Monday, September 20

I'd get somebody on this, ASAP.

 It is unclear how such a large number amassed so quickly. The number of Haitian arrivals began to reach unsustainable levels for US officials in Del Rio about two weeks ago, prompting the acting border patrol sector chief, Robert Garcia, to ask for help, according to a US official.

We have pretty shitty people working in our intelligence services it seems.  I suppose we can't outsource that work, or bring in foreigners or too many first- or second-generations who are more driven, by necessity, to succeed, but still...

Can they get anything right?  Ever since we learned, post-9-11, that the FBI ignored warnings that foreigners were taking flight lessons with no interest at all in learning how to land a plane, just control it, that we've got piss-poor results from our brains in charge.

Remember Parkland too?  Didn't a concerned family friend reach out to alert the FBI before those killings too?  Again they dropped the ball.

There's no excusing the whole 20-year military fiasco in Afghanistan either.  Turns out, our soldiers weren't actually training an army, but making promises:  "You get me out of this alive, translator, when the country falls, I'll get you and your extended family out too.  Deal?" Nothing doing though.  The taxpayers were paying our military to keep the problems over there.  That was the Bush Doctrine promise.  Let the U.S. military test out their new techonological weapons in the desert sands "over there", kill as many civilians / terrorists as necessary (*cough, cough), and we can pretend that these killings are "protecting" our people at home, done in the name of national security...

The military served it up, the media glorified the killings.  Every drone strike was a success, and the military was serving to save lives over here, by slaying terrorists who were imminently plotting to strike us... from over there.

Imagine if for the past 20 years, we'd been investigating ever drone strike on a wedding party that killed civilians the way we did the final drone assassination of the innocent family in Kabul.  Instead, our media got in bed with the military (formally "embedded") and swallowed every explanation they were fed.  Heck, it's hard to be critical or form independent opinions, I suppose, if you realize you've put your own life and safety into the hands of the military people surrounding and protectin you during your period of embedment. (That's why, once she took that first airplane ride up, Martha Raddatze -- for one, and a most visible one -- could no longer be trusted as a reliable news source.  She was in the military's pocket, gushing about their work ... "over there".  I suspect more print journalists than we know took up this special U.S. military invitation too, and "served" their craft, and their careers, right alongside the men and women serving the country.  That's noble, not non-neutral necessarily!, they probably protest.  Funny thing is, nobody in the embedded media detail either seemed to realize over the course of 20 years the futility of the military promises... People back home were safe and protected, afterall, thankful for the military for their service in killing the bad terrorists "over there" so our own children were safe here at home...

 Could honest coverage have ended the war sooner?  Do many Americans, other than myself, simply accept that America must be like Israel -- continually killilng, children included, and pretending such actions have to be taken to protect people?  It makes no sense, and Americans are wising up...

We are a moral people.  We do share Christian-Judeo values, and not everybody thinks that Israel's leaders should be leading America's, instead of vice versa.  

Just imagine, for a moment, that a foreign power had invaded our country, during President Trump's presidency say, and declared him an evil that must be eradicated.  Would our citizens rebel and fight back if our leaders were shot down, and a foreign army encamped on our soil for 20 years?  What if OUR nuclear scientists and researchers were being assassinated by drones, because they knew too much... science?  What if... Iran as well as Israel were able to cheat the non-proliferations treaties and secure nuclear status?  Honestly, I think that might bring more parity to the region.

Just like, sadly, it might take foreign drones dropping explosives on a few mini-vans here, picking kids up from school, or returning home from work, to recognize that whoever erred in our own military or intelligence services must be disciplined and held accountable.  Your actions killed innocents. 

So long as Biden is content to keep morally compromised men like Milley in power though, America will remain fractured.  Some of us relate more to the humans killed, no matter their race or ethnicity, than we do the powerful who continually pull the trigger with no accountability.

 Intelligence over weapons and force wins in the end.  Always has.  America would do well by her people to acknowledge this before it become a free-for-all deathtrap where might makes right...  Jesus, no!