A poem that seems apropos by Sara Teasdale

 

'There Will Come Soft Rains'

Bring them home

'We could have saved all of them': Israelis go on strike as hostage deaths trigger demand for Gaza deal

Protests and general strikes swept Israel on Monday as frustration and anger mounted over the failure of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to secure a cease-fire deal with Hamas that would free Israeli hostages held by the militant group in Gaza for nearly 11 months.

The action comes after Israel's military recovered the bodies of six hostages, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, from a tunnel in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

Goldberg-Polin's funeral was held Monday in Jerusalem. He was 23.

Protesters want Netanyahu do more to bring home the remaining 101 hostages, a third of whom Israeli officials estimate have died in captivity. They say Netanyahu is delaying doing a deal for his own political purposes. His ruling coalition government is propped up by far-right allies bitterly opposed to any kind of agreement with Hamas.

Netanyahu blames Hamas for the lack of progress.

Still, a cousin of Carmel Gat, one of the hostages whose body was recovered by Israel's Defense Forces on Sunday, told a press conference on Monday that "delays" by Netanyahu were the main obstacles to an agreement.

"All six of them were held together and all six of them were killed in captivity," Gal Dickmann said.

"We could have saved all of them."

My view on things

Hmmm....okay, I'm finally weighing in on this. Although I am not Jewish, I did minor in Judaic Studies, took classes on the Arab-Israeli conflict, get news from a variety of sources, am trained to evaluate them, and at least tangentially know people impacted by the attacks on October 7th and beyond. Don't get me wrong, I'm very much for peace in this conflict. But this, along with a lot of videos showing protesters who don't actually know what their goals are and can't explain them when pressed, make me wonder what this is really all about Also, I'm sorry, saying the university should feed the protesters as one story reported? I'm pretty sure the anti-Vietnam protesters brought their own snacks. My point is that it is not wrong to protest injustice-peacefully-it should be protested, but know what you're protesting and don't be entitled gets parroting someone else's agenda, or destroying property, trespassing, or making threats against other people. Yes, the political situation is horrible. No, there should not be a sort of apartheid in Israel. The response to the terror attacks should have targeted Hamas as much as possible, not civilians. But I don't understand women's groups who support terrorists who use rape as a weapon in a society that would oppress them, or gays marching when they are considered abominations in that culture. The protesters (on both sides) are often ill-informed, they're believing a lot of disinformation, they're not thinking critically, and some of them are downright bigoted. Which is sad, particularly the 'best and brightest' at Ivy League and other prominent schools, which have failed them in their education. That's my opinion, anyway.

NYC says half of those arrested at 2 pro-Palestinian campus protests were not students

Interesting fact (and an opinion)

In Arabic, 'Hamas' means "zeal", "strength", or "bravery". In Hebrew, it means "violence".

The portion of the Torah for this week that is read in synagogues, from Noach (the Hebrew book named after Noah in the Jewish scriptures) contains the word Hamas.

My friend, who was watching services this morning, pointed it out to me. It's getting a lot of attention on the Internet given the current events in Israel.

I just think this whole thing is a tragedy. What happened with the attacks on Jews in Israel was horrible, and unforgivable. The response, attacking civilians who are already corralled in Gaza and who have nowhere to go, the history of supplanting Palestinians [who, incidentally, are a nationality, not a religious group, as there are both Muslims and Christians who are Palestinian], so there could be a Jewish state (regardless of it being their ancient homeland) has roots going back a century-and-a-half and breeds extreme emotions and violence on both sides. And that is tragic.

My friend's synagogue has members in Israel. They are thankfully safe, and I am so glad for this. His friends from the congregation in general were shocked and expressed extreme grief at the deaths. I also heard a young man asking a lady on the bus with whom he had class how she and her family were. She said they were relieved her brother was safe, as he'd been at the hospital which was bombed, thinking it would be safer like so many. I nearly cried at her words. I can't imagine how either side feels in terms of lack of safety (even here in America there is fear of attacks for both) and the fate of loved ones. I pray for those affected on both sides who are not the instigators themselves, the ones who viciously began this war.

It's just all so sad.

The Israeli-Palestinian war is already full of tragedy and death

This could make it something of epic proportions.

