Military Commissioning Quotes

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

First is our unbreakable rule that every candidate must be a trained trooper, blooded under fire, a veteran of combat drops. No other army in history has stuck to this rule, although some came close. Most great military schools of the past—Saint Cyr, West Point, Sandhurst, Colorado Springs—didn’t even pretend to follow it; they accepted civilian boys, trained them, commissioned them, sent them out with no battle experience to command men . . . and sometimes discovered too late that this smart young ‘officer’ was a fool, a poltroon, or a hysteric.

War. In 1901, he graduated from the Virginia Military Institute, where he marched before Stonewall Jackson’s widow. He soon joined the Army, which then was recovering from its low ebb of the 1890s, the decade when the frontier officially closed and the last of the Indian wars ended. The Army expanded rapidly in the wake of the Spanish–American War of 1898, almost quadrupling in size to 100,000. As part of that growth, George Marshall received his commission. In this newly energized force, he stood out as a young officer. Marshall was temporarily posted to Fort Douglas, Utah—originally placed on a hillside overlooking Salt Lake City to keep an eye on Brigham Young’s nascent and hostile Mormon empire. One

❝Washington — perhaps as many global powers have done in the past — uses what I might call the “immaculate conception” theory of crises abroad. That is, we believe we are essentially out there, just minding our own business, trying to help make the world right, only to be endlessly faced with a series of spontaneous, nasty challenges from abroad to which we must react. There is not the slightest consideration that perhaps US policies themselves may have at least contributed to a series of unfolding events. This presents a huge paradox: how can America on the one hand pride itself on being the world’s sole global superpower, with over seven hundred military bases abroad and the Pentagon’s huge global footprint, and yet, on the other hand, be oblivious to and unacknowledging of the magnitude of its own role — for better or for worse — as the dominant force charting the course of world events? This Alice-in-Wonderland delusion affects not just policy makers, but even the glut of think tanks that abound in Washington. In what may otherwise often be intelligent analysis of a foreign situation, the focus of each study is invariably the other country, the other culture, the negative intentions of other players; the impact of US actions and perceptions are quite absent from the equation. It is hard to point to serious analysis from mainstream publications or think tanks that address the role of the United States itself in helping create current problems or crises, through policies of omission or commission. We’re not even talking about blame here; we’re addressing the logical and self-evident fact that the actions of the world’s sole global superpower have huge consequences in the unfolding of international politics. They require examination.

Private sector networks in the United States, networks operated by civilian U.S. government agencies, and unclassified U.S. military and intelligence agency networks increasingly are experiencing cyber intrusions and attacks,” said a U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report to Congress that was published the same month Conficker appeared. “. . . Networks connected to the Internet are vulnerable even if protected with hardware and software firewalls and other security mechanisms. The government, military, businesses and economic institutions, key infrastructure elements, and the population at large of the United States are completely dependent on the Internet. Internet-connected networks operate the national electric grid and distribution systems for fuel. Municipal water treatment and waste treatment facilities are controlled through such systems. Other critical networks include the air traffic control system, the system linking the nation’s financial institutions, and the payment systems for Social Security and other government assistance on which many individuals and the overall economy depend. A successful attack on these Internet-connected networks could paralyze the United States [emphasis added].

The trial wasn’t the finest hour of American justice as the treatment of the prisoners seemed medieval in its barbarism. Almost all of the male prisoners were dragged into the courtroom with linen masks shielding their faces and chains and heavy iron balls strapped to their ankles. With clanking irons, they shuffled in and, once seated, their hoods were removed. The military commission took testimony for seven weeks and ultimately found all eight defendants guilty, with four of them (Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt) sentenced to hang while three others (including Michael O’Laughlen) were given life imprisonment and one a six-year term. Mary Surratt, who ran a boardinghouse where Booth colluded with other conspirators, went down in historical annals as the first woman ever executed by the federal government.

Near the end of his job application to Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo touted himself as someone who could “be the equal of any other in architecture and the composition of buildings.” But for his first few years in Milan, he had trouble getting any such commissions. So for the time being, he pursued his architectural interests the way he did his military interests: mainly on paper as imaginative visions never to be implemented.

The decision by the ruling elites in ancient Rome—dominated by a bloated military and a corrupt oligarchy, much like the United States—to strangle the vain and idiotic Emperor Commodus in his bath in the year 192 did not halt the growing chaos and precipitous decline of the Roman Empire. Commodus, like a number of late-Roman emperors, and like Trump, was incompetent and consumed by his own vanity. He commissioned innumerable statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He used his position as head of state to make himself the star of his own ongoing public show. He fought victoriously as a gladiator in the arena in fixed bouts. Power for Commodus, as it is for Trump, was primarily about catering to his bottomless narcissism. He sold public offices to the ancient equivalents of Betsy DeVos and Steven Mnuchin. Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax, the Bernie Sanders of his day, who attempted in vain to curb the power of the Praetorian Guards, the ancient version of the military-industrial complex. The Praetorian Guards assassinated Pertinax three months after he became emperor. The Guards then auctioned off his position to the highest bidder. The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted sixty-six days. There would be five emperors in AD 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus. Trump and our decaying empire have ominous historical precedents.

America’s last step into the Vietnam quagmire came on November 22, 1963, when Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth president of the United States. Unlike Kennedy, Johnson was no real veteran. During World War II he used his influence as a congressman to become a naval officer, and, despite an utter lack of military training, he arranged a direct commission as a lieutenant commander. Fully aware that “combat” exposure would make him more electable, the ambitious Johnson managed an appointment to an observation team that was traveling to the Pacific. Once there, he was able to get a seat on a B-26 combat mission near New Guinea. The bomber had to turn back due to mechanical problems and briefly came under attack from Japanese fighters. The pilot got the damaged plane safely back to its base and Johnson left the very next day. This nonevent, which LBJ had absolutely no active part of, turned into his war story. The engine had been “knocked out” by enemy fighters, not simply a routine malfunction; he, LBJ, had been part of a “suicide mission,” not just riding along as baggage. The fabrication grew over time, including, according to LBJ, the nickname of “Raider” Johnson given to him by the awestruck 22nd Bomber Group.

Not only the yield size of Hood was classified; so was the fact that despite the Atomic Energy Commission’s assurance that it was not testing thermonuclear bombs, Hood was a thermonuclear bomb test. At seventy-four kilotons, it was six times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and remains in 2011 the largest bomb ever exploded over the continental United States. The flash from the Hood bomb was visible from Canada to Mexico and from eight hundred miles out at sea. “So powerful was the blast that it was felt and seen over most of the Western United States as it lighted up the pre-dawn darkness,” reported the United Press International. It took twenty-five minutes for the nuclear blast wave to reach Los Angeles, 350 miles to the west.

Hard military power will remain crucial, but if its use is perceived as unjust, such as at Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo, then hard power undercuts the soft power needed to win the minds of mainstream Muslims and creates more new terrorists than are destroyed. For example, a leading terrorism expert concludes that anti-Americanism was exacerbated by the war in Iraq and the U.S. failure to tailor strategies for key countries. International jihadist groups increased their membership and carried out twice as many attacks in the three years after 2001 as before it.38 Similarly, the former head of Britain’s MI5 intelligence service told the commission investigating the origins of the Iraq War that the war had increased, rather than decreased, terrorists’ success at recruitment.

