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Tag Archives: Iraq

Good

08 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by jrbenjamin in War

≈ Comments Off on Good

Tags

army, Echo Charles, Iraq, Jocko Podcast, Jocko Willink, leadership, Military, Motivation, Navy SEALS, Podcast

Jocko Willink

Echo Charles: How do you deal with setbacks, failures, delays, defeats, or other disasters?

Jocko Willink: I actually have a fairly simple way of dealing with this. I use one word in most of these situations — “Good.”

This is actually something that one of my direct subordinates pointed out to me. He would call me up, pull me aside with some major challenge and say, “Boss, we have this problem and that issue and another thing…”

And I would say, “Good.”

Finally, one day, he was telling me about an issue that he was having, and he said, “I already know what you’re going to say.”

And I said, “Well, what am I going to say?”

“You’re going to say ‘Good.’ That’s what you always say. When something is wrong, you always just look at me and say ‘Good.'”

And I said, “Well, yeah, and I mean it.” And that’s how I feel. When things are going bad, there’s going to be some good that’s going to come from it.

Oh, mission got cancelled? Good — we can focus on the other one.

Didn’t get the new high speed gear we wanted? Good — we can keep it simple.

Didn’t get promoted? Good — more time to get better.

Didn’t get funded? Good — we own more of the company.

Didn’t get the job you wanted? Good — you can get more experience and build a better resume.

Got injured? Good — needed a break from training.

Got tapped out? Good — better to get tapped out in training than tap out in the street.

Got beat? Good — you learned.

Unexpected problems? Good — we have the opportunity to figure out a solution.

That’s it. When things are going bad, don’t get startled, don’t get frustrated.

And I don’t mean to just spout off a cliché, and I don’t mean to sound like Mr. Positive. I’m not. But find the positive… Get up, dust off, reload, recalibrate, reengage, and go out on the attack. It’ll bring that attitude to those who look to you for guidance and leadership, too.”

__________

Jocko Willink, speaking recently on his podcast — you can also see a clip of this speech.

Willink is a retired Navy SEAL commando and world-class mixed martial artist. On another one of his podcasts he tells the story of leading a night patrol during one of his tours in Iraq. A worried soldier ran to the patrol as they set out from the base and informed them that recon had spotted several new enemy positions on their assigned route. Willink’s response was, apparently, unflinching: “Good. That’ll give us a chance to get after it.”

More:

  • How George Washington led
  • Orwell talks about the problem with nationalism
  • What happens when European terrorists return home?

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Killing Saddam, Resurrecting al-Qaeda

19 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Interview, Politics

≈ Comments Off on Killing Saddam, Resurrecting al-Qaeda

Tags

Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, al-Qaeda, Bush Doctrine, foreign policy, George W. Bush, Harry Kreisler, Imperialism, Iraq, Iraq War, Lawrence Wright, Red Army, September 11th, Shia, Sunni, Taliban, USSR

ISIS

Harry Kreisler: From the start, Jihadists came to believe that it would be ideal if American troops would be drawn back into the middle east. The idea was that if they attacked [on 9/11] and we came back at them in Afghanistan, the US would be destroyed in Afghanistan like the USSR had been.

They were wrong about that. But then… the invasion in Iraq.

Lawrence Wright: Iraq looks a lot like what bin Laden had in mind for us in Afghanistan.

If you read the memoirs of the inner-circle and ideologues of al-Qaeda, they confess that al-Qaeda was essentially dead after November, December 2001, when American and coalition forces swept aside the Taliban and pummeled al-Qaeda, accomplishing in a few weeks what the Red Army had failed to do in 10 years.

Eighty-percent of al-Qaeda membership was captured or killed, according to their own figures. And although we didn’t get the leaders, the survivors were scattered, unable to communicate with each other, destitute, and repudiated all over the world.

So this was a movement that was in a kind of zombie-like state.

It was Iraq that set the prairie on fire, that gave them another chance. Ironically, Iraq was never on bin Laden’s list of a likely candidate for Jihad because he knew it was a largely Shia nation, and al-Qaeda of course is an Sunni organization.

So it wasn’t high on his list. But we gave him an opportunity. And he took it.

