Sgt. Dennis Weichel, 29, gave the world a measure of the bravery and humanity of our soldiers serving abroad this week. Weichel, a father of three from Rhode Island, gave his life to save an Afghan girl from being run over by a 16-ton armored fighting vehicle this week. While Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called all Americans “Demons” , Weichel did not hesitate to give his life for a little girl in danger.
Weichel, a Rhode Island National Guardsman, was riding in the convoy in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan when he and his comrades saw Afghan children collecting shell casings on the road. The soldiers got out of the convoy to shoo the children away for their safety. Then, one girl suddenly ran back to grab a casing that the children collect for money. Weichel looked up and saw a MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle, heading toward the girl. He ran in front of the armored vehicle, grabbed the girl, threw her to safety, and was then run over himself.
A member of the Rhode Island National Guard since 2001, Weichel had only arrived in Afghanistan a few weeks ago. He previously served in Iraq.
I can only imagine the pain and sorrow of this family. However, if it is some small comfort, the entire nation is mourning the loss of this wonderful human being.
Source: ABC
Blouise,
Aren’t computers wonderful. Just when you think……wham!
No advice. You’ve been fighting the system longer than I have.
I asked once about your avatar, as I sought and saw a larger version.
Asked if it was Walden Pond. Would be in some way, months ago, appropriate for you. Now am not so sure.
But knowing it is in your backyard. Wowee.! Come around and see my moose in the autumn when they steal apples from my tree in the country
That’s the only thing I can offer other than 300+ rhododendron and azaleas, some of the many inappropriate plants we have. And the 80 step climb up the stairs to the “backyard”..
But water, after forests the Swedes love water.
You’ve been to Stockholm I believe. Our year round pleasures are both. My cottage is only 300 meters to a bay of the Baltic. But yours is better and year round too. Lovely.
Elaine:
“Second, you’ll have to provide me with examples of situations where I was involved in discussions on this blog and should have chastised Buddha and/or Gene for comments they made to you that were worse than what you said to Gene.”
You were privy to them and you know what I am talking about.
Gene H.
Retreating behind the Sergeant, are you? Seems so. You were so happy with joining in on the save us from future wars discussions before.
Well here comes one more, no armistice for you now.
You launched a counter attack against a surprising attack from MM.
And now comes a satrap and enters the fray, uncertain his motive.
You ARE tired today. You support the use of nukes. You descend to:
“Again, straw man much? My but you’re a tedious self-righteous twit.”
insults of low quality. (A known tactic I’ve experienced. You do abandon arguments all too readily, mixing them indiscriminately with logical exhibitionism.)
And you seek to avoid the effort by simply labeling everything he said as
strawmen which he pushes over.
I am perhaps who I am, ie limited, but his arguments do have resonance in us who don’t buy the Afghanistan scapegoat for nuking.
Osama was quite simply given an offer he could not refuse. Your family or lead this red herring which can recruit and train for side track attacks to reinforce the image of Aghanistan as a goal for war.
It gave us Iraq (which you say and I believe you, did not support.)
It also fitted America’s strategic need to complete the circuit to the Pacific Rim (just aa Alexander wanted to do ; no relevance but interesting anyway).
India is being suborned from within, Pakistan will fall or be bought later.
So the task was done, but for one thing. Tha Afghanistan outlasted us, just as the North Vietnamese Foreign Minister told us they would do. And they were correct.
So I can understand you
And the role of SA has been ignored by you, focusing as you did earlier solely on Afghanistan who would be nuked.
You, in any case, clearly have identified yourself, inconsequently, with non-violent demonstrations AND the violent use of unclearly motivated nuking.
Rather inconsequential in my eyes.
Draconian measures are nothing new.. From Cain to Ashoka killing his 99 brothers over throne rights, to Ottoman winners of succession rights to the killing of JFK, the list is long and will continue.