In early 2016, Amazon was given a license by the Federal Maritime Commission to implement ocean freight services as an Ocean Transportation Intermediary. So, Amazon can now ship others’ goods. This new service, dubbed Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), won’t do much directly for individual consumers. But it will allow Amazon’s Chinese partners to more easily and cost-effectively get their products across the Pacific in containers. Want to bet how long it will take Amazon to dominate the oceanic transport business? 67 The market to ship stuff (mostly) across the Pacific is a $ 350 billion business, but a low-margin one. Shippers charge $ 1,300 to ship a forty-foot container holding up to 10,000 units of product (13 cents per unit, or just under $ 10 to deliver a flatscreen TV). It’s a down-and-dirty business, unless you’re Amazon. The biggest component of that cost comes from labor: unloading and loading the ships and the paperwork. Amazon can deploy hardware (robotics) and software to reduce these costs. Combined with the company’s fledgling aircraft fleet, this could prove another huge business for Amazon. 68 Between drones, 757/ 767s, tractor trailers, trans-Pacific shipping, and retired military generals (no joke) who oversaw the world’s most complex logistics operations (try supplying submarines and aircraft carriers that don’t surface or dock more than once every six months), Amazon is building the most robust logistics infrastructure in history. If you’re like me, this can only leave you in awe: I can’t even make sure I have Gatorade in the fridge when I need it.

The assumptions that propagandists are rational, in the sense that they follow their own propaganda theories in their choice of communications, and that the meanings of propagandists' communications may differ for different people reoriented the FCC* analysts from a concept of "content as shared" (Berelson would later say "manifest") to conditions that could explain the motivations of particular communicators and the interests they might serve. The notion of "preparatory propaganda" became an especially useful key for the analysts in their effort to infer the intents of broadcasts with political content. In order to ensure popular support for planned military actions, the Axis leaders had to inform; emotionally arouse, and otherwise prepare their countrymen and women to accept those actions; the FCC analysts discovered that they could learn a great deal about the enemy's intended actions by recognizing such preparatory efforts in the domestic press and broadcasts. They were able to predict several major military and political campaigns and to assess Nazi elites' perceptions of their situation, political changes within the Nazi governing group, and shifts in relations among Axis countries. Among the more outstanding predictions that British analysts were able to make was the date of deployment of German V weapons against Great Britain. The analysts monitored the speeches delivered by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels and inferred from the content of those speeches what had interfered with the weapons' production and when. They then used this information to predict the launch date of the weapons, and their prediction was accurate within a few weeks. *FCC - Federal Communications Commission

Foch never for a moment thought about the easy ways of bringing his name before the public and the political world, or even about acquiring a reputation for military insight among the chiefs of the French army. He never posed as a central figure at public functions; he was never interviewed by the press; he made no use of the professional reviews to bring his name before military readers. Ile never published a line until his chiefs suggested the publication of his lectures at the Staff College. From the day when he received his first commission he was a hard-working student of war, patiently preparing himself to do his duty when the opportunity came, and meanwhile content to put all his energies into the work assigned to him. Success in the career of arms is not always associated with high personal character or with this modest pursuit of duty for its own sake.

far as General Johnston is concerned, I think Davis did him a great injustice in this particular. I had know the general before the war and strongly believed it would be impossible for him to accept a high commission for the purpose of betraying the cause he had espoused. There, as I have said, I think that his policy was the best one that could have been pursued by the whole South—protract the war, which was all that was necessary to enable them to gain recognition in the end. The North was already growing weary, as the South evidently was also, but with this difference. In the North the people governed, and could stop hostilities whenever they chose to stop supplies. The South was a military camp, controlled absolutely by the government with soldiers to back it, and the war could have been protracted, no matter to what extent the discontent reached, up to the point of open mutiny of the soldiers themselves.

Benedict Arnold was appointed to the rank of general in the Continental Army by George Washington during the American War of Independence. It was up to him to protect the fortifications at West Point, New York, which in 1802 became the U.S. Military Academy. Arnold however planned to surrender his command to the British forces. When his treasonous act was discovered Arnold fled down the Hudson River to the British sloop-of-war Vulture, avoiding capture by the forces of George Washington, who had previously been alerted to the plot. Arnold was hailed a hero by the British, who gave him a commission in the British Army as brigadier general. In the winter of 1782, after the war, he moved to London with his wife where he was received as a hero by King George III. In the United States his name "Benedict Arnold" became synonyms for the words “TRAITOR & TREASON.” Cohorting with a foreign power to overthrow the government or purposely aiding the enemy is an act of Treason!

However, it is important not to lose sight of exactly how the neoliberal system works. As David Harvey has demonstrated, by drawing on Karl Polanyi’s masterful work, the free market has never been incompatible with state intervention, and the management of crises is part of the neoliberal project. We therefore need to inquire into how this crisis was presented by recalling, if we take the American example, that President George W. Bush kept forcefully repeating that the foundations of the economy were solid. Then suddenly, in the fateful month of September, as if faced with the sudden surge of a more or less unexpected “economic hurricane,” he asked for $700 billion to avoid a severe economic meltdown. It was necessary to save the banks and businesses that were too big to fail. This complex crisis called for a reaction that was as fast as it was extreme, starting with $350 billion distributed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs. We should note in passing that this sort of crisis discourse recalls all of the exceptional measures put in place or intensified after September 11, 2001: the usa patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, illegal wiretappings, extraordinary rendition, the network of secret prisons, the redefinition of torture by the Office of Legal Council, and so on. It is not by chance that this crisis was presented as a complex and uncontrollable natural phenomenon, whose severity was largely unforeseen, for it is similar to the historical logic outlined above. By naturalizing the economy and transforming it into an autonomous authority independent of the decisions made by specific agents, this historical order promotes passivity (we can only bow before forces stronger than us), the removal of responsibility (no one can be held accountable for natural phenomena), and historical nearsightedness (the situation is so critical that we must respond quickly, without wasting time by debating over distant causes: time is short!). If we were to step back and assess the overall situation, we would see numerous specters rising up in the cemetery that is neoliberalism, and we would need to begin questioning—following Polanyi—whether the very project of laissez-faire economics has ever been anything other than socialism for the rich or, more precisely, topdown class warfare enforced by state intervention

In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands. But even gossip has its limits. Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings. Even today, a critical threshold in human organisations falls somewhere around this magic number. Below this threshold, communities, businesses, social networks and military units can maintain themselves based mainly on intimate acquaintance and rumour-mongering. There is no need for formal ranks, titles and law books to keep order. 3A platoon of thirty soldiers or even a company of a hundred soldiers can function well on the basis of intimate relations, with a minimum of formal discipline. A well-respected sergeant can become ‘king of the company’ and exercise authority even over commissioned officers. A small family business can survive and flourish without a board of directors, a CEO or an accounting department. But once the threshold of 150 individuals is crossed, things can no longer work that way. You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon. Successful family businesses usually face a crisis when they grow larger and hire more personnel. If they cannot reinvent themselves, they go bust. How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in fees.

