Sunday Sermon: Shooting Back

(Content Warning: war, death)

I’m going to begin today’s sermon with a transcript from a podcast I recently heard. It’s David Wood, speaking at Politics and Prose on “What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars.” Wood’s view is that wars can cause “Moral Injury” – a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder to our sense of right and wrong. The bit that stuck in my mind, which I went back and replayed and bookmarked, was an example that he gave – an example that is very typical of the experiences of many soldiers:

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Gear is No Substitute For Competence

Content warning: War, Death, Violent imagery.

The other day I posted about the Iraqi army advance on Mosul, and observed that one of the vehicles in the picture appeared to be a US-made M-1 Abrams main battle tank.

I didn’t think that, at $5 million apiece, and still being fairly high-tech, the US would let gear like that out into the wild. TL;DR: I hadn’t realized how badly the warmongers in Washington have been screwing up.

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An Extract —

In my recent post “Nationalism Is A Lie” there was so much horror behind what I wrote, that I was either going to have to write a textbook-length incoherent screed,* or leave a lot on the table. So I thought that rather than diverticulating into asides, I’d post this piece separately.

Trigger warning: really horrible people doing really horrible things, with a walk-on by the Roman Catholic Church

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Weapons of Privilege

About a decade ago, I did a series of talks at various conferences entitled “cyberwar is bullshit” – the problem, I felt, was that the US was talking about being deeply afraid of cyberattack from Eurasia (or was it Eastasia?) but there was considerable irresponsible talk about “weapons of mass destruction-like capability.” Industry insiders like myself wound up divided as to whether it was likely/practical, or good marketing/a chance to make a fast buck. There were a lot of fast bucks made.

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It’s Just “Metadata”

I’ve always been suspicious of power.* One of the warning signs I’m especially alert to is when I see language being bent or waterboarded in the interest of obscuring facts, rather than clarifying them. When a new word suddenly begins to take on a heavily-freighted meaning, e.g: “ethnic cleansing” instead of “genocide” I immediately ask myself “why that word, and not the other perfectly useable words?” The sudden promotion of or carpet-bombing with a new term is often an indicator that someone has decided to start using a new word with a subtly different definition – basically, lying by redefining the truth.

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A Blip

A few years ago, I read a book about the big terrorist bombing in New York. You know, the one in 1920. And it got me interested in the turmoil of the time – a time when, largely due to the depression, Americans were realizing that capitalism wasn’t quite their friend after all. So I wound up reading about the bonus army and how they were suppressed with cavalry and tanks commanded by heroes.

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