Bill 'Moyers & Company: 23 March 2012

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Saturday March 24, 2012 · 7:02 AM PDT

2012/03/24 · 07:02

I would suggest many watch or listen to this discussion with fellow Vietnam Veteran Andrew Bacevich and listen closely.

I would also suggest that even if many do, or did last night, that they still won't get it, even some veterans, reason many who are ordered into our wars don't or won't talk much about the experiences of, just the questions from those asking them show that if talked about they wouldn't understand the realities of war and especially wars of choice.

The hawks, or neo-cons if you will, civilian political leaders and their supporters who ordered and carried out the policies in the past administration and rubber stamping congress, then walked away from comely, with still a few on the public stage or some still in political offices, will be long gone before the remnants of blowback or retaliations might cease or the memories passed down by those at the end of our terror will blur in younger generations. Yet they and younger ideologues like them still seek to create even more hatreds thus enemies with even more destructive terror, sealing what will be the decades coming.

Andrew Bacevich on Changing Our Military Mindset

March 23, 2012 - Nine years after Baghdad erupted in “shock and awe,” we’re once again hearing in America the drumbeat for war in the Middle East. Now, the bull’s-eye is on Iran. But what we need more than a simple change of target is a complete change in perspective, says Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran-turned-scholar who’s become one of the most perceptive observers of America’s changing role in the world.
This week, on an all-new Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers and Bacevich explore the futility of “endless” wars, and provide a reality check on the rhetoric of American exceptionalism. read more>>>

Andrew Bacevich on Changing Our Military Mindset from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

The Real Costs of War

March 23, 2012 - Most discussion about the “costs of war” focuses on two numbers: dollars spent and American troops who gave their lives. A decade into the war on terror, those official costs are over a trillion dollars and more than 6,000 dead. But as overwhelming as those numbers are, they don’t tell the full story.
In one of the most comprehensive studies available, researchers in the Eisenhower Study Group at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies looked at the human, economic, social and political costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as our military actions in Pakistan. Their complete findings are available at costofwar.org. The numbers below are all from their report, which is dated June 2011. When the study sites both conservative and moderate estimates, we’ve chosen the conservative numbers. It is difficult to find more recent tallies for most of these numbers, but up-to-date totals of U.S. military deaths, along with photos and biographical information, can be found in The Washington Post’s Faces of the Fallen collection. read more>>>

Bill Moyers Essay: The Dangerous Road of Wishful Thinking

March 23, 2012 - Bill Moyers counsels President Obama not to look at America through the rose-colored glasses of people — like Robert Kagan — led by political opportunity and wishful thinking, but by those — like Andrew Bacevich — who see the world as it truly is, and are best poised to make it better. read more>>>
Bill Moyers Essay: The Dangerous Road of Wishful Thinking from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Sgt. Robert Bales and the Trauma of Repeat Deployments

March 22, 2012 - Does Robert Bales, the army staff sergeant who allegedly killed 17 Afghan civilians on March 11, symbolize a larger problem in our military ranks? In this web-exclusive video, Vietnam veteran and military scholar Andrew Bacevich talks with Bill Moyers about Bales’ accountability, the stress of repeated tours on soldiers, and how war itself “compromises our humanity.” read more>>>
Andrew Bacevich on Sgt. Robert Bales | Moyers & Company from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

This country, the U.S., walked away from accountability, all accountability, and left everything done then to be taken off the table while they quickly picked up passing the blame, much more then even the wars, directly on those now holding office and then in only a few short years turned control in congress over to same with numbers of even more extremist political ideology representing the countries population.

The country has yet to pay the costs of these wars, nor demands to! The country has yet to seek sacrifice for the results of these wars nor demands to!

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