I,” he said, a faint note of derision in his voice, “am the least favored scion of our ruling house, House Mara Sant.” He was from Brontes, then. Which might explain the eyes…she thought again of certain differences, and suppressed a shudder. “I am a Prince of the Blood,” he continued, sounding both embittered and proud, “third in line for the Dragon Throne, and grand nephew to the Emperor. Owing to a…political dispute, I am now also an exile. Presented with a choice between resigning my commission in the na-vy and leaving to become governor of a mining planet and staying to face my uncle’s as-sassins….” He shrugged slightly, as if the choice were of no consequence. “A…political dispute?” “I gambled,” he said bluntly. “I lost.” “You seem…sanguine,” she remarked, surprise blunting the instinct to guard her tongue. “He shouldn’t have let me live.” That anyone could discuss their own murder with such cold calculation horrified her. He horrified her. She chewed her lip, digesting all that he’d told her: not merely a naval officer, but a prince—and a maverick one at that. She wondered what he could have done. “So you see,” he finished, “I’m no more free than you.” He laughed, then, but without humor. “We can be prisoners together. I am en route to a wretched planet called Tarsonis to assume governorship and as you have no other, more pressing engagement, you are coming with me.

Rejecting failure and avoiding mistakes seem like high-minded goals, but they are fundamentally misguided. Take something like the Golden Fleece Awards, which were established in 1975 to call attention to government-funded projects that were particularly egregious wastes of money. (Among the winners were things like an $84,000 study on love commissioned by the National Science Foundation, and a $3,000 Department of Defense study that examined whether people in the military should carry umbrellas.) While such scrutiny may have seemed like a good idea at the time, it had a chilling effect on research. No one wanted to “win” a Golden Fleece Award because, under the guise of avoiding waste, its organizers had inadvertently made it dangerous and embarrassing for everyone to make mistakes. The truth is, if you fund thousands of research projects every year, some will have obvious, measurable, positive impacts, and others will go nowhere. We aren’t very good at predicting the future—that’s a given—and yet the Golden Fleece Awards tacitly implied that researchers should know before they do their research whether or not the results of that research would have value. Failure was being used as a weapon, rather than as an agent of learning. And that had fallout: The fact that failing could earn you a very public flogging distorted the way researchers chose projects. The politics of failure, then, impeded our progress. There’s a quick way to determine if your company has embraced the negative definition of failure. Ask yourself what happens when an error is discovered. Do people shut down and turn inward, instead of coming together to untangle the causes of problems that might be avoided going forward? Is the question being asked: Whose fault was this? If so, your culture is one that vilifies failure. Failure is difficult enough without it being compounded by the search for a scapegoat. In a fear-based, failure-averse culture, people will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk. They will seek instead to repeat something safe that’s been good enough in the past. Their work will be derivative, not innovative. But if you can foster a positive understanding of failure, the opposite will happen. How, then, do you make failure into something people can face without fear? Part of the answer is simple: If we as leaders can talk about our mistakes and our part in them, then we make it safe for others. You don’t run from it or pretend it doesn’t exist. That is why I make a point of being open about our meltdowns inside Pixar, because I believe they teach us something important: Being open about problems is the first step toward learning from them. My goal is not to drive fear out completely, because fear is inevitable in high-stakes situations. What I want to do is loosen its grip on us. While we don’t want too many failures, we must think of the cost of failure as an investment in the future.

As Allied forces moved into Hitler’s Fortress Europe, Roosevelt and his circle were confronted with new evidence of the Holocaust. In early 1942, he had been given information that Adolf Hitler was quietly fulfilling his threat to “annihilate the Jewish race.” Rabbi Stephen Wise asked the President that December 1942 to inform the world about “the most overwhelming disaster of Jewish history” and “try to stop it.” Although he was willing to warn the world about the impending catastrophe and insisted that there be war crimes commissions when the conflict was over, Roosevelt told Wise that punishment for such crimes would probably have to await the end of the fighting, so his own solution was to “win the war.” The problem with this approach was that by the time of an Allied victory, much of world Jewry might have been annihilated. By June 1944, the Germans had removed more than half of Hungary’s 750,000 Jews, and some Jewish leaders were asking the Allies to bomb railways from Hungary to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. In response, Churchill told his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, that the murder of the Jews was “probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world,” and ordered him to get “everything” he could out of the British Air Force. But the Prime Minister was told that American bombers were better positioned to do the job. At the Pentagon, Stimson consulted John McCloy, who later insisted, for decades, that he had “never talked” with Roosevelt about the option of bombing the railroad lines or death camps. But in 1986, McCloy changed his story during a taped conversation with Henry Morgenthau’s son, Henry III, who was researching a family history. The ninety-one-year-old McCloy insisted that he had indeed raised the idea with the President, and that Roosevelt became “irate” and “made it very clear” that bombing Auschwitz “wouldn’t have done any good.” By McCloy’s new account, Roosevelt “took it out of my hands” and warned that “if it’s successful, it’ll be more provocative” and “we’ll be accused of participating in this horrible business,” as well as “bombing innocent people.” McCloy went on, “I didn’t want to bomb Auschwitz,” adding that “it seemed to be a bunch of fanatic Jews who seemed to think that if you didn’t bomb, it was an indication of lack of venom against Hitler.” If McCloy’s memory was reliable, then, just as with the Japanese internment, Roosevelt had used the discreet younger man to discuss a decision for which he knew he might be criticized by history, and which might conceivably have become an issue in the 1944 campaign. This approach to the possible bombing of the camps would allow the President to explain, if it became necessary, that the issue had been resolved at a lower level by the military. In retrospect, the President should have considered the bombing proposal more seriously. Approving it might have required him to slightly revise his insistence that the Allies’ sole aim should be winning the war, as he did on at least a few other occasions. But such a decision might have saved lives and shown future generations that, like Churchill, he understood the importance of the Holocaust as a crime unparalleled in world history.*

Faith’s like a goddess to the Marines, and she’s actually good at her job, especially given she’d just finished seventh grade. Which is an important job. She does really important shit. “Right now, you’re just getting your head together. Like the pamphlet says, maybe you decide to help out. We can use people who know how to get shit done. Not just as military. I only took the Lieutenancy they offered cause I have to work with the Navy and Marines to get my job done and it helps. But there’s lots of ways a guy with your background and work ethic and general get-it-done attitude could help. Problem being, even if you wanted to, right now the only reason the Marines haven’t gotten together to kick the crap out of you is that they’re too busy. When they get less busy or, for example, this evening when they break from killing zombies, I would not want to be in your shoes.” “So what is this?” Zumwald said. “A military dictatorship? Beatings for free?” “Yeah,” Isham said, looking at him as if he was nuts. “We’re on ships. And they are all officially US Navy vessels. Even most of the dinky little yachts. The commanders, including this one, are all Navy officers, even if the ink is still wet on the commissions. And even if they weren’t, captains of vessels at sea have a lot of legal control in any circumstances. By the way, I talked Captain Graham, boss of this boat, out of pressing charges against you for assault. Because you don’t get how badly you fucked up. I get that. He’s another Faith lover, but it’s also you don’t get to just grab any cookie and tell her you want another scotch. You don’t. This isn’t Hollywood, and, sorry, you’re not some big time movie executive anymore. You’re a fucking refugee in a squadron that spends half its time on the ragged edge. Still. You got no clue how tough it is to keep these vessels supplied.