But opening the Pandoran box for George and his successors to use seems to hail you as a nihilits. Aprex moi. le deluge. Pardon the bad French.
That Obama has seized the Caeserian right of killing whom he will, an ideological extenstion of our right (as you exemplify with nuking) to pre-emptive wars—progressing fromf the false evidence of WMDs and the conspiracy with the Saudis to today is only logical. Logic is not right.
Go ahead attack. Ridicule, brilliantly demonstrate your logical powers.
heap abuse, do your best. But you will be met with accomodation as all satrapies do as survival, until the dominator weakens or is distracted.
You and I are allies in the fight against America’s corruption in its government and politics—in fact just about all of public life, media corporatism, and health care is corrupt. That is simply why I turned my back. Until my concern for a dear relative awoke renewed interest.
Abandon this maniacal idea. Revenge may be swift. But it is not free from eventual retribution. As long as a survivor exists who can reproduce you must be on your guard. That’s why how the opposition ws to be detected and fought and punished was written down in 320 BC, the same year ironically as Buddha’s enlightenment. But it was another person who wrote those instructions down.
Let us join hands and forgive ourselves if the Afghanis can. Don’t ever let us hear you talking of nuking as a solution again. I hope not.
My arguments are offered in all respect but the right to differ rules here.
Go ahead and fire when ready. whatever his name was.
id707,
The name thing has to do with the sign in requirements. Some times I sign in before I post, sometimes after. Also, if I haven’t been on for awhile Word Press forgets me but I don’t know that till I try to post. It’s a bother. I could skip the whole process if I wanted to go without an avatar, which, quite frankly I’m thinking of doing since I’m having so much trouble adapting. Of course if I skip the avatar then anyone could sign in under my name … though why one would want to is beyond me.
For now, just look for the avatar which is a picture I took in my backyard. If I’ve signed in as “hitspics boodac” with that avatar, it’s me.
Bron,
“Do you think what he has called me and others is wrong? I never saw you chastise Gene or Buddha is Laughing when they were saying much worse things to many of us.”
First, that’s not an answer to the question I asked you: “Do you think what you said to Gene was mean?” Second, you’ll have to provide me with examples of situations where I was involved in discussions on this blog and should have chastised Buddha and/or Gene for comments they made to you that were worse than what you said to Gene.
However, let’s steer back to the point:
Sgt. Weichel behaved heroically and selflessly.
That’s the only topic relevant to this thread. If you two clowns want to argue alternate strategy some more, you’ll have to save it for later. I’ll be glad to argue the point on an appropriate topic. You both seem to want to distract from the topic of this thread for your own reasons.
Sgt. Weichel deserves better.
Actually, you’re both attributing something to my alternate strategy that is not there. Bron will say anything to distance and distract from his earlier display of selfishness. MM, you’re simply swinging at straw men. Go ahead and ignore that I imposed a time limit. Go ahead and ignore that I advocated the use of nuclear deterrent instead of first strikes. Go ahead and ignore that I advocated proper target selection for response. As long as you do, you’re simply going to be arguing against your own straw men. I’ve been war gaming my entire life. If you don’t think I have thought this strategy through, then you’re only fooling yourself. Had I been in charge, this conflict would have long been over and those responsible for 9/11 put on trial no matter what their business dealings with the Bush family might be.
Michael Murray:
“your “logical” associations reveal glaring gaps and leaps from one untenable assumption to another, and you give no sign of ever having contemplated the dire and irreversible consequences of the madness you advocate.”
That is Gene H for you, he cant help himself.
MM,
I really couldn’t let this one pass. The sheer, mindless malevolence arising from its obtuse refusal to acknowledge reality requires debunking. From commenter Gene H:
“What we should have done with Afghanistan is simply this: bombed every training camp we could find and the villages that acted as their support networks and told the Afghans that if they ever trained personnel to attack U.S. targets again, we’d come back with nukes. And then left them to their Islamic hillbilly ways with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.”
