More from @GrayConnolly

Gray Connolly

@GrayConnolly

22 Nov

On this day in 1963, the US President, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas. Kennedy was a naval officer and war hero in WWII, then a Congressman and Senator. A complex man whose presidency was cut short, yet was also significant for the crises it faced in its 1000 days.

Kennedy served in WW2 in the US Navy - by contrast to the Boomer generation & Vietnam, young Kennedy, with a terrible medical history, lied in order to join the US Navy, first serving in Naval Intelligence and then in the SW Pacific.

In 1943, the US Navy's PT-109, serving in the Solomon Islands campaign. is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. The boat's Skipper, LT(JG) John F. Kennedy, swam for 4 hours to rescue & then save his sailors. Australian coastwatcher, SBLT Arthur Evans, helped save the crew.

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Gray Connolly

@GrayConnolly

21 Nov

Noting debates here over the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu (March-May 1954), it remains my position that the French loss (esp post-Korean War armistice) was a needless disaster & that the Allies should have helped the French resist the Communist insurgency. I blame Ike. 🇫🇷 ⚜️

The brilliant war correspondent & historian, Bernard Fall, wrote superb histories of the French experience in Indochina, include the Dien Bien Phu denouement

Bernard Fall's account of the end of the French war in Indochina at Dien Bien Phu was a lesson that awaited 'learning', less for the successor Vietnam War (which was a just war of assistance to Sth Vietnam) than for the Afghan War of our times.

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Gray Connolly

@GrayConnolly

21 Nov

https://twitter.com/neighbour_s/status/1329941439728422912

Look forward to the Media taking responsibility for cheering on a 20 year War so that NATO could bring weird European liberal norms to tribal & primitive Afghans that hated us as occupiers & in which our local allies were often pederast Warlords. We need a complete accounting.

https://twitter.com/neighbour_s/status/1329941439728422912

For example, Laura Bush thought the Afghan war was important enough for the 'Afghan women' but not so important for her own daughters to enlist .... Guess what the media cheered on....?

theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

More here - apparently we are all now occupying Afghanistan to bring Brooklyn to Bagram .... you can never withdraw. Ever

nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…

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Gray Connolly

@GrayConnolly

19 Nov

https://twitter.com/MassimoFaggioli/status/1329529036813557766

A moral equation of the 'body count' between abortions and state executions is simply absurd....also, an execution usually follows an exhaustive if at times flawed process. They are two separate species of 'death penalty' & culpability of the 'executed'.

https://twitter.com/MassimoFaggioli/status/1329529036813557766

Biggest problem for advocates of the death penalty: the criminal justice system can and does make horrifically unjust errors.

Biggest problem for opponents of the death penalty: what do you do with those tried and convicted at Nuremberg in 1945-1946?

What if the death penalty is to be viewed, historically at least, as the domestic application of war powers the State will use abroad? The Sovereign's duty was to protect the realm, against enemies foreign and domestic. Do those to be 'droned' deserve any due process?

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