Recently I heard an airline gate agent reading the familiar announcement that active-duty military personnel were welcome to board before everyone else and I asked myself, why?
The Thing That Won’t Leave
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Obama wants to leave 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014. Except for a “contingency force,” which will stay longer. Then we’ll be gone. Well, not really.
Likeable
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Obama’s attorney general announced that the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone for the murders of CIA detainees during the Bush years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, despite this and Guantanamo, most Americans still think Obama is likeableâa key factor in this year’s campaign.
Death by Skype
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A soldier serving in Afghanistan was killed while Skyping with his wife. (We don’t know whether he was shot or died of some other cause.) How will your death be live-streamed?
Bad Apple
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After a soldier slaughters 16 civilians in Afghanistan, President Obama as usual blames the “bad apple” while exonerating the military as a whole.
You’re Gonna Miss Me
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As the U.S. withdraws from an Iraq it destroyed, it wonders how Iraqis will do on their own.
The Penultimate Sacrifice
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It’s true that the lawn around the Vietnam war memorial is in trouble. But at least soldiers who died in Afghanistan will have died for something useful.
The Last American Job
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In 1945, with the Allies closing in on all sides and the regime crumbling, leaders of the Third Reich accelerated the Holocaust, assigning trains that could have been used for the war effort to carry tens of thousands of Jews to their deaths. Dying regimes, you see, have their priorities.
At Tuesday’s debate, neither candidate dared to suggest that getting out of Iraq might help alleviate our current financial difficulties.
