarantee that al Qaeda would not be able to go back there. To think that is a one-size answer to say we need to be in Afghanistan, is not complete. We have fallen in love with a military solution in Afghanistan and that is not the answer.

Roberts: Let me go to Thomas on that. What do you think about that argument that Jake just made, that we've fallen in love with the idea of a military solution in Afghanistan? And then on the idea of more troops going on, as you know, U.S. diplomat Matthew Hoh recently resigned his post, saying we're doing this all wrong, we’re creating more of a problem by having American forces there.

Cotton: I agree that a military solution alone is not the answer. General McChrystal recognizes that, as does President Obama. However, first and foremost, you must have security for – you’re going to hope to have improvements in the government or economic development.

And I know Matt, he actually came to my base last year – or earlier this year – and we visited sometime, and he may not have received the clearest guidance from the civilian side, but on the military side, we certainly received crystal-clear guidance from General McChrystal down to the front line troopers, that you really have to provide security for the people to allow them to be able to develop the economy and develop a strong and more efficient government. The same way we saw in Iraq with the surge in 2007 and 2008.

Roberts: And Jake, what do you say to that argument, that one of the problems that the Afghan people have is they believe the U.S. isn't keeping their promises. They promised to go in there and provide safety and security and they don't have it. So the way to get safety and security to win over the hearts and minds of the Afghan people is to send more troops in there so you can more effectively police the area.

Diliberto: Well, our history is short in this country. I think we need to recognize that the Afghanistan people have been bombed for almost 100 years going back to the British at the turn of the 20th century. And this continued violence that's taking place has caused the Afghanistan culture to be very resilient and also resistant to any sort of foreign powers. So to think that another 40,000 troops or counterinsurgency campaign can be successful really misses the point on this war.

What's taking place is a cultural misunderstanding and a war on poverty. The real war that's taking place in Afghanistan is poverty. And more troops destabilizes the area even more. And this overlooks, if you send more troops to Afghanistan, you actually have the unintended effect of destabilizing Pakistan, which is a nuclear-armed, highly volatile region that needs to be a close watch of intelligence and special operations for terrorist activity, not a counterinsurgency campaign.

As a former member of the American Servicemens' Union during the Vietnam era and a current member of Veterans for Peace, I applaud the efforts of Brock McIntosh and his Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan group.

Back in the early 70's, the prominent public participation of veterans in the US peace movement blunted the blatant demagoguery of Nixon, Agnew, and the hawks. How could returning soldiers be lacking in patriotism? How could their personal insights into the futility of the bloody Vietnam quagmire be casually dismissed as naivite, or as disloyalty to their comrades in arms? Antiwar veterans provide much needed political cover for antiwar civilians, most of whom have never served in the military, when the partisan crossfire heats up.

What should be emphasized here is that there is an important distinction to be drawn between veterans engaging in the democratic decision making process, and open political gamesmanship by soldiers who are on active duty - especially naked partisanship by field commanders who are serving in a combat zone.

First it was General Petraeus, fresh off the cover of Newsweek, hyping the brilliant success of the surge in Iraq to shore up the legacy of Bush/Cheney for the electoral benefit of John McCain in the fall of 2008. Now it's General Stanley McChrystal, making speeches in England and leaking classified "progress" assessments and troop increase requests to DC beltway insiders, in order to help the GOP right wing and Faux News paint his current Commander in Chief into a corner.

Were it not such a dangerous insult to the principle of civilian control over the military, and to the historical tradition of active duty American soldiers staying outside the sandbox of partisan politics, the image of the Veterans For Freedom spokesman rehearsing his TV sound bites by chanting McChrystal's name over and over would be absurdly comical. As is, it's not funny at all.

War is literally a matter of life and death. And injecting the personalities of active duty Generals and Admirals into the policy formulation process marks a major, ominous step down the road towards fascism.

Smedley Butler and Ike must be turning over in their graves.

Bill from Saginaw

So, "the suffering of others tormented my soul" said John, then he joined the military. Uhhh.

If your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.

"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats

"Sometimes in our urge to fix things, we just pile money on top of a [friendly] government,"
"if you want to do a counterinsurgency campaign, you absolutely need 40,000 troops. But that's not enough. You're going to need another 100,000 troops on top of that. And all counterinsurgency experts will pretty much agree that another year is going to look like another 15 years. And so the idea that another counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan is in our best interest as Americans, I don't think, is the right answer."

There, in a nutshell, is the MIC strategy. Support both sides, support chaos, supply all sides and you have an endless war, endless profits, all at the expense of the American taxpayer, the lives of hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians, the destruction of their culture and infrastructure, and the incidental loss of a few thousand American raised cannon fodder. (plenty more where they came from)

If we don't cut the head off this python, it will strangle and consume us all. Off the Oligarchy and their hired minions that control the three branches of the government and look for people who will represent We the People and not They the Wealthy as they do now and have done for many years.

Regardless of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and now Iran, we have to look within. It will be getting harder to turn things around. Remember that Cheney/Bush had the concentration camps built. NorthCom is training returning combat brigades in "suppressing civil dissent," and the congress is passing ever more restrictive surveillance laws against American citizens. Look at the many "lists" We the People find ourselves on. Watch lists, no-fly lists, Police harrassment and raids on such dangerous terrorists as the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) who are dedicated to peace and non-violence. BUT, they protest government policy, therefore... The same goes for other protest groups. Government agents provocateur infiltrate groups to spy and incite them to violence so they can be raided and imprisoned. If that fails, they do something violent and claim "credit" for the group.

Do you think they are doing all of this to find a few people that may not like us? No, they are getting ready for the day when the American People have had enough. History is filled with this sort of thing. Usually the people are quiet, putting up with more and more restriction until it is too late. Then, they go along to get along. The Third Reich, for instance.

A long time ago, some American Patriots (insurgents, terrorists?) decided that we had had enough of foreign rule and declared their independence. It took several bloody years, but we finally achieved it. Now we are spending our national treasure and our youth doing the same things that we fought against so long ago, suppressing, occupying and killing patriots who want the foreigners out of their land.

Possibly something like a general strike would still work. Just shut the country down. If nothing runs, nothing works, and nothing is bought and sold, the banksters and their puppets will have to take notice. Perhaps there can even be meaningful change. Ghandi did it. He shut down the British Raj, non-violently because millions believed in his message and peacefully filled the streets.

The alternative is to keep feeding this chaos until it is too late for anybody.

That last line is exactly the kind of talk that congress needs.

"..election matters little since both candidates are representatives of the warlord class." -- Malalai Joya

Ms. Joya was speaking of the Afghan parliament but easily could have been referring to our government.

I think Warlords are an accurate description, as well, for Obama and any Senator and Representative who vote in favor of war funding.

I applaud these young men and Ms. Joya for speaking out.

I do not agree with the act of joining the military with it's obvious imperialist and murderous intents.

However, these individuals have seen the truth of our country's "occupation" and the suffering and death we inflict on other people, and are standing up to the "Warlords".

BEFORE you vote in any election, find out if your representative or senator or candidate for president has voted yes for war funding.

Then vote NO to that candidate.

Time to KICK THE WARLORDS OUT.