I just came across this amazing documentary made in 2004 by Sean Langan and I decided to share it with you because of the many analyses I have recently written on the US armed forces. Watching this documentary I realized how vividly it illustrates the totally dysfunctional and delusional nature of the US military. Now, 14 years later, we can clearly see how what Langan showed in this documentary has resulted in the total disaster of the US interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere. Clearly, the only thing the US military can do is to f**k up any country it invades. Rumor has it that there will be no “reconquista” of Syria and that Trump will pull the US forces out. I am still very dubious, but let’s hope this does happen and that it sets a precedent for the other US military interventions elsewhere. Frankly, I am not holding my breath, not as long as the Neocons are in power. Time will tell. In the meantime, I leave you with this amazing flashback to 2004 and “Mission Accomplished”.
The Saker
An empire needs a military. The military needs to be professional. The Roman Empire had a professional military. In fact all armies of today are based on the Roman Army. However, abusing the military is very dangerous. If you use it too much and stretch it over the empire, you wear it out, especially if in the end you have no money to pay it, as all happened to the Roman Army.
How many wars has the US fought ? How much did it cost financially, in men and material. More than the Pentagon cares to admit. The NATO campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, which lasted 77 days, saw NATO lose 137 aircraft and 25 choppers, not counting troops on the ground. Many of the stated losses were American, which the Pentagon never dared admit.
For years i have been reading articles on the US military. Apparently it’s being worn out. The Air Force is short of pilots, while the US Army is having trouble finding recruits, now recruiting people with previously recorded psychological ailments, including those whose sexual orientation would have made them unacceptable not too long ago.
Do the neocons care ? No, why should they. To them the military is expendable, to be used for imperial conquest, being unofficially reduced to a corporate mercenary force. Such a state of affairs cannot end well. Do the neocons care ? Not really. When things start to go bad, they move to their prepared hideaways, both in the US and outside it. Repetition of history. That’s how the Roman elite behaved, fleeing Rome to Venice before the Vandals took the city.
US military recruitment is always inversely proportional to the unemployment rate.
There is an other one about Afghanistan, made by Vice: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI
I would wenture to say, that all those operations were smashing successes. Not victories of course in the traditional sense, but missions accomplished.
The “realm” is secured for the time being…
@borzoi. Mineral and cash reserves of the victims were successfully transferred to the AZC: oil, water, gold and currency. Opium fields were set up. More destruction of Israel’s neighbours. Yes, Mission Accomplished. Was the price paid by the U$A worth it? Ask Madeleine Albright.
There is ‘normal’ corruption, and then there is Mafia corruption. Normal corruption weakens the economy by 10-25%, Mafia corruption up to 90%. The laughable extent of Zionist organized crime corruption is, funny enough, currently the biggest hope for humanity. Even though the clowns in charge can print a billion USD per second, and build, buy, bribe anything and anyone, the ‘return on investment’ is trending ever closer to zero, which seems hard to comprehend considering that the Jewish Mafia has a almost monopoly on everything and no adversaries to talk of.
Stormy days ahead.
What’s hard to understand? It’s the usual: the profits for the few, the costs for the many – and not just financially. This has been going on for at least 120+ years in the USA, read US Marine General Smedley Butler’s War is a Racket, from 1935.
“War is a Racket”
-by ret Marine Gen Smedley Butler.
https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
Well worth a read. If you haven’t read it, you should. If you have read it, you should read it again periodically.
This documentary reminds me of two Vietnam genre films, Heaven and Earth, directed by Oliver Stone based on a true story of a Vietnamese peasant girl whose world collapsed thanks to the efforts of freedom and democracy.
The other film, Good Morning Vietnam has a similar feeling to this film, especially the broadcast BS of the the US military radio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOWjnVdZ0fs
Pride goeth before a fall, it’s just a question of when.
i remember watching that when it aired,, will bookmark it and rewatch later:)
This is incredible.
I had never seen this.
In fact, I doin’t think i have ever seen any similar footage that shows Baghdad, Baghdadis, the location, the reality of the American presence on the streets, the faces of the people of Iraq.
What the F were we thinking? What were we doing there? Taking over ht estreets and lives of a foreign country than didn’t want us. Little Yankee boys acting like big shots playing around with big dangerous toys.
Ignorant. Indoctrinated.
The signs of collegiate type American communications culture, the PX or whatever the supply house was is grotesque.
The whole scene is grotesque. The folly and waste of it all. The seminal crime of the new century.
The Freedom brand/product was/is a total fraud.
Sean Langan is the idea guide to this hell. Low-key, seemingly unflappable, empathetic, nonjudgmental.
Katherine
Just reread the intro above, and “delusional” is truly the operative word.
How did these delusions get translated to the horrors of Abu Ghraib? Torturing to impose “freedom” . . . ?
According to analyses I have read but right now cannot recall, the insurgence-repressions-insurgence dynamic in Iraq was the genesis of ISIS.
The world, including of course Europe and the EU, is reaping what the USA “coalition” and cowboys like Paul Bremer have sown.
Katherine
IIRC, the prison guards at Abu Gharaib were a National Guard unit. Which means they serve in the military part-time on top of their ‘day-job’. For the most part, their ‘day-job’ was serving as prison guards in American prisons. America, ‘the land of the free’, which locks up more people than any other nation on earth, including those America bombs in order to bring them such freedom.
It is unlikely that their plane to Iraq flew through a magical rain storm that turned a group of kind and caring American prison guards into sadistic jerks.
You nailed it Katherine… I thought I’d seen every doc on this subject, but I’ve never seen footage like this. This is like the Iraq war version of the “Vietnam” era, which was almost completely whitewashed out of existence — amazing that this doc was ever made, broadcast (?), and that it survives at all.
As media, it might as well have been shot 40 years ago. Hard to remember when BBC would put their name on something like this.
Great find, Saker.
So then, there is this:
http://www.stalkerzone.org/drunken-nato-troops-sexually-harassed-a-waitress-in-odessa/
(where was the Shore Patrol)
Troops on temp R & R + booze + testosterone=gross harassment!
My sense is that a fairly intensive NATO coverup on going in Poland/Baltics-very surprised if not.
US forces will leave Syria when Gen. Mattis says they will leave. Gen. Mattis is “the Decider”, thus he’s the one to listen to. Trump does not decide these things. Its doubtful that Obama was deciding them either, and everyone laughed when Dubya said he was “the Decider.”