Behind the Green Gates

Feline doppelganger observes and comments on war, literature, sex, mankind, biology, Afghanistan,
tree-hugging, music, art, God and gods, America, books, politics and the return of the Florida anole.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The Wrong War

Also the title of a book: Why We Lost in Vietnam, Bing West hangs out with the Marines again and tells us why we're losing in Afghanistan. It's in the title, essentially putting the grit into our strategy. Let the Marines and Soldiers fight to the death and forget about protecting the population, which has become a welfare society and sincerely duplicitious on top of that. He also suggests a hard core advisory group which we should be training now to aggressively get the Afghan Army on board with fighting the Taliban. It's amazing how the Afghans don't seem to care or realize that they're about to be subsumed by the Taliban in the very near future. Are they stupid or just lazy?

Monday, July 11, 2011

Arctic Indifference

The Long Exile tells the cruel story of Canadian Inuit who were forcibly relocated to desolate and virtually unliveable locations in the Canadian Arctic in order to validate land claims for Canada during the Cold War. Although used to surviving in Eskimo fashion in the Quebec Arctic, these new locations would not have been intentionally selected by anyone with any sense to live in and yet these Inuit were forced to remain there by the Canadian government. They didn't even have proper dogs for that type of terrain and had to eventually find Greenland dogs to breed with. It was a horrible existance and they didn't achieve recognition much less justice until the 1990s when a special commission was formed and the Inuit territory of Nunavik was created. Those surviving relocatees were compensated financially and the press castigated the Canadian government, which never did apologize. What these Inuit went through to adapt in these terrible conditions is amazing and true testimony to their inner strength.