__________

Messrs. Wright and Kreisler, chatting about Wright’s fantastic chronicle of the origins of the war on terror The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

Keep going:

  • The story of how Christopher Hitchens was almost killed in a lynch mob in Pakistan
  • In 1907, Joseph Conrad already realized the psychology of terrorists
  • From Wright’s book — inside the mind of Muhammad Atta

Lawrence Wright

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Martin Amis on Terror, Iraq, and His Father

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Interview, Politics

≈ Comments Off on Martin Amis on Terror, Iraq, and His Father

Tags

ethics, Father, foreign policy, interview, Iraq, Iraq War, Islam, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, morality, Quran, Son, Taliban, terror, Terrorism, Terry Eagleton, War

Jon Snow: Look at the war on Iraq – do you not think that would stir an urge in the Arab world when they see women and children ravaged by what we Westerners are doing?

Martin Amis: I’ve said in print that by far the greatest danger of terrorism is not what it inflicts, but what it provokes; and the Iraq war has been a disaster. I was against it at the time, and I’m against it now. Blowing up a London nightclub on lady’s night [as an uncovered terrorist plot had planned] doesn’t seem to me to be a proportionate act in response to that.

The other night, I asked an audience to put up its hands if it felt morally superior to the Taliban. To the Taliban – who have two-day massacres, slash the throats of children, not only subtract women from society, but black up the windows of the houses they’re confined to. And only a third of the audience raised its hands.

Jon Snow: But do you feel morally superior to Islam?

Martin Amis: I feel morally superior to Islamism, yes. By some distance.

Jeremy Paxman: Islam itself?

Martin Amis: Well, I feel an intellectual distance from it.

Jon Snow: What do you say to the charge that you are your father’s son?

Martin Amis: Well, he’s now being lazily and cornily defamed by his critics when he’s not around to defend himself. You have an argument with your father all your life – and he’s been dead for twelve years, and I’m still having that argument.

I was on most things to the left of him. But critics are accusing him of impulses he never had – he was never homophobic; he had a difficult time in his relations with women, but was not misogynistic; was not, in any sense, anti-semitic, except in the odd impulse. And why do we not admit to these odd impulses?

Do we cleanse ourselves? Do we pretend that we’re homogenous and pure and clean? Do we want to live with that kind of illusion?

The anti-semites, the psychotic misogynists and homophobics are the Islamists.

__________

Martin Amis in an interview with Jon Snow in 2007.

Martin Amis and Isabel Fonseca

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“It’s a Quagmire”

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Politics

≈ Comments Off on “It’s a Quagmire”

Tags

Dick Cheney, Iraq, Iraq War, Kurdistan, middle east, Occupation, Saddam Hussein, Syria, Terrorism, Turkey, War

Dick Cheney

“Once you got to Iraq and took it over, and took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place?

That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire.”

__________

Dick Cheney, riffing in an interview with CNN on April 15th, 1994.

Go on:

  • There’s Always a Reason to Invade: Joseph Schumpeter on Roman Imperialism
  • What Kipling’s “Recessional” Can Teach Us
  • Martin Amis on Terror and Boredom

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What Could’ve Been among Jews and Arabs

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in History

≈ Comments Off on What Could’ve Been among Jews and Arabs

Tags

Arabia, Arabs, Chaim Weizmann, conflict, Felix Frankfurter, Hamas, history, Homeland, Iraq, Israel, Israel-Palestine, Jews, letter, middle east, Middle East History, Palestine, peace, Prince Feisal Husseini, Syria, Zionism, Zionist Organisation to Peace Conference

King Faisal of Iraq

Paris, March 3, 1919.
DEAR MR. FRANKFURTER:

I want to take this opportunity of my first contact with American Zionists to tell you what I have often been able to say to Dr. Weizmann in Arabia and Europe.

We feel that the Arabs and Jews are cousins in having suffered similar oppressions at the hands of powers stronger than themselves, and by a happy coincidence have been able to take the first step towards the attainment of their national ideals together.

We Arabs, especially the educated among us look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organisation to Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate proper.

We will do our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.

With the chiefs of your movement, especially with Dr. Weizmann, we have had and continue to have the closest relations. He has been a great helper of our cause, and I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to make the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and revived Near East, and our two movements complete one another.

The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist. Our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed I think that neither can be a real success without the other…

I look forward, and my people with me look forward, to a future in which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are mutually interested may once again take their places in the community of civilised peoples of the world.

Believe me,
Yours sincerely,
(Sgd.) Feisal. 3rd MARCH, 1919.

__________

A letter sent from Feisal Husseini (above, center), then King of Syria and later Iraq, to United States Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter (pictured below).

