Was the Crimean War stupider that the current war in Ukraine?
(Mostly) lurking moron bensdad00 offers his review of the Crimean war history book, The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade, by which you'll see how easy it is to think of war as an enterprise conceived of by the insane, planned by the ignorant, and carried by the incompetent:
The war is a Near East boondoggle no one wanted sparked by obscure religious disputes (sound familiar?) and half a dozen instances described in the campaign will make you laugh out loud - i.e. the British commander who heads out with his staff for a better view of a battlefront and ends up obviously on a hill behind enemy lines, only avoiding capture or death because the enemy couldn't believe it wasn't a trap of some kind. Or the fleet of hundreds of ships crammed with thousands of sailors that sailed from port - - without a destination.
Combine this with the British gentry class's complete contempt for working men with actual skills (prejudice against soldiers with decades of experience because they served in India was rampant) and it's disheartening that despite how much things have changed they still remain the same.
'War is crazy' has been done before in books such as Catch-22, and MAS*H, but the reality is always far worse.
I find much to admire in the principles of the upper classes of Britain while Tennyson was alive, but they held a certain disdain for the working classes, and the popularity of this poem among the gentry somehow did not carry through to those who would make up the ranks of ordinary soldiers:
II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
And the six hundred were expected to die for the Ottoman Empire - - NOT for their own country.
Storytelling in the NYT about Ukraine
On March 29, the end of month in which Zelensky challenged President Trump's idea that it was time to work toward peace in Ukraine, a huge article appeared in the New York Times revealing that the CIA and our military had been running much of the war effort in Ukraine out of Germany.
The Secret History of the War in Ukraine
This piece by Adam Entous is behind a paywall, but the next day, a shorter piece was released with Key Takeaways from the longer piece without a paywall (if you look it up in a search).
And other news sources like The Nordic Times also reported on this remarkable news.
Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi have done a rather thorough Fisking of the longer NYT piece, with commentary on the author's earlier piece on Ukraine as well, below:
It is actually sort of tedious to sit through, so you might want to skip through it, or put it on background as you do something else. But it shows how a prestigious NYT reporter changes the story in rather dramatic ways without causing much of an uproar in the nation. And there should be an uproar!
Key sections to check out are the beginning, at about 8 minutes. A CIA agent is our hero. And 300 people are interviewed.
44 minutes: Possible insights into why the Biden Administration issued a vague pardon for General Milley. Plus Hollywood!
1 hour 16 minutes: Chances of nuclear war estimated to increase from 5 to 10 % to 50% (limited strikes, but still).
1 hour 28 through 43 minutes - several narratives change. Zelenskyy is no longer "bulletproof" in the press.
2 hours 2 minutes - Takeaway quote
Ghoulishly upbeat NYT recasts the FUBAR Ukraine war with its hundreds of thousands of dead and countless maimed and crippled soldiers and civilians as "a grand experiment in war fighting" which will reward the Americans with lessons for any future war."
Nice.
Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.
This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.
Last week's thread, September 30, N.I.C.E. Science and Technology vs. Ordinary Humans
UPDATE:
Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.