Month: November 2019

Militia territory

benfell

See updates through November 13, 2020 at end of post.

My eyes popped when I first saw this (figure 1):

Fig. 1. Photograph by author, November 22, 2019.

There are a few dissonances here. First, it’s a dump truck, painted in a camouflage scheme, as if its owner were prepared to deploy it in a combat zone. Second, it’s owned by a locksmith—for what, to build fortifications? Read more →

Raw, naked power

benfell

Simon Jenkins asks a good question, but I think misunderstands the purpose of war.

Jenkins wants to know why the U.S. and Britain are still engaged in fruitless, unwinnable wars in the Middle East. These wars, he writes, are unpopular among the general public and even among soldiers, with the latter preferring wars that can be won.[1] And while a counterfactual is unprovable, it is, at best, unclear that the wars have accomplished a thing.
Read more →

  1. [1]Simon Jenkins, “The US and Britain face no existential threat. So why do their wars go on?” Guardian, November 15, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/15/britain-and-us-wars-conflicts-middle-east↩