Read on:

  • What’s the point of reading history if you’ll just forget it later?
  • The last gentleman on the Titanic
  • The Hungarian photographer who stormed Omaha Beach

Felix Frankfurter

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A Chekist on the Global Chessboard

30 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Interview, Politics

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Anne Applebaum, Cheka, Chekist, China, Clement Attlee, Communism, current events, Danielle Crittenden, David Frum, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Gulag, Gulag: A History, Harry Truman, International Politics, Iraq, KGB, Leninism, Leon Trotsky, Leonid Brezhnev, Lev Kamenev, Neville Chamberlain, Nikita Khrushchev, North Korea, Police State, Russia, Russian History, Saddam Hussein, Secret Police, Soviet Union, Stalinism, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Torture, Totalitarianism, Vladimir Lenin, Vladimir Putin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Winston Churchill

Vladimir Putin

Brian Lamb: Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you say [Putin] was a ‘Cheka’?

Anne Applebaum: Putin was a member of the secret police, which was later called the KGB. And the old name — the Leninist era name — for the KGB is the Cheka. And Putin has described himself as a ‘Chekist,’ which is an old fashioned word for secret policeman.

Brian Lamb: What does that mean to you?

Anne Applebaum: The first time I heard him say it, it filled me with horror. It’s like somebody saying, “I was a Brownshirt.” It has very, very unpleasant connotations.

Brian Lamb: Why do you think he says it?

Anne Applebaum: He says it because it gives him an aura of invincibility. ‘We were the people behind the scenes who were running the old Soviet Union.’ The term still commands a certain amount of respect in Russia. A poll was done recently which showed that some 60 or 70 percent of Russians still think Lenin was a great man who contributed to their country. So he’s echoing a respect for the Russian Revolution.

Brian Lamb: I read a story in The New York Times about Saddam Hussein which read just like [accounts of the Soviet Gulag] —  the enemies lists that they had, the kind of people they put away, the torturing that went on. How much of this is still going on around the world?

Anne Applebaum: I would say a great deal. The Stalinist regime — and later the Krushchevite and Brezhnevite regimes in the Soviet Union — actually spread their techniques, and they taught people around the world how to run police states. I have no doubt that, through the East Germans, Saddam Hussein’s police state was probably set up with Russian or Soviet advice.

It is not an accident that so many of these systems share so much in common; there was a set of techniques, they were deliberately spread. The Soviet camp was exported to China; the Chinese exported it to North Korea. The North Korean Gulag that exists today sounds, from what little we know about it, very much like Stalin’s Gulag.

__________

From Anne Applebaum’s 2003 interview with C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb, discussing her Pulitzer Prize-winning book Gulag: A History.

I sometimes think it all boils down to names. We had Roosevelt (Dutch for “rose garden”) then Truman (Old English: “honest man”); Chamberlain (“servant of a bed chamber”) then Churchill (“church’s hill”) and Attlee (“from the meadow”).

They had Stalin (“man of steel”) and his henchmen: Kamenev (“man of stone”), Molotov (“hammer”), Lenin (“from the River Lena”) — and Trotsky (The name on one of young Lev Bronstein’s fake passports, which wound up catching on).

Putin, though he mysteriously lacks a single antecedent family member who shares his surname, lays claim to a strangely appropriate etymology: “on his way”, “on his path”.

In the next few weeks, I’ll post more on this topic as well as excerpts from Applebaum’s book, which as far as I can tell is now considered the preeminent history of the Soviet prison and slave labor system (a Google search for “gulag book” displays it first, above Solzhenitsyn’s Archipelago). Gulag concludes with a clear-eyed rumination on the post-Soviet psyche, especially as it is expressed by today’s Russians and enacted in the 20th century atavisms of their largely popular Chekist-in-Chief. Writing in her epilogue a decade ago, Applebaum observed,

[T]en years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia, the country that has inherited the Soviet Union’s diplomatic and foreign policies, its embassies, its debts, and its seat at the United Nations, continues to act as if it has not inherited the Soviet Union’s history. Russia does not have a national museum dedicated to the history of repression. Nor does Russia have a national place of mourning, a monument which officially recognizes the suffering of victims and their families…

Many Russians experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union as a profound blow to their personal pride. Perhaps the old system was bad, they now feel—but at least we were powerful. And now that we are not powerful, we do not want to hear that it was bad. It is too painful, like speaking ill of the dead.

Unlike most attempts at mass psychoanalysis, these considerations are hardly trivial, especially as we attempt to internalize what is happening in Ukraine and perhaps anticipate the Chekist’s next move.