Batista was a rebellious non-commissioned officer in the 1933 Cuban Army and became the indisputable leader of the revolutionary faction within the military. Fulgencio Batista took over power during the bloody “Sergeants’ Revolt” and forced a military coup with the help of students and labor leaders, thus taking control of the government. He promoted himself to the rank of Colonel and summarily discharged the entire cadre of commissioned officers. Many officers fearing for their lives, barricaded themselves into the National Hotel. The Hotel Nacional was the fanciest hotel in Cuba, but that didn’t stop Batista from shelling it, using the Cuban war ship, the SS Cuba. Those officers who were not killed outright were jailed and “pax Batistiana” began. Batista controlled the short-lived five man Presidency of Cuba, which was called “The Pentarchy of 1933.” This ruling body was followed by the Presidency of Ramón Grau San Martin, a professor of the University of Havana, who held the office for just over 100 days. Carlos Mendieta followed and stayed in power for 11 months, after which Batista set himself up as the strong man behind a continuing succession of puppet presidents. Although calling himself a “Progressive Socialist,” Batista was supported by the “Communist Party” which had been legalized in 1938. In time much of this changed!

GENERAL STANLEY WAS still blinking in astonishment at Grey’s brief description of the events that had culminated in his own appointment as military governor—Grey judiciously suppressing the facts that Azeel had commissioned an Obeah man to drive the previous governor mad and that Rodrigo had gone one step further and arranged to have the late Governor Warren killed and partially devoured—

In its 2008 report the EMP commission recommended that measures taken by the Defense Department to protect crucial military installations, including the installation of surge arrestors and Faraday cages, could usefully be applied to civilian infrastructure also. The commission estimated that protecting the national electric grid against an EMP attack would cost about $2 billion. Such estimates are easily made in the abstract, but reality is another matter. No action was taken on the commission’s recommendations for protecting the electric power grid.

Being a Non-Commissioned officer (NCO) or Petty Officer (PO) is a commitment and a lifestyle that shouldn't ever be taken lightly as you are constantly being observed by other enlisted men, women, and officers desiring to see true leadership in action. Even civilians understand there is something empowering which accompany those chevrons.

Almost all modern governments are highly conscious of what journalism calls ‘world opinion.’ For sound reasons, mostly of an economic nature, they cannot afford to be condemned in the United Nations, they do not like to be visited by Human Rights Commissions or Freedom of the Press Committees; their need of foreign investment, foreign loans, foreign markets, satisfactory trade relationships, and so on, requires that they be members in more or less good standing of a larger community of interests. Often, too, they are members of military alliances. Consequently, they must maintain some appearance of stability, in order to assure the other members of the community or of the alliance that contracts will continue to be honored, that treaties will be upheld, that loans will be repaid with interest, that investments will continue to produce profits and be safe. “Protracted internal war threatens all of this ... no ally wishes to treat with a government that is on the point of eviction.

Every book of tactics in the regiment was in use from morning until night, and the officers and non-commissioned officers were always studying the problems presented at the schools.

Besides the moral courage required to accept commissions in the Fifty-fourth at the time it was organizing, physical courage was also necessary, for the Confederate Congress, on May 1, 1863, passed an act, a potion of which read as follow: - Section IV. That every white person being a commissioned officer, or acting as such, who, during the present war, shall command negroes or mulattoes in arms against the Confederate States, or who shall arm, train, organize, or prepare negroes or mulattoes for military service against the Confederate States, or who shall voluntarily aid negroes or mulattoes in any military enterprise, attack, or conflict in such service, shall be deemed as inciting servile insurrection, and shall, if captured, be put to death or be otherwise punished at the discretion of the Court.

As political and humanitarian pressures mounted, the others convicted in the subsequent Nuremberg trials, as well as by the U.S. military commissions, were quietly given their freedom.

Corbett condemned a failure of imagination that devalued the process: the persistent heresy of regarding military and naval strategy as two different subjects that can be dealt with apart, of refusing to see them broadly as mere branches of the great art of war, two branches so intimately intertwined that one can never be treated apart from the other, and least of all when we are dealing with the fundamental problems of Insular or Imperial Defence. Lord Elgin’s Commission had treated the Navy as ‘a negligible quantity’, because it had no authority to consider wider strategic issues.76

Now, faced with political cases like yours, all prosecutorial organs and courts would rather be too severe than too lax. This is because treating you too severely would just be a mistake in method, but treating you too laxly would be a mistake in political direction. Ultimately, however, the decision belongs to the military control commission. Of course, I’m telling you all this off the record.

The CMAG reported directly to the Central Military Commission of the CCP Central Committee, and Mao “often directly reviewed battle plans and gave specific directions.”74

To us they are not accusations. To us they are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor. We are terrorists to the bone. So, many thanks to God. Therefore, killing you and fighting you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion. These actions are our offerings to God.” (“The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations.” Written by five detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison camp, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, released in military commission proceedings, March 5, 2009).

Number of SWAT teams in the FBI alone in 2013: 56         Unlikely federal agencies that have used SWAT teams: US Fish and Wildlife Service, Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, US National Park Service, Food and Drug Administration         Value of surplus military gear received by Johnston, Rhode Island, from the Pentagon in 2010–2011: $4.1 million         Population of Johnston, Rhode Island, in 2010: 28,769         Partial list of equipment given to the Johnston police department: 30 M-16 rifles, 599 M-16 magazines containing about 18,000 rounds, a “sniper targeting calculator,” 44 bayonets, 12 Humvees, and 23 snow blowers105

The war with Mexico fiercely divided the American people. While the majority supported the war, a loud minority despised it, and their rancor filled the newspapers and the debates in the houses of Congress. A newly elected congressional representative from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, declared: ‘The war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the president.’ Lincoln challenged Polk on the issue that American blood had been shed on American soil and implied that the American troops were the aggressors. He charged that Polk desired ‘military glory … that serpent’s eye which charms to destroy … I more than suspect that Polk is deeply conscious of being in the wrong and that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.’ However, like many critics of the war, Lincoln voted for an appropriations bill to support military operations. An Illinois newspaper responded to Lincoln’s fulminations by branding him a ‘second Benedict Arnold,’ and Lincoln was defeated for reelection. Comparing Lincoln to Arnold was perhaps the most vicious charge that could then be made against an American. General Arnold has been a trusted favorite of George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. In August 1780 he had turned traitor and attempted to turn over the American army’s position at West Point to the British in exchange for money and a brigadier’s commission in the British army. His act of treachery was discovered but he was able to escape to safety behind British lines. Henry Clay, a former senator from Kentucky and unsuccessful candidate for president, often called the ‘Great Pacificator’ or the ‘Great Compromiser’ for his efforts to hold the Union together, spoke out forcefully: ‘The Mexican war,’ he said, ‘is one of unnecessary and offensive aggression … Mexico is defending her firesides, her castles, and her altars, not we.’ Representative

