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Understanding the Cost of War: Moral Injury

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“My guilt will never go away,” former Marine Matthew Hoh explained to me. “There is a significant portion of me that doesn’t believe it should be allowed to go away, that this pain is fair.”

If America accepts the idea of fighting endless wars, it will have to accept something else as well: that the costs of war are similarly endless. I’m thinking about the trillions of dollars, the million or more “enemy” dead (including civilians of every imaginable sort), the tens of thousands of American combat casualties, those 20 veteran suicides each day, and the diminished lives of those who survive them all. There’s that pain, carried by an unknown number of women and men, that won’t go away, ever, and that goes by the label “moral injury.”

The Lasting Pain of War

When I started my new novel, Hooper’s War, a what-if about the end of World War II in the Pacific, I had in mind just that pain. I was thinking — couldn’t stop thinking, in fact — about what really happens to people in war, combatants and civilians alike. The need to tell that story grew in large part out of my own experiences in Iraq, where I spent a year embedded with a combat unit as a US State Department employee, and where I witnessed, among so many other horrors, two soldier suicides.

The new book began one day when Facebook retrieved photos of Iraqi children I had posted years ago, with a cheery “See Your Memories” caption on them. Oh yes, I remembered. Then, on the news, I began seeing places in Iraq familiar to me, but this time being overrun by Islamic State militants or later being re-retaken with the help of another generation of young Americans. And I kept running into people who’d been involved in my war and were all too ready to share too many drinks and tell me too much about what I was already up all too many nights thinking about.

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Why Are We Attacking the Syrians Who Are Fighting ISIS?

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Just when you thought our Syria policy could not get any worse, last week it did. The US military twice attacked Syrian government forces from a military base it illegally occupies inside Syria. According to the Pentagon, the attacks on Syrian government-backed forces were “defensive” because the Syrian fighters were approaching a US self-declared “de-confliction” zone inside Syria. The Syrian forces were pursuing ISIS in the area, but the US attacked anyway.

The US is training yet another rebel group fighting from that base, located near the border of Iraq at al-Tanf, and it claims that Syrian government forces pose a threat to the US military presence there. But the Pentagon has forgotten one thing: it has no authority to be in Syria in the first place! Neither the US Congress nor the UN Security Council has authorized a US military presence inside Syria.
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Saudi Arabia is Destabilizing the World

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Just a few months ago, the governor of Indonesia’s largest city, Jakarta, seemed headed for easy re-election despite the fact that he is a Christian in a mostly Muslim country. Suddenly everything went violently wrong. Using the pretext of an offhand remark the governor made about the Koran, masses of enraged Muslims took to the streets to denounce him. In short order he lost the election, was arrested, charged with blasphemy, and sentenced to two years in prison.
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Can Gaddafi Save Libya?

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Politically dramatic news emerged on Saturday 10th June when it was announced that Saif Al-Islam, was freed from Zintan and had arrived in eastern Libya, to Al-Bayda. This is a very significant turn of events on the ground politically in so many different ways. One of these is described below.

The Libyan National Army (LNA) liberation of the Jufra AFB is also connected to Libyan "militias'" in Tripoli releasing last week some Gaddafi era VIPs including Saif's brother, Saadi and former prime minister Baghdadi Mahmudi from prison. 

These developments are part of a new dynamic that seems to be entering the Libyan stage. The idea is to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Tribunal, similar to Mandela's South Africa’s, in order to bring unity to the country. 

Specific Libyan tribes are starting to back Saif Gaddafi and with the backing of Libya's House of Representatives and LNA head Khalifa Haftar, a new and hopefully peaceful attempt at unification may appear when the fighting stops and Saif can play a most important and historic part in this.
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The Surveillance State and Big Brother Trump

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Despite his opposition to surveillance during the campaign, Trump has flip-flopped once again and now supports the surveillance state.

His Homeland Security advisor, Tom Bossert, who worked with the Bush administration, penned an editorial for The New York Times this week calling for a reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Section 702 allows for vacuuming up emails, instant messages, Facebook messages, web browsing history, and more in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment.

