In an interview at Antiwar.com author James Bamford, A Pretext for War, suggests that a war tax and a mandatory draft are a sure way to assure full public involvement in the war making process:
The key problem is massive public apathy and extremely poor press coverage. I think the only way to prevent such wars in the future would be to make every citizen an equal shareholder in the war
Or, at minimum, getting away with involuntary manslaughter:
“I have come to realize what I did was wrong”
Thus spoke Spc. Brian E. Cammack, who was sentenced to three months in prison over the beating death of a prisoner in Afghanistan. Cammack plead guilty to charges of assault and two counts of making a false statement. In accepting a plea bargain, prosecutors decided not to pursue a charge of maltreatment (I guess manslaughter wasn’t on the list of possibilities).
A manslaughter charge certainly is a possibility in a military court.
This pat on the butt plea bargain could be the a result of at a couple different things: 1) The guy really is giving up good info that will lead to more severe penalties for others (don’t hold your breath) and 2) this administration and its military still don’t think anything wrong has occurred and believe that too severe sentences in these cases will dampen ongoing behavior in the inquisition centers.
Mark Morford tries a glass half full view of Real ID:
Ah, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is just rampant paranoia talking and it’s just a silly piece of harmless legislation and Real ID is overall a genuinely good and useful idea that will ultimately make us safer and more secure. You think?
Because hasn’t BushCo proven to be reliable and honest and just reeking with integrity about privacy and security issues so far? Hasn’t the USA Patriot Act been just a wondrous boon to police and CIA and our sense that we are trusted and cared for by our government? Aren’t we all feeling just so much safer with this most secretive, least accountable administration at the helm?
After all, why not trust the government on this? Why not put our faith in the goodly Homeland Security Department? Maybe Real ID really is patriotic and constructive and it will be a smooth and secure and completely inviolable system, one that protects citizens while giving them a new sense of freedom to move about the country with carefree flag-waving ease, safe in the knowledge that their big, snarling gummint is watching over them like a protective mother bear — as opposed to, say, a female praying mantis, who greedily screws her lover, and then, of course, eats him alive.
Really, this raving bit of incompetence by congress and the president is adequate reason to toss them all out of office. This is really one party no one should attend and if it means boycotting the airlines until they scream in anguished pain to get this stuff stricken from what passes for law then so be it.
Professor Bainbridge in the course of an interesting discussion of VE Day and the strategic bombings of German and Japaniese civilian populations notes:
Indeed, there seems little doubt but that the strategic bombing campaign violated the precepts of a just war. In particular, it violated the tenets of proportionality and discrimination. Proportionality holds that the response to aggression should not be disproportionate to the original aggression. Was the deliberate firebombing of Dresden or Hamburg, say, proportional to the Blitz? As for discrimination, there is no doubt that Bomber Harris and his US counterparts deliberately targeted German and Japanese citizens.
So, at point do the Afghani and Iraqi campaigns breach the proportionality principle? When we have killed 3000 of them? Destroyed property in value equal to the WTC buildings and related economic damage? Or, what?
Maybe not!
For a day or so last week it nearly impossilbe to escape from the headlines in the papers, at the top of every hourly newscast, on talk radio, NPR, etc., the story that the #3 dude in al-qaeda had been captured. Great news, right?
The sad part is that equal play will is not being given to the follow up story that this guy was simply part of the flotsam and jetsam of al-qaeda. Nothing number 3 about him.
Spin, Spin, Spin!