Back in 1415, Prince Henry and his brothers had convinced their father, King John of Portugal, to capture the principal Muslim trading depot in the western Mediterranean: Ceuta, on the northeastern tip of Morocco. These brothers were envious of Muslim riches, and they sought to eliminate the Islamic middleman so that they could find the southern source of gold and Black captives. After the battle, Moorish prisoners left Prince Henry spellbound as they detailed trans-Saharan trade routes down into the disintegrating Mali Empire. Since Muslims still controlled these desert routes, Prince Henry decided to “seek the lands by the way of the sea.” He sought out those African lands until his death in 1460, using his position as the Grand Master of Portugal’s wealthy Military Order of Christ (successor of the Knights Templar) to draw venture capital and loyal men for his African expeditions. In 1452, Prince Henry’s nephew, King Afonso V, commissioned Gomes Eanes de Zurara to write a biography of the life and slave-trading work of his “beloved uncle.” Zurara was a learned and obedient commander in Prince Henry’s Military Order of Christ. In recording and celebrating Prince Henry’s life, Zurara was also implicitly obscuring his Grand Master’s monetary decision to exclusively trade in African slaves. In 1453, Zurara finished the inaugural defense of African slave-trading, the first European book on Africans in the modern era. The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea begins the recorded history of anti-Black racist ideas. Zurara’s inaugural racist ideas, in other words, were a product of, not a producer of, Prince Henry’s racist policies concerning African slave-trading.1

The most singularly significant bond between Cincinnatus and Washington is Washington’s resignation of the military commission at the end of the Revolution. As a military leader, Washington fought the entire conflict under the assumptions of only two formal pledges: to resign as soon as independence was won and to receive no compensation for his efforts.394

The 9/11 Commission warned that Al Qaeda "could... scheme to wield weapons of unprecedented destructive power in the largest cities of the United States." Future attacks could impose enormous costs on the entire economy. Having used up the surplus that the country enjoyed as part of the Cold War peace dividend, the U.S. government is in a weakened financial position to respond to another major terrorist attack, and its position will be damaged further by the large budget gaps and growing dependence on foreign capital projected for the future. As the historian Paul Kennedy wrote in his book The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, too many decisions made in Washington today "bring merely short-term advantage but long-term disadvantage." The absence of a sound, long-term financial strategy could bring about a deterioration that, in his words, "leads to the downward spiral of slower growth, heavier taxes, deepening domestic splits over spending priorities and a weakening capacity to bear the burdens of defense." Decades of success in mobilizing enormous sums of money to fight large wars and meet other government needs have led Americans to believe that ample funds will be readily available in the event of a future war, terrorist attack, or other emergency. But that can no longer be assumed. Budget constraints could limit the availability or raise the cost of resources to deal with new emergencies. If government debt continues to pile up, deficits rise to stratospheric levels, and heave dependence on foreign capital grows, borrowing the money needed will be very costly. [Alexander] Hamilton understood the risks of such a precarious situation. After suffering through financial shortages, lack of adequate food and weapons, desertions, and collapsing morale during the Revolution, he considered the risk that the government would have difficulty in assembling funds to defend itself all too real. If America remains on its dangerous financial course, Hamilton's gift to the nation - the blessing of sound finances - will be squandered. The U.S. government had no higher obligation that to protect the security of its citizens. Doing so becomes increasingly difficult if its finances are unsound. While the nature of this new brand of warfare, the war on terrorism, remains uncharted, there is much to be gained if our leaders look to the experiences of the past for guidance in responding to the challenges of the future. The willingness of the American people and their leaders to ensure that the nation's finances remain sound in the face of these new challenges - sacrificing parochial interests for the common good - is the price we must pay to preserve the nation's security and thus the liberties that Hamilton and his generation bequeathed us.

Money is paid to them in Germany and the kick-back is transferred to the local military attaché and he transfers it to the princes.’ He concluded: ‘Not a piece of equipment would go from the US to Saudi without Bandar getting a commission.’13

Radia Hosni, mhitimu wa mikanda miwili myeusi ya sanaa za mapigano za kareti na kung’fu katika ngazi ya dani mbili za kung’fu na dani moja ya kareti, mwanajeshi wa Tunisia aliyepata mafunzo ya kawaida ya kijeshi nchini Ufaransa na mafunzo ya kikomandoo nchini Uingereza kabla ya kujiunga na Tume ya Dunia, alikuwa mshindi wa tuzo ya shujaa wa taifa la Tunisia. Hussein Kashoggi alipokuwa akiwasili Tunis kutokea Copenhagen, Radia alikuwa katika Uwanja wa Mpira wa El Menzah akiangalia mechi kati ya Stade Tunisien na Espérance ST – timu ambayo mchumba wake Fathi Meoki alikuwa kocha msaidizi. Fujo zilipozuka, baada ya Stade Tunisien kufungwa bao moja kwa sifuri na Espérance ST, Radia alipanda Quadrifoglio na kuondoka kuelekea Uwanja wa Ndege wa Tunis-Carthage; ambapo alimpokea Hussein Kashoggi na jambazi wa Kolonia Santita, Delfina Moore.

It later turned out that we, who had permits signed by the governor, were in a different category than those, whose permits were issued by the mayor. At the time we did not know that the Popovici permits would turn out to be almost a death warrant. We had barely settled in when, by the end of November, the governor issued a decree, summoning all permit holders to have them reviewed by a military commission, to have everything documented. That threw a new scare into everybody, especially those whose name was not exactly the same as on their papers; the profession was not correct, names added, like on ours. Since life depended on a signature, many people were scared to go, for fear that they may lose that valuable permit.

Next morning, the commission announced that they would stop reviewing the Jewish permits. Everybody, who is in town, will reside in Czernovitz on the strength of a paper signed by the mayor, Dori Popovici. In July, 1942, the Romanians deported on one night, from Saturday to Sunday about 2000 Jews with permits signed by Popovici. During the night, the military took entire families for "resettlement." Horror spread among the rest of us, since nobody knew what criterion they were considering. Everybody packed a knapsack and held it ready. The following week the same thing happened. We realized that they took only families with Popovici permits.