“Cabinet officials and security professionals from different agencies will testify on this matter on Wednesday,” writes Bossert. “President Trump stands with them 100 percent on the need for permanent reauthorization of Section 702. Officials from the past two administrations also agree that we cannot have a blind spot in our defenses simply because a foreign terrorist on foreign land chooses an American email provider.”

Former NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers have repeatedly claimed NSA snooping has thwarted 54 terrorist attacks. This claim has been completely debunked. Like the baseless and politically motivated claim Russia hacked the election, the 54 terrorists claim is little more than fiction. It’s propaganda to justify a surveillance state.
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Terror in Tehran, Qatar Spat, and Race for Syria-Iraq Border: the Washington ‘Swamp’ Gives Green Light for Saudi Arabia’s Jihad Agenda

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This week’s attacks in Tehran, for which the Islamic State (ISIS) promptly claimed responsibility, are at this writing the latest incidents to roil the troubled waters in an increasingly turbulent “Broader Middle East.” They will not be the last.

The terror in Tehran comes as the threats from Saudi Arabia against Qatar on the surreal charge of supporting terrorism have reached a fever pitch. Observers openly discuss the possibility of a coup against the ruling Sheikh Tamim bin Hamаd al-Thani, or even a Saudi invasion. Regarding a possible regime change, Saudi media note that Tamim’s father, Hamаd, came to power in a coup against his father; coups are not rare in Qatari history, and there’s always another al-Thani brother, cousin, or nephew who could be installed as a suitable puppet for Riyadh.

As for an invasion, keep in mind that Qatar was a part of the first and second Saudi states (defunct in 1818 and 1891, respectively) and could end up that way again. Given depressed oil prices and Qatar’s massive natural gas reserves, the Saudis would welcome a quick and lucrative diversification of their portfolio. Qatar has placed its armed forces on the highest state of alert.

Meanwhile, in Syria, on June 6, US planes for the second time put in an airstrike on pro-government forces near the al-Tanf border crossing with Iraq, near Jordan. The stated purpose was to protect U.S.-supported “moderate” jihadists in a “de-confliction zone” unilaterally declared by Washington. The US also has reportedly established a presence at al-Zkuf, another border point to the north and east, with the obvious aim of blocking any link-up of Syrian and Iraqi forces fighting against ISIS.
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Russia-gate’s Mythical ‘Heroes’

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Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.
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The Imperial City Unhinged -- J. Edgar Comey's Big Fat Nothingburger

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Comey's ballyhooed testimony contains nothing not already known, nothing remotely about obstruction of justice, and, in fact, nothing that matters at all. It's just a replay of the self-serving tommyrot Comey has been leaking all along.

Indeed, it's the Nothingburger that proves Imperial Washington has become completely unhinged in its groundless RussiaGate hysteria; and is stumbling toward a lawless defenestration of a sitting president in the name of a hypocritical obeisance to a tortured version of "the law".

It is a smoking gun in only one sense: It proves why the sanctimonious Comey should have been fired on day one and why the apparent Wall Street assumption that it can count on "Washington governance as usual" is so dangerously misguided.

As to the latter, our point is very simple. What we have is an entirely unstable, unsustainable hothouse economy and financial system that is completely dependent upon the ministrations of the state and its central banking branch. The giant bubble that was reflated after the 2008 crisis will soon violently implode and take the economy down with it----unless it is again arrested and bailed-out by extraordinary Washington action.
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Comey Under The Gun: Truth-Telling...Or Just Politics?

Will the Comey Senate testimony put an end to the "Russiagate" scandal and the issue of whether President Trump will continue to be hobbled by suggestions he pressured the FBI to drop investigations? Don't count on it, but we break down today's explosive hearing in today's Liberty Report...
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Trump — Blundering into European Truths

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President Trump’s ignorant, oafish and crude foreign policy style rivets our attention, arouses our indignation. But the drama of the diplomatic mayhem he wreaks while traveling abroad also distracts from recognizing more serious underlying problems of US policy— deep negative trends that predate Trump.

Focusing on Trump’s latest crude pronouncements encourages the soothing belief that these current dilemmas are all his doing. In other words, if we didn’t have Trump, the US would be back in the comfortable saddle as world’s acknowledged, respected, indispensable leader. The sad fact is, we can vent our anger as we like, but the old days just aren’t coming back.
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