Hugh Raffles doesn't know ecology

Claiming, as he does in this NYT op-ed, that invasive species are good, is clueless.

Designating some as native and others as alien denies this ecological and genetic dynamism. It draws an arbitrary historical line based as much on aesthetics, morality and politics as on science, a line that creates a mythic time of purity before places were polluted by interlopers.

To such nonsense, I reply: "Tamarisk," also known as "saltcedar."

Or "kudzu." Or "starling."

Even worse is his personalizing this, by claiming alien plants enhance a society just like immigrants, then at the end of the column, turning to his own naturalization ceremony.

And, the NYT, even with a putative paywall, still doesn't let us peons comment on op-ed stories.

Anonymous sourcing gets even more ridiculous

Here's the latest. On political strategy for a presidential race that won't have its first semi-binding vote for nine months .... granting campaign aides anonymity to "leak" about their boss's campaign plans.

Allies and aides who outlined the path that Romney is charting to the nomination spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publically discuss private strategy sessions.

Ridiculous. "Traditional media" gets worse at this all the time.

Oh, and Philip Elliott of the AP, "publically" is NOT a word. "Publicly" is.

Spiegel's must-read on U.S. military's Afghan kill teams

I hadn't gotten myself fully up to speed on the issue, but, Der Spiegel is all over the issue that American media are still (with the exception, overall, of McClatchy) slow to address. That issue is the "kill teams" ... the issue that at least in some military units, soldiers are not just heartless toward but ready to brutally kill Afghan civilians.

First, per one soldier, Adam Wingfield, who was concerned about it, the "kill, kill, kill" attitude sounds kind of common:

There are people in my platoon that can get away with 'murder.' They planned and went through with it. ... Pretty much the whole platoon knows about it. It's OK with all of them pretty much, except me. I want to do something about it, the only problem is I don't feel safe here telling anyone.

Meanwhile, despite Gen. Petraeus' allegedly having concern for Afghan civilians as part of his counterinsurgency, how well is he working to INSIST that message percolates down? Maybe not totally?

Winfield again:

I have to make up my mind. Should I do the right thing and put myself in danger, or should I just shut up and deal with it? The army really let me down out here. When I thought I would come here to do any good, maybe make some change in this country, I find out it is all a lie. There are no good men left here.

What brought this attitude on?

Can we, like FiredogLake, say it's all a "hate industry" at home?

No. To the degree this is hate-based, racial and ethnic hatred have never needed an "industry" to fuel them. If anything, any causal correlation is the other way.

Second, the military trains people to kill. After actual stories (whether close to true or not) that in World War I, very few riflemen actually fired to kill, armies around the world ever since have worked on molding soldiers into psychologically "better" killers. There's not necessarily any ethnic hatred involved. That said, it makes it harder to have uniformed soldiers be the lead on counterinsurgency, especially when their mission is hugely undermanned, putting them on edge in an uncertain countryside all the time.

Adam's mom, Emma, and another military mom talks about that:

For the soldiers of the 5th Stryker Brigade, the new COIN strategy was a non-starter, says Audrey Morlock, Jeremy's mother. The Army didn't provide her son with training for this strategy, she says. "For three years, my boy was only trained (to do) one thing -- kill, kill, kill." The Winfields also have the impression that the requirements for the soldiers which came with the new COIN strategy overburdened them. "How were they supposed to protect the population?" asks his mother Emma.

Bingo. Oh, this is yet another reason to note that the British counterinsurgency in Malaysia was far different than what Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal proposed.

So, instead of blaming a "hate machine," let's blame politicians from President Obama on down who still want to believe, and want to have the American public believe, a ground war can be fought on the cheap. Let's blame generals like Petraeus who refuse to counteract many Americans' video game version of war and won't tell the politicians the truth, as Spiegel notes in discussing the Pentagon's fear of war atrocities photos coming to light. And, let's blame Americans who want to believe all this and who, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, aren't being asked to "feel" the cost of war.