A PROCESSION OF ANGELS Then I saw a powerful angel walk up to Jesus. The Lord spoke to this angel, although I did not understand the words that passed back and forth between them. However, I did understand that this angel had been working in Tanzania and had been on an important assignment. I really do not understand how I knew what was transpiring. I just had a supernatural revelation of what was taking place as the Lord stood over me and gave instruction to the angel. Perhaps just being so close to the Lord allowed me to have some understanding of the things that were unfolding before me in the spirit. Shortly, I saw this angel “ascend” upon Jesus. I knew that this angel was returning into the realms of Heaven, and that the assignment that it had been on had now been completed. I was astonished to see the angel ascend into the heavens “on” Jesus. It was very similar to the night in Springdale when I saw Jesus ascend back through the open heaven spinning in the sanctuary in Living Waters Church. (See John 1:51.) The Lord looked at me and gave me a big smile. He began to speak to me again, just as a loving friend would to a small child. In just a moment or two, He was again interrupted by a second strong angel. This time the angel descended from the realms of Heaven upon Jesus and stepped onto the beach. Once again the Lord and the angel began to speak, though again I was unable to understand the language that they spoke. I could see this second angel was powerful and very strong. He carried himself in the manner of a warrior, and there was a large sword in his right hand. He also had a large, polished, shiny golden shield in his left hand. Upon his belt were other weapons, including an ornate buckler and a smaller type of sword. As I was looking, I suddenly saw Jesus pat the angel upon his powerful shoulder and point with His right hand. Immediately, the angel turned in military fashion and ran off in the direction that the Lord had indicated. I was astonished, but I was also absolutely certain that Jesus had just commissioned the strong second angel to an important mission in the nation of Tanzania. Then Jesus turned His loving gaze back upon me as I lay on the beach. The waters were still billowing around me. The Lord again began to speak to me and told me that it was important that I began to study and learn to understand about the “seer anointing.” At that moment, I did not have any knowledge of the seer anointing, so I was a little concerned about my ignorance. As if sensing I was uncomfortable, the Lord smiled and gently began to speak with me about the seer prophets of old. This encounter with the Lord continued from about 4:15 A.M. until about 6:30 A.M. in the natural. However, in the realm of the spirit, it seemed to last for many more hours. The Lord continued to speak to me in great detail about the seer gift or anointing. I could determine the passage of time because the sun shifted its position over the sea of glass-like crystal as He continued to speak. The other reason I was aware of time passing was that there began to be a steady stream of angels ascending and descending upon the Lord Jesus Christ. ANGELS ON MISSIONS This procession of angels was quite impressive. After the first few, I began to relax. I had been

Another collaborator who found an important position in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat was Mahbubul Alam[6]. Alam was the Dacca correspondent of the English daily from Karachi, Dawn. During the liberation war, he was characterized as a Sarkari[7] newsman by the Pakistani authorities to distinguish him from other Bengali journalists. Alam was known to be pro-Pakistani and the military authorities commissioned him to write scripts for Plain Truth, a propaganda program of Radio Pakistan against the liberation war. He received thirty to fifty rupees for each piece[8]. Alam was now the Press Secretary to the Prime Minister." [6] Mahbubul Alam is currently the editor of the Independent. [7] Sarkari means government owned or government minded. [8] Anthony Mascarenhas, Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood, Kent: Hodder and Stoughton, 1986.

It began two years earlier when Karetnikov seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in broad daylight and dared the West to make him pay. As sanctions were levied against Karetnikov’s associates, the European Commission passed regulation after regulation to prevent South Stream from being built and leaned on the Bulgarian government, where the pipeline would come ashore, to end their involvement. Gazprom executives and Kremlin emissaries began clandestine pilgrimages to Bojan Siderov, the prime minister of Bulgaria, and showered the country with politically strategic investments. Ivanov warily helped the GRU, Russian military intelligence, funnel millions to Ataka, a far-right party opposed to European integration and the exploration of Bulgarian shale gas. After parliamentary elections, Ataka gained enough seats to bolster Siderov’s coalition and pass a bill clearing the way for the pipeline. Everything was in order, and even as of that morning, pipe-laying ships were at work in the Black Sea.

Perhaps their most famous piece is The Conquest of America (1989), a bloody homosexual pas de deux in which, bare-chested and barefoot, they performed the cueca, a traditional (and often politicized) dance in Chile, over a map of South America made of glass shards from Coke bottles. This was in front of the Chilean Commission on Human Rights, the committee responsible for calculating the number of people who were killed or tortured by the Chilean military between 1973 and 1989.

Almost 3,000 people were murdered at the WTC on the morning of September 11, 2001. The United States has invaded two countries under cover of the rhetoric of the War on Terror, resulting in massive casualties and unprecedented deficit spending. We have lost many of our civil liberties as a result of the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, and other laws enacted in reaction to 9/11. Once you, too, investigate the evidence we believe that you will want to take action.

COL Nicholas Young Retires from the United States Army after More than Thirty -Six Years of Distinguished Service to our Nation 2 September 2020 The United States Army War College is pleased to announce the retirement of United States Army War College on September 1, 2020. COL Young’s recent officer evaluation calls him “one of the finest Colonel’s in the United States Army who should be promoted to Brigadier General. COL Young has had a long and distinguished career in the United States Army, culminating in a final assignment as a faculty member at the United States Army War College since 2015. COL Young served until his mandatory retirement date set by federal statue. His long career encompassed just shy of seven years enlisted time before serving for thirty years as a commissioned officer.He first joined the military in 1984, serving as an enlisted soldier in the New Hampshire National Guard before completing a tour of active duty in the U.S, Army Infantry as a non-commissioned officer with the 101st Airborne (Air Assault). He graduated from Officer Candidate School in 1990, was commissioned in the Infantry, and then served as a platoon leader and executive officer in the Massachusetts Army National Guard before assuming as assignment as the executive officer of HHD, 3/18th Infantry in the U.S. Army Reserves. He made a branch transfer to the Medical Service Corps in 1996. COL Young has since served as a health services officer, company executive officer, hospital medical operations officer, hospital adjutant, Commander of the 287th Medical Company (DS), Commander of the 455th Area Support Dental, Chief of Staff of the 804th Medical Brigade, Hospital Commander of the 405th Combat Support Hospital and Hospital Commander of the 399th Combat Support Hospital. He was activated to the 94th Regional Support Command in support of the New York City terrorist attacks in 2001. COL Young is currently a faculty instructor at the U.S. Army War College. He is a graduate of basic training, advanced individual infantry training, Air Assault School, the primary leadership development course, the infantry officer basic course, the medical officer basic course, the advanced medical officer course, the joint medical officer planning course, the company commander leadership course, the battalion/brigade commander leadership course, the U.S. Air War College (with academic honors), the U.S. Army War College and the U.S. Naval War College (with academic distinction).

He is awaiting both civilian and military prosecution, which will likely see him dishonorably stripped of his commission and discharged from the Marine Corps.

by Julius II (1503–13). Julius won the papacy in part through bribery and in part through delicate negotiations with the Borgia family. Like Alexander, Julius was a shrewd diplomat. But even more than his predecessor, he was a man of action who, through vigorous military campaigns, greatly expanded the pope’s temporal jurisdiction. Julius was also a great builder as well as a great warrior-diplomat. His foundations included the Vatican Library, many other architectural triumphs, and a series of memorable artistic commissions (including Michelangelo’s frescoes on the vault of the Sistine Chapel).

Maloof controlled the exchequer, advised in regard to the imposition of taxes, fees, rents and imposts. Witherwood worked to codify the judicial systems of the land, reconciling regional differences and making the laws universally responsive, to persons of high and low degree alike. Sion-Tansifer, a relict from the reign of King Granice, advised as to military organisation and strategy. Foirry was an expert in the field of naval architecture. Pirmence, who had travelled widely, from Ireland to Byzantium, was in effect the Minister of Foreign Affairs, while Langlark had been commissioned by Aillas to establish at Domreis a university of letters, mathematics, geography and the several sciences.

