27 Sep
United States Wars, News and Casualties
A Walk Through Arlington
Come, walk with me past the white stones
Through ancient fields of the fallen
Along paths of dreams not seen
Through aisles of solemn stillness
The oaks and elms not heard
To acres not visited by the tours
Come, walk with me
Past wars and our discontents
We will look for fresh earth
Where a canopy is ready
Where fresh wreaths adorn the new white
Where an anthem and taps sound
Come, walk with me
Past the innocence of youth
The bounty of life never seen
The saga of age denied
Borne by brothers to rest
We will see the past
Come, walk with me
The moment is over the next rise
The white of canopy
Green shoveled aside for the earth
Upon approach
Curfew calls a mother and daughter
Come, walk with me
Stones’ whiteness sears the eyes
A nation’s history cries
Pangs of conscience overwhelm
We are among the young
Born to flower we failed
Such a large bounty to waste
Come, walk with me
One of eighteen years rests
Beloved daughter, Sam
No child will bound into her lap
No child will grace her knee
Her art of mind and heart lost
No warm hearth of ages of love
Come, walk with me
Through alleys of white
Row upon row of young
Never to return to their streets of warmth
Nor to grace a porch
And shout a greeting to the village
Their virtues denied by war
Come, walk with me
Oh Sam, I hurt for you
For denying you your destiny
The bounty of life and saga of age
If only my voice could provoke your silence
We could meet the dawn
And grasp the moon
One would grace your knee with a little one
Give warmth to your mother
Come, walk with me
Our view will turn to and over the river
Where a little tyrant rules
Rising through lies, fear, slaughter and blood
To the applause of a nation
And that of a listening congress
Silence triumphs its halls
Come, walk with me
Let us go outside …..and march
Come, walk with me
For Sam and the young resting….in silence
The McGlynn
October, 2007
Damn
The WarCriminals,Bush,Cheney,Rice,Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell and Blair from England.
How many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago? Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again.
The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in our country as a “blunder,” or even a “colossal mistake.” It was a crime.
Those who perpetrated it are still at large. Some of them have even been rehabilitated thanks to the horrors of a mostly amnesiac citizenry.
We condemned children to death, some after many days of writhing in pain on bloodstained mats, without pain relievers. Some died quickly, wasted by missing arms and legs, crushed heads. As the fluids ran out of their bodies, they appeared like withered, spoiled fruits. They could have lived, certainly should have lived – and laughed and danced, and run and played- but instead they were brutally murdered. Yes, murdered!
The war ended for those children, but it has never ended for survivors who carry memories of them. Likewise, the effects of the U.S. bombings continue, immeasurably and indefensibly.
The McGlynn
War News
From The McGlynn
The United States supplies bombs and other support for the war in Yemen that’s killed civilians and is creating famine.
So many Americans confess to feeling “helpless” in the face of the US’s major role in the war on the people of Yemen which the UN has described as the world’s largest humanitarian emergency. They also often incidentally bemoan their country’s other disastrous and bloody military adventures.
But this alleged “helplessness” also importantly absolves them from responsibility for the carnage left in the wake of US foreign policy. What does it say about the American so-called “democratic” system that an overwhelming majority of the country has wanted an end to these endless wars for over two decades and they still grind on with new conflicts arising every few years?
What kind of democracy is constantly at war and allies itself with a medieval theocratic gender apartheid state that beheads and crucifies student democracy protestors? It’s simple. When it comes to its foreign policy the US is not a democracy. US foreign policy is run by the Military Industrial Complex.
The feelings of the general public are irrelevant. Sad to say is that the only thing that would get the people out on the streets is a reinstatement of the draft so that wealthy/middle class college kids – the kind most care about – were put at risk by all this militarism. But the Military Industrial Complex learned its lessons well in Vietnam. As long as their is no draft we will “weep a tear” for the people of Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan etc… but in the time it takes to turn the page we’ve forgotten and gone to the movies or church.
The McGlynn
Children in Yemen are acutely malnourished. Those who survive will often be stunted for the rest of their lives, physically and mentally.CreditCreditHammadi Issa/Associated Press
A girl being weighed at the Aslam Health Center in Hajjah, Yemen.CreditHammadi Issa/Associated Press
At least eight million Yemenis are at risk of starvation from an approaching famine.CreditEssa Ahmed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The news about Brett Kavanaugh and Rod Rosenstein is addictive, but spare just a moment for crimes against humanity that the United States is supporting in far-off Yemen.