Here's the reality, as Spiegel describes it:

Adam Winfield rarely saw the enemy. He and his comrades only saw the Talibans' helpers through their night-vision devices when the enemy was burying landmines -- they hid during the day. For days, the Americans did nothing but carry out senseless patrols. The soldiers became frustrated and bored.

The enemy, says Adam's father, is invisible until somebody gets blown up. "They are fighting against ghosts."

Of course they're going to be skittish, and not do well on counterinsurgency work.

That said, again, let's remember these facts:
1. Americans want to hear lies about the painless, techie nature of modern war.
2. Politicians don't want to upset citizens, nor appear "weak on war"; in Bush's case, it includes continuing to tell lies about what his administration achieved in Afghanistan.
3. The military brass will "sell" whatever it can, while doing another thing in reality, for a number of reasons.

So, you're going to get a clusterfuck.

That's why good liberals who write blank checks of support for the Army aren't such good liberals. That's especially true when a "professional" army, versus draftees, is more likely to produce incidents such as these, in my opinion.

As for Adam Winfield? Does his finally giving into pressure to join the kill team make him murderer or victim of psychological bullying? Or a bit of both?

While glad I've never been in a situation such as his and presuming I never will be, we can't consider him 100 percent innocent. I'm not going to lay down exact percentages, but, we can't totally excuse him.

Andrew Wakefield - more blood on his hands

What else can you saw about the not-only long-discredited Andrew Wakefield, but the money-hungry data-cheating Andrew Wakefield, with the spread of measles in Minnesota, especially as he deliberately seeks out barely, and partially, Westernized Somali women and fear-mongers the alleged and over-hyped dangers of vaccines.

And, the AP reporter doesn't know much about the antivaxxer movement's tentacles, either. Otherwise she wouldn't have interviewed and quoted antivaxxer Wayne Rohde, a regular at Age of Autism, as a defender of Wakefield.

"Unfortunately a lot of the media thinks he's saying 'Don't get vaccinated.' That's far from the truth. He's basically encouraging people to get vaccinated but do your homework and know the risks," said Wayne Rohde, a co-founder of the Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota, which says parents should have other options for immunizing their children.

No, that's surely NOT what he's doing. Rather, he's fear-mongering, highly inflating the quite small dangers of vaccination to women recently immigrated from a part of the world where anti-Christian Muslim extremists fear-monger about vaccines as a Christian plot at times.

I'll be charitable enough to assume the AP reporter is a general assignment reporter; nonetheless, in the age of teh Google, reporting like this simply isn't good. Period.

Oh, and yes, antivaxxers, Age of Autism IS antivaxxer. Read here.

Joe Nocera comes out swinging

The newest New York Times op-ed columnist skewers Warren Buffett in his first column.

Good thing, too. For too long, too many financial reporters, and columnists, have operated under the assumption that "The Sage of Omaha" had a halo.

Well, from his ownership of the Buffalo News onward, the answer is NOT.

Of course, in the past, as a business writer, he's bought into conventional Beltway wisdom at times, as Naked Capitalism notes.

Gohmert Pyle strikes again

Arguably Texas' most nutbar emissary to the Congress of the United States, Rep. Louis Gohmert appears determined to top himself, time and time again.

The latest? President Obama's military action against Libya is possibly part of a nefarious Obamacare plot.

It's a bad bill. And then when you find out that the prior Congress not only passed that 2,800 page bill with all kinds of things in it, including a new president's commissioned officer corps and non-commissioned officer corps. Do we really need that? I wondered when I read that in the bill. But then when you find out we're being sent to Libya to use our treasure and American lives there, maybe there's intention to so deplete the military that we're going to need that presidential reserve officer commissioned corps and non-commissioned corps that the president can call up on a moment's notice involuntarily, according to the Obamacare bill.

No, really.

Don't believe the pull quote? Here's Gohmert Pyle in his own words.



And, as we see him in gear-churning action, this isn't surprising ....