First, you cannot “debunk” an alternate strategy. You can criticize it, but you can’t debunk it. But first, you must understand it to criticize it. And understanding doesn’t seem to be your strong point.
“First off: the 9/11 hijackers came almost exclusively from Saudi Arabia — the home, heart, soul, and bankroller of Islamic Jihadism. Not a one of the 9/11 hijackers came from either Iraq or Afghanistan.”
I didn’t mention Iraq other than to say I’d have left them alone as they did not attack us. However, a great many of the Saudis involved did receive their training in camps in Afghanistan.
“Second: the operational planning for the 9/11 attacks took place in Hamburg, Germany, and could have taken place anywhere on earth where people can think. An Egyptian engineer did the calculations concluding that the explosive energy of a plane full of high octane fuel could, in effect, function as a potent bomb.”
So? The operations were funded with Saudi money. I don’t care where they were planned. Where the money came from and where the bulk of the training took place is relevant though. Again: Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.
“Third: learning how to fly an American commercial jet airliner, the one critical skill without which the entire enterprise would never — no pun intended — have gotten off the ground, took place at American flight simulator schools in America. The Saudi terrorists, in other words, trained to attack America in America.”
Some of the training did occur here. So what? Again, other than pointing to an area where our domestic LE failed – namely the FBI – to pay attention to reports field agents were submitting, you point to nothing of substance and are making a straw man argument combined with an argumentum ad absurdum (which you deploy poorly).
“Fourth: the Saudi terrorists did not employ “weapons of mass destruction” in attacking America. They found American stuff in America and attacked America with its own stuff. They took a lesson from American terrorist Timothy McVeigh, who created a bomb out of a truck full of fertilizer and brought down an American building with it.”
Straw man much? I didn’t mention WMD’s other than after kicking the shit out Afghanistan and leaving we should have told them next time we have to get off the porch, we’re going to vaporize you.
“Therefore, according to Gene H, America should nuke Germany and Florida for “allowing” the training required to attack American targets to occur on German and American territory, since the entire “logic” of Gene H’s atavistic revenge fantasy hinges on the location of thinking and training, no matter that the governments of both Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with the events of 9/11/2001, a daring stunt carried out almost exclusively by our “stalwart ally” Saudi Arabia in retaliation for American presidents stationing infidel American troops on Saudi Arabian soil within infecting distance of Mecca, the holiest of Islamic shrines.”
You don’t actually read before you write, do you? I never said anything about attacking Germany or Florida, but you feel free to make up all the shit you like. And if you’ve got a problem with American troops being deployed in Saudi Arabia? Guess who invited them? The House of Saud. Go bark up another tree.
“As for the “training camps” in Afghanistan, America and Saudi Arabia created them for use in fighting a proxy war against the former Soviet Union. America should therefore nuke itself and Saudi Arabia for midwifing Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.”
Again, straw man much?
“Several problems with nukes, though: they tend to create radioactive fallout that spreads via wind currents to neighboring countries — even far away countries like the United States. The United States government might not mind raining radioactivity on its own citizens, but other countries — some of them with nukes of their own — most assuredly would mind getting a dose of cancer-causing fallout, to the point of taking joint action in self-defense against the United States for its mindless and terrifying stupidity.”
Apparently you don’t understand the word “threat” or “deterrent” or that those strategies are useless without the willingness to back them up.
“Worst of all: those persons alive and awake during the First Gulf Battle of 1991-92 can recall seeing columns of greasy black smoke arising from Kuwaiti oil fields set ablaze — with very small explosives — by Saddam Hussein’s retreating army. Now imagine a series of thermonuclear explosions in the same area — assuming they even hit the intended target — that setsan underground sea of oil on fire for decades. Sayonara atmosphere, sunlight, crops, food, animal and human life — everything gone in an instant of venal vainglorious madness.”
Again, straw man much? My but you’re a tedious self-righteous twit.