President Trump didn’t mention it at the United Nations, but America is helping to kill, maim and starve Yemeni children. At least eight million Yemenis are at risk of starvation from an approaching famine caused not by crop failures but by our actions and those of our allies. The United Nations has called it the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and we own it.
An American bomb made by Lockheed Martin struck a Yemen school bus last month, killing 51 people. Earlier, American bombs killed 155 mourners at a funeral and 97 people at a market.
Starving Yemeni children are reduced to eating a sour paste made of leaves. Even those who survive will often be stunted for the rest of their lives, physically and mentally.
Many global security issues involve complex trade-offs, but this is different: Our behavior is just unconscionable.
“Yemen’s current crisis is man-made,” said David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary and current president of the International Rescue Committee, who recently returned from Yemen. “This is not a case where humanitarian suffering is the price of winning a war. No one is winning, except the extremist groups who thrive on chaos.”
The United States is not directly bombing civilians in Yemen, but it is providing arms, intelligence and aerial refueling to assist Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as they hammer Yemen with airstrikes, destroy its economy and starve its people. The Saudi aim is to crush Houthi rebels who have seized Yemen’s capital and are allied with Iran.
That’s sophisticated realpolitik for you: Because we dislike Iran’s ayatollahs, we are willing to starve Yemeni schoolchildren.
“The Trump administration has made itself complicit in systematic war crimes,” said Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.
Let’s be clear, too: This is a bipartisan moral catastrophe. The policy started under President Barack Obama, with safeguards, and then Trump doubled down and removed the safeguards.
“The war in Yemen has prompted today’s worst humanitarian catastrophe worldwide,” said Robert Malley, a former Obama aide who acknowledges missteps by the administration in Yemen — which Trump has aggravated. Now president of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit working to prevent conflict, Malley added, “By our actions and inaction, we inevitably are complicit in it.”
I know, I know. All eyes are focused on the reality television show that is the Trump White House. But we can’t let Trump suck all the oxygen away from life-or-death issues. Trump drama cannot be allowed to nullify global tragedy.
The carnage in Yemen hasn’t stirred more outrage because the Saudis use their blockade to keep out journalists. I’ve been trying for two years to go, but the Saudis bar aid groups from taking me on relief flights.
Both sides in this civil war have at times behaved brutally, and the only way out is diplomacy. But Saudi Arabia’s crown prince seems to prefer famine and a failed state in Yemen to compromise, and the more we provide him weapons the longer we extend the suffering. We should be using our influence to rein the Saudis in, not cheer them on.
Read more about atrocities in Yemen:
To their credit, some members of Congress are trying to stop these atrocities. A bipartisan Senate effort this year, led by Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Mike Lee of Utah, tried to limit arms sales to Saudi Arabia because of the Yemen war, and it did surprisingly well, winning 44 votes. New efforts are underway as well.
World leaders are gathered for the United Nations General Assembly, making pious statements about global goals for a better world, but the Assembly is infused with hypocrisy. Russia is up to its elbows in crimes against humanity in Syria, China is detaining perhaps one million Uighurs while also shielding Myanmar from accountability for probable genocide, and the United States and Britain are helping Saudi Arabia commit war crimes in Yemen.
That’s pathetic: Four of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are complicit in crimes against humanity.
Many Americans erupt in fury every time Trump lies, or tweets some inexcusable comment. Please do, but also save outrage for something even more monstrous — the way we are contributing to starvation of children and exacerbating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Summer campaign by Saudi-led coalition to regain control of strategic port of Hodeidah kills 500 people in nine days
Civilian deaths in Yemen have surged dramatically since June after the Saudi-led coalition began an offensive to take the key port city of Hodeidah from Houthi rebels.
According to the figures, collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (Acled), civilian deaths in the Yemeni conflict have increased by 164% in the four months since the Hodeidah offensive started, claiming the lives of about 166 people a month.