These officers were—first, Samuel Cooper, a native of New York, a graduate of the United States Military Academy in 1815, and who served continuously in the army until March 7, 1861, with such distinction as secured to him the appointment of Adjutant-General of the United States Army. Second, Albert Sidney Johnston, a native of Kentucky, a graduate of the United States Military Academy in 1826, served conspicuously in the army until 1834, then served in the army of the Republic of Texas, and then in the United States Volunteers in the war with Mexico. Subsequently he reëntered the United States Army, and for meritorious conduct attained the rank of brevet brigadier-general. After the secession of Texas, his adopted State, he resigned his commission in the United States Army, May 3, 1861, and traveled by land from California to Richmond to offer his services to the Confederacy. Third, Robert E. Lee, a native of Virginia, a graduate of the United States Military Academy in 1829,

think-tank report promoted the idea of the federal government creating a national service-year program and “scholarships for service” as part of a domestic version of the Peace Corps. Recent college graduates would enroll for one to two years of paid voluntary service and be placed within distressed communities across the United States. They would be matched up with local development projects, nonprofits, charities, and schools. The federal government would also forgive student loans for the period of service. The National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, which was set up in 2017, proposed a similar idea in its final report in 2020. The commission advocated legislation to secure funding for national service and volunteering on a large scale that would enable young people

This was clearly worrisome for the future of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, and it caused King Kamehameha III great distress. With the instability of political and military powers in the Hawaiian archipelago, he consulted his foreign advisors and missionaries on what he should do to protect the kingdom’s sovereignty and ensure Hawaiian control of the land. Clearly, foreign powers wanted Hawaiʻi’s system of land tenure to transition to one of private ownership for their own benefit, as they were familiar with such a system and wanted to obtain secure land titles. They further promoted such changes by pointing out that it would be a great help in steering the islands toward economic prosperity and encourage hard work. Predictably, large numbers of Hawaiian natives were deeply suspicious of the proposed changes and continually petitioned King Kamehameha III to reconsider his position on the matter. The local chiefs and residents were hesitant to compete with foreigners, as the change to the land tenure system would be confusing and difficult. Regardless, the Land Commission and King Kamehameha III proceeded with the Mahele process. The Great Mahele

Had Washington’s military career ended with the French and Indian War, he would have earned scarcely more than a footnote in history, yet it is impossible to imagine his life without this important preamble. The British Empire had committed a major blunder by spurning the talents of such a natural leader. It said something about the imperial system that it could find no satisfactory place for this loyal, able, and ambitious young subject. The proud Washington had been forced to bow and scrape for a regular commission, and it irked him that he had to grovel for recognition. Washington’s military career would be held in abeyance until June 1775, but in the meantime he had acquired a powerful storehouse of grievances that would fuel his later rage with England.

You can’t see the Party because it chooses to stay out of view, and as a result, what visitors to China see are the institutions (which the Party controls from behind the scenes) that on the surface resemble those of any other country: a government and cabinet ministries, courts at all levels, a central bank, two houses of parliament, and of course, above them all, a president. Yet, even the president, largely for the purposes of global optics, dons this title only for the outside world. ‘President’ does not even exist within the lexicon of domestic Chinese politics. China’s English-language media refer to ‘President’ Xi Jinping, but the domestic media translate the same title as the ‘National Chairman’, all aimed at conveying to the world a subtly different message about how this system really works. The title of National Chairman is itself the least important of the three crowns Xi wears. His position as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China is what gives him his power, as does his being the Chairman of the Central Military Commission that controls the PLA. The Party, as always, comes first.

First Century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who was a prominent Jewish military leader who fought against the Romans during the Jewish-Roman War (a.d. 66–70), which led to the destruction of the Temple, Jerusalem and Judea, around a.d. 70, was commissioned to write a history of the Jewish people for his Roman conquerors. When discussing the exploits of Moses, he wrote: (245) for when the ground was difficult to be passed over, because of the multitude of serpents, (which it produces in vast numbers, and indeed is singular in some of those productions, which other countries do not breed, and yet such as are worse than others, in power and mischief, and an unusual fierceness of sight, some of which ascend out of the ground unseen, and also fly in the air, and so come upon men at unawares, and do them a mischief), Moses invented a wonderful stratagem to preserve the army safe, and without harm; (246) for he made baskets, like to arks, of sedge, and filled them with ibis, and carried them along with them; which animal is the greatest enemy to serpents imaginable, for they flee from them when they come near them; and as they flee they are caught and devoured by them, as if it were done by the harts; (247)but the ibis are tame creatures, and only enemies to the serpentine kind: but about these ibis I say no more at present, since the Greeks themselves are not unacquainted with this sort of bird. As soon, therefore, as Moses was come to the land which was the breeder of these serpents, he let loose the ibis, and by their means repelled the serpentine kind, and used them for his assistants before the army came upon that ground.

According to the Munir Commission, no one who had ‘given serious thought to the introduction of a religious State in Pakistan’ had failed to realize ‘the tremendous difficulties with which any such scheme must be confronted’. It pointed out that before Partition ‘even Maulana Abul Ala Maududi of Jamaat-i-Islami was of the view that the form of Government in the new Muslim State, if it ever came into existence, could only be secular’.45 Although a consensus has been imposed with the help of the military over the last several decades that Pakistan must be an Islamic state, the issue remains, ‘which version of Islam should the state adopt in becoming Islamic?

A good bit has been learned about the wars in El Salvador and Guatemala since Deterring Democracy was published thirty years ago. As the wars wound down, Truth Commissions were established in both countries. Their research revealed that the overwhelming majority of the crimes were carried out by the security forces that were armed, trained, directed by the Reagan administration. I’ll come back to all of that and its backgrounds, particularly since the Kennedy years. This is bipartisan. It’s highly instructive. There has never been a Truth Commission here. That’s unthinkable, a violation of common sense. Truth Commissions often have a considerable impact, in Argentina, to take one case. So does their absence. The most important country in Latin America, Brazil, did not have one. They had a brutal military dictatorship, but there was no reckoning. Actually, the Catholic Church did publish an inquiry, but there was no real Truth Commission. The effects are in the headlines right now. In Brazil, something similar to military dictatorship is taking shape. It’s tolerated, even supported, in part because people don’t even remember the military dictatorship and its many crimes. Younger people may not even know about it.

In October 2002, five evangelical leaders sent a letter to President Bush to assure him that a preemptive invasion of Iraq did indeed meet the criteria for just war. Written by Richard Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and signed by fellow evangelicals Charles Colson, Bill Bright, D. James Kennedy, and Carl Herbster, the “Land letter” expressed appreciation for Bush’s “bold, courageous, and visionary leadership” and reassured him that his plans for military action were “both right and just.

In 1952 MI6 commissioned a series of trials at the Porton Down military facility near Stonehenge, thinking LSD could be useful as a weapon of warfare.* Soldiers deployed on routine exercises under the influence of the drug43 – who mostly just had trouble reading maps and decided to climb trees instead – gave some indication for how the molecule could be useful. Not as a truth serum, but as a mode of destabilising the enemy: a battlefield incapacitant. Hippies would later bear placards stating DROP ACID, NOT BOMBS in protest of American campaigns in Vietnam, but militarists had pondered doing exactly that 15 years earlier.