UN Chief Appeals for Israel to Avert a Humanitarian Catastrophe

Israel evacuation order: Tens of thousands flee northern Gaza - BBC News

I hate this

As much as I'm pro-Jewish, I am not a real supporter of Israel itself. I believe it has engaged in the equivalent of apartheid, and recent moves by the right-wing government have sparked a great deal of protest (Israel does not have a Constitution, and the Knesset, their parliament, recently took most of the power away from the Supreme Court of Israel. Thousands have been marching in the streets for months, with little coverage here in America). Neither am I a supporter of Palestine either, and Hamas has a lot to answer for, and a lot of money is funnelled in there from outside sources who do not want Israel to exist. The Arab-Israeli conflict is extremely complex with years of terror and retaliation. It hurts my heart to see death on either side. I wish we could just see peace in the Middle East. But there have been generations of hatred entrenched, and I think it might take a miracle to get the various groups to sit down and talk with one another and see their similarities amid their differences. Most people just want a better life, and one for their children. I don't understand the rest.

Hamas surprise attack out of Gaza stuns Israel and leaves hundreds dead in fighting, retaliation

Lest we forget

The Tragic Futility of World War I: A century on, we're still paying the price.

If you find human behavior discouraging today, consider what happened a century ago. A Martian might have gazed down upon Europe in 1914 and seen a peaceful, prosperous continent with a shared culture. Pretty much everyone had enough to eat. The English listened to Wagner, Germans savored Shakespeare, Russian aristocrats mimicked the French, Mozart and Italian opera were loved by all. Then, Europe imploded.

Ten days before Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, prompting the descent into the Great War, “people everywhere were working, resting, eating, sleeping, dreaming of nothing less than of war,” a British political scientist wrote in The Atlantic the following year. “War came upon them like a thunderclap.”

I particularly like this paragraph:

It was a sad, pointless war, for which we’re still paying a price. A hard-hearted peace treaty and a ravaged economy produced a “lost generation” of young Germans and led directly to the rise of Hitler and an even uglier worldwide conflagration. The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement reached by Britain and France in 1916 drew arbitrary boundary lines across the postwar Middle East—around Iraq, for instance—that are returning deadly dividends to this day. The toppling of the Russian monarchy and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire created a balkanized Europe that, as recently as the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over strife-torn Ukraine, pains us still. The world was a nastier place after the war than before it.

100 years since World War I: Could it happen again today?

One hundred years ago today, Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia in retaliation for the assassination one month earlier of his heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by a Serbian pan-Slavic nationalist. What might otherwise have remained a regional conflict between the dying Hapsburg Empire and one of its former holdings instead became, through a tangle of alliances and a global power imbalance, two world wars that began in 1914 and ended in 1945, with a 21-year intermission for the Jazz Age and the Great Depression. Civilian and military casualties for the two wars approached 100 million – roughly the entire population of the United States as of July 1914.

3 important lessons learned from World War I

The hallowed ground of World War I, then and now uses an interesting technique to show pictures of the time, and swiping to pictures of the same areas now.

World War One: Every Man Remembered database launched

The Royal British Legion has started an online campaign to gather tributes to every Commonwealth serviceman and woman who died in World War One.

A total of 1,117,077 service personnel from what was then the British Empire died in the war, which began in 1914.

The outbreak of the First World War reminds us why we need a peace movement

Today marks one hundred years since Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. And so began four years of hell in Europe. The failure of diplomacy to prevent war and the inability of elites to prophesy its cost was an indictment of absolutism. Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia – whose combined ambitions in the East largely engineered the war – were monarchies in which too few people of too little calibre enjoyed too much power.

My first thought when I the news of the Malaysian Airlines MH17 broke was of the Lusitania. The thing about being trained as a historian is that you think in patterns, in waves of repetition, and analyse the similarities and difference in historical events. I may not remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but my historical memory is long, and the things other people forget over time seem very real to me.

I'm not saying we'll be drawn into the Ukrainian conflict like we were into World War I, or that our world is heading for another World War. But there are things that historians hold their breath for when they encounter them in the present, wondering if diplomacy will hold, wondering if we've never quite escaped, as the one piece put it, nations 'in which too few people of too little calibre enjoyed too much power'. There's a general unrest among the have-nots these days, and the haves seem to get fewer and more out of touch from the have-nots. There are fine, noble people using their wealth to better humanity and our world--but increasingly it is less about wealth of individuals and more about corporations. Our food, our water, our very lives, are controlled by corporations that flood our political agendas with money for their own good, engineer our food, frak our resources, market to our children, and in many ways they own our leaders. And so in many ways, today's world has a much scarier potential for conflicts to escalate than we have seen in years. It is, in fact, one of the reasons I remind myself of the good in people, of those who hold to peace. But things that seem to repeat history or which can act as a flashpoint still trouble me greatly.