The group’s analysis suggests Hodeidah has become the most violent frontline in the four-year conflict. In recent months, about one-third of the total conflict-related fatalities have been recorded in the governorate, reflecting the bitterness of the struggle for the key port and its surrounding environs………….“August was the most violent month of 2018 in Yemen with nearly 500 people killed in just nine days,” said Frank McManus, the IRC’s Yemen director, who added that, “since 2015, the coalition has undertaken 18,000 airstrikes – one every 99 minutes – one-third of which have hit non-military targets”…………..In a statement to the UN general assembly, 14 groups including Save the Children, Oxfam and Mercy Corps said: “After almost four years of conflict, and despite all efforts to halt displacement, hunger and disease, Yemen remains the worst humanitarian crisis on earth. The suffering inflicted on Yemeni people is entirely manmade and will continue to deteriorate rapidly on all fronts without actions to end the violence.
AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian rebels said on Thursday they have growing confidence that their jihadist rivals will comply with a requirement to leave a demilitarized buffer zone set up by Turkey and Russia to avert a Russian-backed Syrian army offensive.
Last week Turkey and Russia agreed to enforce a new demilitarized zone in Idlib province from which “radical” rebels will be required to withdraw by the middle of next month.
The position of the biggest jihadist group, Tahrir al-Sham, spearheaded by al Qaeda’s former Syrian offshoot, will be crucial to the deal’s success, but it has so far said nothing.
Several rebel sources said neither jihadist nor mainstream rebels had started to pull back yet.
However, a senior Syrian opposition official said Tahrir al-Sham had sent secret feelers to the Turkish army though third parties in recent days signaling it would comply.
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The families of people detained in Iran on false charges joined forces for the first time on Wednesday to call on world leaders meeting in New York to help bring their relatives home.
The wives, sisters and children of people held hostage by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said the world must not stand back and allow Iran to imprison and torture people over no charges or false charges related to espionage.
The call came as a study published by TrustLaw, a unit of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, revealed a gap in international laws to protect citizens taken hostage by states in peacetime, with the situation more complex for those with dual citizenship.
Human Rights Watch researcher Tara Sepehri Far said there is a rising trend of people taken hostage in Iran and used as bargaining chips for political gains.
“I call on all world leaders gathered at the (United Nations General Assembly) for their attention and to remember all these names in horrible incarceration,” said Hua Qu, whose student husband Xiyue Wang has been jailed in Iran for two years.
“They are the sacrifices of the political situation.”
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday Tehran had no intension to go to war with U.S. forces in the Middle East, where Iran has been involved in proxy wars with U.S. ally Saudi Arabia for decades.
“We do not wish to go to war with American forces in the region,” Rouhani told a news conference.
He said Iran would remain in a multinational 2015 nuclear deal that Washington exited in May.
“As long as the deal serves our interests we will remain in the pact … Remaining members of the deal have taken very good steps forward but Iran has higher expectations,” he said, adding that expected U.S. sanctions in November on Iran were illegal and “nothing new”.
GENEVA/LONDON — An attack on a military parade in Iran is a blow to the image of its Revolutionary Guards, but the elite force could yet turn the bloodshed to its advantage, using public sympathy to bolster itself at the expense of President Hassan Rouhani.
Twelve Guards were among 25 people killed on Sept. 22 when gunmen fired on a viewing stand as military officials watched a ceremony in the city of Ahvaz marking the start of Iran’s 1980-1988 war with Iraq.
The bloodshed exposed vulnerabilities of the Guards, custodians of clerical rule since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, who have sought to project an image of invincibility.
Initial responses from ordinary Iranians have been largely sympathetic, however, with many posting on social media to express support for the security forces.
Recent Casualties:
Color Denotes Today’s Confirmation
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.
Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy A. Bolyard, 42, from Thornton, West Virginia, died Sept. 3, 2018, of wounds sustained from small arms fire in Logar Province, Afghanistan. The incident is under investigation.
Bolyard was assigned to 3rd Squadron, 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, Fort Benning, Georgia.
Care for Veterans:
PTSD: National Center for PTSDPTSD Care for Veterans, Military, and FamiliesSee Help for Veterans with PTSD to learn how to enroll for VA health care and get an assessment.
All VA Medical Centers provide PTSD care, as well as many VA clinics.Some VA’s have programs specializing in PTSD treatment. Use the VA PTSD Program Locator to find a PTSD program.
If you are a war Veteran, find a Vet Center to help with the transition from military to civilian life.
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