His path was in some ways traditional—Stanford to Stanford Law to judicial clerkship to high-powered law firm—but it was also marked by bouts of rebellion. At Stanford he created and published a radical conservative journal called The Stanford Review, then he wrote a book that railed against multiculturalism and “militant homosexuals” on campus, despite being both gay and foreign born. His friends thought he might become a political pundit. Instead he became a lawyer. Then one day, surprising even himself, he walked out of one of the most prestigious securities law firms in the world, Sullivan & Cromwell, after seven months and three days on the job. Within a few short years, Thiel formed and then sold PayPal, an online payments company, to eBay for $ 1.5 billion in July 2002, the month that Nick Denton registered the domain for his first site, Gizmodo. With proceeds of some $ 55 million, Thiel assembled an empire. He retooled a hedge fund called Clarium into a vehicle to make large, counterintuitive bets on global macro trends, seeding it with $ 10 million of his own money. In 2003, Thiel registered a company called Palantir with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2004, he would found it in earnest. The company would take antifraud technology from PayPal and apply it to intelligence gathering—fighting terrorism, predicting crime, providing military insights. It would take money from the venture capital arm of the CIA and soon take on almost every other arm of the government as clients.

The title of National Chairman is itself the least important of the three crowns Xi wears. His position as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China is what gives him his power, as does his being the Chairman of the Central Military Commission that controls the PLA. The Party, as always, comes first.

Alarmed at a high incidence of crashes during routine flight training in the 1940s, U.S. Air Force officials looked for evidence of mechanical flaws in the planes or human error perhaps inadvertently introduced by their curriculum, but the cause of the crashes remained mysterious. At last, officials commissioned a lieutenant trained as a scientist, Gilbert Daniels, to look at the physical structures of the cockpit and the men who used them. Daniels noted that all the cockpit structures—seat and back, pedals, knobs, and so on—had been built to specifications calculated for an average military recruit. Recruits for pilot training were already selected for some degree of averageness, had been the reasoning, so these dimensions should fit most pilots, most of the time. But when Daniels measured 4,063 soldiers, he was astonished to find that not a single one of the men fit all ten of the measurements that had been determined to be average. Instead, every body offered its own variation: One pilot might have a longer-than-average arm length, but a shorter-than-average leg length. Another pilot might have a big chest but small hips. Even more astonishing, Daniels discovered that if you picked just three of the ten dimensions of size—say, neck circumference, thigh circumference, and wrist circumference—less than 3.5 percent of pilots would be average sized on all three dimensions. Daniels’s findings were clear and incontrovertible. There was no such thing as an average pilot. The unyielding fixity of the average cockpit ended up being useful to exactly no one. Thereafter, aeronautical engineers began to make everything from seats and foot pedals to flight suits and helmet straps adjustable, and the Air Force adjusted its cockpit specifications to stipulate movable parts that could be adapted to fit a range of body measurements, from 5 to 95 percent of average, just right.

Lamentations The book of Lamentations in the English Bible takes its name from the Greek and Latin versions, which translate the Hebrew qinoth “dirges, laments.” The Hebrew Bible names a book by the first word or phrase. Lamentations is one of the “megilloth,” or five scrolls that are read during various of the annual festivals. Lamentations has traditionally been read in observation of Tish b’av (ninth of the month ‘Av), the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem. While Tish b’av is a later development, it is a likely extension of the communal mourning over Jerusalem reflected in Jer 41:5; Zec 7:3–5; 8:19. Historical Setting Lamentations focuses on the trauma experienced by the kingdom of Judah at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. In 604 BC Nebuchadnezzar’s military confronted the western states, and Babylonian power was brought to bear on Judah. In less than a decade the devastation of Judah had begun with the first deportation. Typical of ancient Near Eastern warfare, if time permitted, cities fortified as Jerusalem was were often “softened” by siege warfare. This protracted strangulation of a city deprived the defenders and citizenry of food and often of water. Thirst and starvation would decimate the besieged population. Though from an earlier period, the art and inscriptions of the Assyrian palaces provide insight into the horrors of the siege. They also show the intensity of devastation once the defenses were broken down. There was no theory of “separation of church and state” in the ancient Near East. The city-state was viewed as the realm of a patron deity. Palace and temple were intimately connected functionally and were often closely situated physically. One implication of this view is that in order to vanquish a city-state, not only must the military be defeated and the royal court put out of commission (either by killing the king or rendering him unfit to reign—often by mutilation), but the temple and its accoutrements were to be looted and put out of commission. Putting the god under submission was just as important as putting the king and his military under submission. When the kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonian Empire (586 BC), the temple and the palace were destroyed, along with the rest of the capital city, and the leadership and much of the population were carried away captive.

This is the story of a rather unorthodox department known as M.D.1. (Ministry of Defence 1). Born at the War Office early in 1939 with a staff of one commissioned and one non-commissioned officer charged with the task of devising special weapons for irregular warfare,

States should impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against officials and individuals responsible for the continued commission of these serious crimes and condition arms sales and military and security assistance to Israel on Israeli authorities taking concrete and verifiable steps towards ending their commission of the crimes of apartheid and persecution.

In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that the United States’ exercise of authority over Guantánamo gave the detainees a constitutional right to bring their habeas corpus claims in federal district courts. The Court also held that the procedures authorized under the Military Commissions Act, which called for military tribunals to look into the detention of the Guantánamo detainees, were not an adequate substitute for habeas. As the Court explained, “[t]he laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, even in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system, they are reconciled within the framework of the law.”17

Pasha’s full name was Abdur Rehman Hashim; an ex-army officer in the 6th Baloch Rifles, he was handsome and battlefield savvy, and had resigned his commission after refusing an order to fight against Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mountains, when the Pakistan military signed up to the Americans’ ‘war on terror’.

And it was as a diplomat that Congress dispatched him to Montreal. Under nineteen paragraphs of instructions signed by Hancock, Franklin’s task was nothing less than to restore Canadian faith in America’s ideals, innocence, and military commitment after the debacle in Quebec. As leader of a small commission, he was “to settle all disputes between the Canadians and the Continental troops,” persuade Canada that “their interests and ours are inseparably united,” urge Canadians to join “our union as a sister colony,” and pledge “the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion.

By 1947, as Truman’s embargo began to be enforced, Nicaragua started providing arms to the Haganah. Somoza reportedly profited directly from this venture: he “received 3.5. percent commission on all arms purchases made by the Haganah under Nicaraguan aegis.”18 A decade later, Israel returned the favor when Shimon Peres negotiated an arms deal with Somoza that transformed Israel’s emergent military-industrial complex into the primary supplier of weapons for Nicaragua.19 As will be discussed in Chapter 7, Israel was active in arming and training the Nicaraguan Contras, the US-backed paramilitary forces that opposed the Sandinista government, which had toppled the Somoza regime in the late 1970s. The entry of Israel into this conflict was guaranteed by this precise history – and the Reagan administration, as part of its propaganda campaign, was quick to paint the new, Sandinista-led government as violently anti-Semitic.