“So I say to you, Gene H, with all earnestness and care for my choice of language, that you ought to give the “nuke ‘em” jive a rest. You do not seem to have enough credible historical information at your disposal, your “logical” associations reveal glaring gaps and leaps from one untenable assumption to another, and you give no sign of ever having contemplated the dire and irreversible consequences of the madness you advocate. America has already pounded Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to a bloody pulp for going on twenty years, beginning with President George the First. That the bloody pulp has somehow emerged victorious over the American pounding enrages and frustrates your vicarious homicidal proclivities, so that you now can do nothing but howl for even more draconian pounding.”
Apparently you are hard of understanding. Especially the difference between rational and irrational targets and the value of limited engagements versus prolonged engagements.
“Give it up. Spastic and incoherent American violence has lost again, as it should have. We lost the day we started this insanity. We win the day we stop it. Just stop it. The sooner safe-at-home Americans stop treating war-somewhere-else as “reality” TV entertainment, the sooner America and its many victims will begin the necessary healing. It seems to me that Americans ought to take the occasion of Sergeant Weichel’s death as an opportune moment to reflect on ceasing what America never should have begun.”
Give what up? Looking to get justice against those who actually did attack us on 9/11? Not going to happen, dingus. We should have begun looking out for our national interests which would have been attack those who attacked us: Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. If you’ve got a problem with that? That would be your problem. And just one among many apparently.
Michael Murray:
“It seems to me that Americans ought to take the occasion of Sergeant Weichel’s death as an opportune moment to reflect on ceasing what America never should have begun.”
Yes we should. It is way past time for selfless sacrifice to stop.
Years ago, I wrote this for therapy, for myself and others. Perhaps a little of it applies to Sergeant Weichel, as well.
Soldier’s Soldier
Scapegoat of the king’s ambition
Hostage to the prince’s crime
Sent upon a madman’s errand
Soldier of another time
Sworn to do as he is bidden
Not to think of why he came
From himself his purpose hidden
Soldier by another name
Searching for a mystic evil
Ever just a war away
Always beaten, not defeated
Back to fight another day
Battles always won, but cheated
Of the promised victory
Never lost but just depleted
Army of our history
Kill the chicken; scare the monkey
Centipede is dead, not stiff
Off to far Cathay he marches
Soldier diving off a cliff
War not done but just abated
Peace the only thing to fear
Power’s hunger never sated
Soldier’s orders never clear
Dragon’s teeth by Cadmus planted
Sprung from battle’s plain full grown
Men who kill them all if doubtful
Heathen gods will know their own
Burn the village, clear the jungle
Save them from themselves at least
Make excuses for the bungle
Soldier then becomes the beast
Wounds still fresh and redly bleeding
Bound up with a filthy rag
Something shapeless once a husband
Stuffed into a plastic bag
Squatting in the dusty swelter
Widowed woman once a wife
Never more to know the shelter
Of a tranquil married life
Head thrown back in boundless grieving
Mouth agape with soundless woes
Tears and snot now glisten, mingling
Coursing down from eyes and nose
Anguished face a tangled curtain
Clotted, matted, raven hair
Almond eyes with sight uncertain
Weeping pools of deep despair
Do not knock this war we’re having
It’s the only one we’ve got
“Better Dead than Red” we tell them
Mouthing slogans; talking rot
Fight them over there they tell us
Rather that than fight them here
Just invent some casus bellus
Danger’s best that’s never near
Ozymandias’ sneering statue
Crumbled in the desert bare:
Look upon my works, you mighty
See their ruin and take care
Told to teach and be creative
Soldier ignorant and young
Learned instead and then went native
Speaking now an ancient tongue
Only they will now receive him
Who see not his bloodstained hand
None will hear for he can’t speak it
Stranger to his own lost land
Bringing with him what he carried
Losing only what he bought
To the cause no longer married
Soldier doing what he ought
Shipped away like so much baggage
Not to choose the things he’s done
Often bad and sometimes better
Soldier not the only one
Now he comes home like the others
Breathless lips and eyes shut fast
Lain to sleep beside his brothers
Soldier’s soldier to the last
Michael Murry, The Misfortune Teller, Copyright 2005
Elaine:
Do you think what he has called me and others is wrong? I never saw you chastise Gene or Buddha is Laughing when they were saying much worse things to many of us.