On a brighter note: I recommend not only Applebaum’s substantial book, but also her columns, which are printed in The Washington Post. Along with Danielle Crittenden (wife of conservative political commentator David Frum), she has also published a cook book on Polish comfort food — and though I can’t speak to its merits, I can say that when juxtaposed with her work on the famines of Stalinism makes her probably the most versatile author I’ve cited on this blog. (Below: Applebaum and Crittenden; below that, Applebaum with her sons and husband, Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.)

Anne Applebaum and Danielle Crittenden Anne Applebaum and Family

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A Death in the Family

17 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by jrbenjamin in Journalism, Politics, War

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A Death in the Family, Christopher Hitchens, Iraq, Mark Daily, Vanity Fair

Mark Daily

In November of 2007, Vanity Fair published a nonfiction piece titled “A Death in the Family,” which tells the story of a young American lieutenant named Mark Daily and how his death in Iraq impacted his family, his community, and the author of the article.

This is my favorite work of journalism about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve found my eyes welling up each time I’ve read it. The prestigious school of journalism at New York University recently nominated this article as one of the top 80 works of journalism of the past decade.

If you have ten minutes to spare today, I highly recommend you read this article and give some thought to the brave Mark Daily and the guys like him now serving on our behalf in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I’ve reprinted my favorite section of “A Death in the Family” below. It tells of the author’s first meeting with Mark’s family as well as the eventual memorial service for Mark which was held on the coastline of Oregon.

__________

“At the first chance I got, I invited his family for lunch in California. We ended up spending the entire day together. As soon as they arrived, I knew I had been wrong to be so nervous. They looked too good to be true: like a poster for the American way. John Daily is an aerospace project manager, and his wife, Linda, is an audiologist. Their older daughter, Christine, eagerly awaiting her wedding, is a high-school biology teacher, and the younger sister, Nicole, is in high school. Their son Eric is a bright junior at Berkeley with a very winning and ironic grin. And there was Mark’s widow, an agonizingly beautiful girl named Snejana (‘Janet’) Hristova, the daughter of political refugees from Bulgaria. Her first name can mean ‘snowflake,’ and this was his name for her in the letters of fierce tenderness that he sent her from Iraq. These, with your permission, I will not share, except this:

One thing I have learned about myself since I’ve been out here is that everything I professed to you about what I want for the world and what I am willing to do to achieve it was true. …

My desire to “save the world” is really just an extension of trying to make a world fit for you.

If that is all she has left, I hope you will agree that it isn’t nothing.

On a drive to Fort Knox, Kentucky, and again shortly before shipping out from Fort Bliss, Texas, Mark had told his father that he had three wishes in the event of his death. He wanted bagpipes played at the service, and an Irish wake to follow it. And he wanted to be cremated, with the ashes strewn on the beach at Neskowin, Oregon, the setting for his happiest memories of boyhood vacations. The first two of these conditions had already been fulfilled. The Dailys rather overwhelmed me by asking if I would join them for the third one. So it was that in August I found myself on the dunes by an especially lovely and remote stretch of the Oregon coastline. The extended family was there, including both sets of grandparents, plus some college friends of Mark’s and his best comrade from the army, an impressive South Dakotan named Matt Gross. As the sun began to sink on a day that had been devoted to reminiscence and moderate drinking, we took up the tattered Stars and Stripes that had flown outside the family home since Mark’s deployment and walked to his favorite spot to plant it. Everyone was supposed to say something, but when John Daily took the first scoop from the urn and spread the ashes on the breeze, there was something so unutterably final in the gesture that tears seemed as natural as breathing and I wasn’t at all sure that I could go through with it. My idea had been to quote from the last scene of Macbeth, which is the only passage I know that can hope to rise to such an occasion. The tyrant and usurper has been killed, but Ross has to tell old Siward that his boy has perished in the struggle:

Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt;
He only lived but till he was a man;
T
he which no sooner had his prowess confirm’d
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.

This being Shakespeare, the truly emotional and understated moment follows a beat or two later, when Ross adds:

Your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end.

I became a trifle choked up after that, but everybody else also managed to speak, often reading poems of their own composition, and as the day ebbed in a blaze of glory over the ocean, I thought, Well, here we are to perform the last honors for a warrior and hero, and there are no hysterical ululations, no shrieks for revenge, no insults hurled at the enemy, no firing into the air or bogus hysterics. Instead, an honest, brave, modest family is doing its private best. I hope no fanatical fool could ever mistake this for weakness. It is, instead, a very particular kind of strength. If America can spontaneously produce young men like Mark, and occasions like this one, it has a real homeland security instead of a bureaucratic one. To borrow some words of George Orwell’s when he first saw revolutionary Barcelona, ‘I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.'”

Mark Daily

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