This was quite possibly my favourite song growing up

We had it on a 45 record. Someone pieced together a wonderful and powerful video to go along with it.

A video that captures

The dread and horror of the official uniformed visit to the family of a fallen soldier. I was aware of this when I was very young. My father served several tours in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam and Thailand. Fortunately, we never got that visit. But its possibility hangs over every military family. One of my friends lost her father in the military and probably did have such a visit. So many today have as well.

Anyway, I was looking to hear something new from Linkin Park, but came across this while doing so. And I must admit, it made me cry. My father and I have not spoken in over nineteen years. But the fear of losing him as a child is still very much in my psyche.

A legacy of war that is really frightening

Veterans and Brain Disease

In people with C.T.E. [chronic traumatic encephalopathy], an abnormal form of a protein accumulates and eventually destroys cells throughout the brain, including the frontal and temporal lobes. Those are areas that regulate impulse control, judgment, multitasking, memory and emotions.

That Marine was the first Iraq veteran found to have C.T.E., but experts have since autopsied a dozen or more other veterans’ brains and have repeatedly found C.T.E. The findings raise a critical question: Could blasts from bombs or grenades have a catastrophic impact similar to those of repeated concussions in sports, and could the rash of suicides among young veterans be a result?

“P.T.S.D. in a high-risk cohort like war veterans could actually be a physical disease from permanent brain damage, not a psychological disease,” said Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who examined the veteran. Dr. Omalu published an article about the 27-year-old veteran as a sentinel case in Neurosurgical Focus, a peer-reviewed medical journal.

The discovery of C.T.E. in veterans could be stunningly important. Sadly, it could also suggest that the worst is yet to come, for C.T.E. typically develops in midlife, decades after exposure. If we are seeing C.T.E. now in war veterans, we may see much more in the coming years.

Given the number of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the multiple tours of duty, this could mean serious complications in coming years. Already it is being linked to the rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and suicide. The nature of the wars fought in these arenas is that repeated blasts mean repeated concussions at a unprecedented rate. The military is trying to be proactive about this, but there's just so much you can do to protect the head from a blast. But it's good they're recognising this. I hope we can find better ways to treat those who have suffered this before they, too, are lost to the war.

Listening to, and quotations

Linkin Park: Minutes to Midnight

'Hands Held High', which includes the following quote:

When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.--Jean-Paul Sartre, The Devil and the Good Lord (1951) act 1

How true.

When I had that NY Times subscription

on my Kindle, I was struck that each day they listed those who were killed in Afghanistan (and there was a rare day when no one was). Often, the men and women listed were from the 101st Airborne Division, which is based in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

101st Suffers Deadliest Combat Year Since Vietnam

They arrived in Afghanistan in February 2010. Since that time 106 members of the division have been killed, surpassing those killed in Iraq.

My thoughts are with their families, and with other servicemen and women--and those left behind--during such a difficult time. I know three people personally whose husband or son have been or are in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

I was a child of the Vietnam War whose father spent most of the first six years of my life in southeast Asia. There is one picture of me (I'm about 2) with my finger pointing at his picture. My mother always thought it looked like I was asking, 'Is this my Daddy?'

War is awful--horrendous on those in the battle zone and agonising for those left behind. I wish we could end this conflict easily and just bring them all home. I just don't think that is possible at this juncture, though.

How to know you've been fighting a war too damn long

Kids on 9/11 now fighting long Afghan war: Many of the troops who invaded in 2001 have left military and moved on

After awhile, don't you kind of lose sight of why? I don't think we have just yet, but still.... And the Afghani people have seen 30 years of war, with the Soviets, the Taliban, and the Americans/NATO forces all in that time. So sad.

I don't know what the outcome will be, but it will no doubt be messy. One of the things I like about the New York Times (I have a free two-month subscription on the Kindle, so I've being reading that every day) is that they always list the number of troops that have died by that day, along with any new ones. A great proportion seem to be from the 101st Airborne, which I believe is based, or at least partly so, here in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Reflecting

I agree wholeheartedly with Rachel Maddow (via Joe.My.God.):


This, for those who have not read back that far, is the post I put up on March 19, 2003--the day the United States invaded Iraq:

I watched the news tonight with a sick feeling in my stomach. I do not agree with this war that our president and his supporters seem so hell-bent on. But I also realise that it is inevitable. I thought so from the moment Bush was declared the winner in the election-long before the attacks of September 11th. I only hope that it may be accomplished without the loss of innocent lives. I rather think that is a faint hope--so the people of the Middle East and our soldiers and those of our allies are very much in my thoughts and prayers tonight.