Is that the best you’ve got, Bron?
You saying I’m wrong is not the same thing as proving I’m wrong. You say I’m wrong all the time. You’ve never proven me wrong. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t care if you think I’m wrong. Thinking isn’t exactly your proven strong suit. If you can prove me wrong? Have at it. The bottom line is that you took a big ol’ Objectivist dump and then promptly stepped in it. If you don’t like that I pointed that out? I suggest you learn to watch your step.
Bron,
I don’t read every post and every comment at the Turley Blawg–nor do I comment on every thread. I thought what you said to Gene was very personal and truly nasty. I expressed my feelings. Do you think what you said to Gene was mean?
ID,
when you use someone’s name, it means something.
Gene H:
you think what you want. You are usually wrong.
OT but on Afghanistan people who immigrate.
My new Afghan helper was back again once today. She’s born in India, speaks Urdu. and Farsi, has a husband who is from Kandahar, who speaks Pashtu, and they probably speak Swedish together. She met him on Facebook through a friend, and was curious how I and my wife met in Dinosaur times. An outdoor public dance, that was a peculiar idea, she thought.
She and her family moved to Iran and it was then she visited grandparents and uncles etc in Herat.
They came here to Sweden, having won the lottery of the UN quota immigrant list to Sweden. Coulda been America=greater happiness.
She too, like all young people wants to visit America.
So they’re not all terrorists or hardline religious extremists (I know that’s only a joke???). So if you should come to Sweden and see a dark-haired person, don’t be afraid.
OT If she’s blonde and has dark hair roots, ask if she’s from Rumania. If she says yes, then you can ask the next obvious question.
Compassion outside the family circle is one of the few things that raise us above the level of animals.. At times I’m not so sure about that either.
Gene H. said:
“….the other is rationalization for being a selfish prick or a sociopath.”
Or a rich man pissed off because he can’t get through the needle’s eye or was it to heaven he wanted to reach.
Remarkable combinations of heat and light. Seem to remember it from another time.
VoteVets asks Walsh to apologize
By DAVID CATANESE |
3/30/12 3:16 PM EDT
VoteVets.org, the largest group of progressive veterans, is asking Rep. Joe Walsh for an apology following his comments to POLITICO about Tammy Duckworth’s military service.
“Just when you think Congressman Joe Walsh couldn’t sink any lower, he insults the service and sacrifice of our Veterans, particularly one like Tammy who lost her limbs in the line of duty. Congressman Walsh owes Tammy Duckworth and all Veterans an apology for his outrageous disrespect for their service,” said VoteVets.org chairman Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran himself.
When presented in a recent interview with the powerful biography Duckworth brings to the campaign, Walsh offered the following:
“I have so much respect for what she did in the fact that she sacrificed her body for this country,” said Walsh, simultaneously lowering his voice as he leaned forward before pausing for dramatic effect. “Ehhh. Now let’s move on.”
“What else has she done? Female, wounded veteran … ehhh,” he continued. “She is nothing more than a handpicked Washington bureaucrat. David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel just picked her up and dropped her into this district.”
Duckworth campaign manager Kaitlin Fahey also mentioned the remark in a release yesterday following the vote on the GOP budget.
“Joe is being his usual inappropriate self. While he focuses on making disrespectful and outlandish comments in an effort to gain attention in the press, Tammy is focused on opposing initiatives to gut Medicare and meeting with residents of the 8th,” she said.
Politico