As much as I am against this war (for I do not believe it is a just one, or one that must be fought to avert an imminent threat to my country), I don't agree with those who would protest by disrupting daily life. After all, that seems to be more a tactic that terrorists would approve. I guess I'm more of the candlelight vigil-type peacenik than the sign-waving type. Or maybe the pick-up-the-pieces-do-what-you-can-in-the-aftermath sort. And as a child of the Vietnam Era, I can't support verbal or other attacks on our soldiers, even though we have an all-volunteer military these days. After all, many of them joined up to see if they could get money for school or otherwise better life for themselves and their families. Most gung-ho idiots I've ever known who really wanted to go to war were singularly unsuited for military life and were drummed out or never accepted in the first place.

I did not agree with the Gulf War, but at least in that case Iraq had invaded a neighbouring country; and I was frustrated that to have started everything in motion they didn't "finish" it by removing Hussein. I felt that we (and by we, I mean the UN, rather than the US alone) should have intervened in Bosnia long before we did). I am not a pacifist. I would cheer the Iraqis if they rose up against Saddam Hussein. But I'm not sure the US has a right to go barrelling into another country virtually unilaterally. I mean, how would we feel if someone did that to us? I'm sure we'd cry foul. I hate to see the US government play up world unity and the UN when it suits its purpose, but then pretend that it doesn't have to play by anyone else's rules. And I certainly don't think it's honourable to do so.

So for now, the world waits. I'm still not convinced that it will be quick like the supposed authorities say. Certainly if Iraq uses any type of weapon it wasn't supposed to have a lot of other countries will join in. I can see where the war of worlds and dares and all the buildup can go far before the first bullet is fired. If the intent is to occupy Baghdad, though, it may be another matter. Big countries with lots of power often run afoul of things when they think they can go traipsing into that area (think of Russia in Afghanistan as the most recent example). We have the might, but they have the turf.

I just don't know where this will lead. I'm almost numb with the possibilities--and I'm not even directly affected. I think our world needs a bit of luck and perhaps divine intervention to make it through this new century, though.

Nothing about how I feel has changed, and I think I was right. I'm sure a lot of people who did make horrible decisions feel the same, and maybe they can sleep at night. But I'm glad I didn't send thousands of people to their death over political machinations.

I hope that despite it all, the people of Iraq can hold things together on their own and achieve democracy--something they'll have to do on their own, ultimately; it can't really be imposed. But I still have a sick feeling about what might happen now that we've officially left. The situation is extremely complex and has a history going back not just decades but far beyond. I just hope things improve, but that hope is a little faint.

For some, the war lingers for a long, long time

US soldiers returning from Iraq face 'invisible wounds'

As troops return home from 12 months of deployment, experts warn of what many refer to as "the invisible wounds".

Depression, isolation, stress, anger, divorce and suicide are just part of the emotional challenges facing some of the troops.

Scott Swaim, a Gulf War veteran and a therapist at Spring Valleys in Washington DC, says when troops first come home they initially go through "the honeymoon period"

But the images of horror many of them have seen are not memories they can easily leave behind.

"The depression is huge and suicide rates are off the charts," says Mr Swaim.

"Because there's a lot of stigma with mental illness. A lot of people never understand it and in the military there's a double stigma - we're soldiers, not victims," he adds.

Just this month a US Department of Defense task force reported that between 2005 and 2009, more than 1,100 members of the Armed Forces committed suicide.

The military tends to let people fall through the cracks once they're back on US soil, living 'normal' lives after months or years of experiencing horrible things on a daily basis. I hope the brass is waking up to this problem, and that our government is appropriating more resources to help save our veterans' lives and sanity, both in country and back home.

Barbaric if the allegations prove true

Official: Taliban execute boy, 7, as spy: Afghan president condemns alleged act as 'crime against humanity'

Suspected Taliban militants publicly hanged a 7-year-old boy for spying in the militant stronghold of Helmand province, an Afghan official told the Associated Press.

The child was placed on trial by the Islamic extremist group and later found guilty of working for Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, the local official said.

Karzai on Thursday condemned the alleged act, calling it a "crime against humanity".

Seven years old???

Go find a kid to hug. Children are precious; they are our future. They should not be pawns of adults.

A grim milestone indeed

Texan is GI death 1,000 in Afghan war: 'He always wanted to die for his country,' brother says

The 1,000th American serviceman killed in Afghanistan had already fallen once to a hidden explosive, driving his Humvee over a bomb in Iraq in 2007. The blast punched the dashboard radio into his face and broke his leg in two places.

Marine Cpl. Jacob C. Leicht didn't survive his second encounter with a bomb this week. The death of the 24-year-old Texan born on the Fourth of July marks a grim milestone in the Afghanistan war.

Leicht, who spent two painful years recovering from the Iraq blast, was killed Thursday when he stepped on a land mine in Helmand province that ripped off his right arm. He had written letters from his hospital bed begging to be put back on the front lines, and died less than a month into that desperately sought second tour.

To his family, I hope the fact that he lived and died as he wanted to brings you comfort. You are in my thoughts and prayers.

A different sort of archive

Archiving mementos at Section 60: Curators collect items left at Arlington cemetery

Without a national memorial to the more than 5,300 service members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, Section 60 has become its own community of remembrance. Thousands of mementos left at their graves stand testament to the grief of loved ones.

Crown Royal whiskey bottles, war medals, birth announcements, wedding photos, Christmas ornaments, GI Joe action figures, painted rocks, church bulletins, a fishing lure, even a rubber duck are among the items left at the graves of the more than 600 from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who are buried at Arlington.

Families gather for birthday parties for the fallen, leaving behind cupcakes and balloons. War orphans drop off handmade valentines. Twenty-somethings with crewcuts and military boots smoke a cigar and set an empty beer bottle next to a buddy's white grave marker.

Arlington is a working cemetery, not a museum, not a memorial. For years items left at the cemetery were thrown away in an effort to keep it clean and presentable. But last fall a request was made to begin to collect items left at the gravesides. Every Thursday, military curators gather non-perishable items, photograph them, and then bag them up and take them with them. They're intentionally not accessessioning them, to prevent them from becoming specifically military property, but they are saving them until a next step can be determined. Someday, I'm sure, there will be a memorial to those who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan, but until that time, curators are preserving history for us. Kudos to them, and to their effort. As one of the women interviewed for the article (who found out she was pregnant a few day after husband's death) said:

When they see a card left from a 2-year-old or a balloon left welcoming a son that they never met, I think that makes more of an impact. It makes Americans a little bit more thankful or appreciative.

She's right. A tangible item puts things into perspective, breathes life into names and numbers, and remind us of the personalities lost and left behind. I hope this pilot project continues.

A look at spaces left behind

In the musical Les Misérables, Marius sings of the 'empty chairs and empty tables' now that his friends from the student rebellion have died.

Photographer Ashley Gilbertson has taken photos of the bedrooms left behind by soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. These poignant reminders of loss show the personalities of their former occupants, now lost to the world.

The Shrine Down the Hall

The New York Times Magazine put twenty of her photographs together as a slideshow, along with the name, age, place, and circumstances of death for each one. Each name links to a picture of the person. My favourite, the one that really got me the most, was that of Private First Class Richard P. Langenbrunner, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who died on April 17, 2007 in Rustamiyah, Iraq, of a suicide. He was 19 years old. His room has posters of Stargate SG-1 and Lord of the Rings; he has a replica of Bilbo Baggins' sword 'Sting' on his wall as well. There is a telescope in the window, pointed towards the heavens. The room strikes you as that of someone curious, imaginative, and ready to explore.

The photos are stark, black-and-white. They resonate with emptiness and remembrance, as shrines to loved ones now gone. A daughter's stuffed animals, a son's baseball trophies--the details of the things we surround ourselves with--they are all that remain. The photos themselves are moving, and the details worth contemplating.

What would remain of you when you die? How would your family remember you?

I read about this photoessay on Brandon's blog. Thanks, Brandon.

If only there could really be peace on Earth...

Happy Xmas (War is Over) by John Lennon (warning to the squeamish; there are very graphic images included of death and injury, which is part of the point...the EMI folks won't let you embed the video, but I found it very moving, and a good reminder for why we should work for peace. So in the stress of the holidays, as you're surrounded by loved ones and trying to put batteries into radio-controlled cars, remember those both far away and near for which this is an ordinary day of fear, of horror, of hunger, or isolation, and find a way to be part of the solution to the ills of the world.

Of course, there's also this (now) Christmas classic, which has done exactly that over the last 25 (25!) years:


Merry Christmas!