The last American soldier to die in Iraq by CrevanReaver

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

The last American soldier to die in Iraq

POSTED BY: CREVANREAVER
UPDATED: Friday, December 23, 2011 12:06
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VIEWED: 1715
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Sunday, December 18, 2011 3:10 PM

His name was David Hickman, U.S. Army Specialist of the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.

Specialist Hickman was killed in Iraq on November 14, 2011 in Baghdad by a roadside bomb that ripped through his armored truck. According to the Pentagon, he was the 4,474th member of the U.S. military to die in the Iraq War.

http://goo.gl/cagBZ

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Sunday, December 18, 2011 3:30 PM

DREAMTROVE

I knew this would happen to someone. Sucks to be the one. When they said "touring for wind down operations" I thought "god, how much would it suck to be the guy killed in wind down?"

Any sign of the end of Afghanistan, aside from them repeatedly asking us to leave?

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Sunday, December 18, 2011 3:45 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

I'm sure, after the first Gulf war, there was a 'last to die ' too.

Hope this time, it's for real.

"The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein

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Sunday, December 18, 2011 5:16 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Well, the GOP says we should have soldiers dying in Iraq for "the foreseeable future", so there's always that...

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Sunday, December 18, 2011 6:50 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by CrevanReaver:
His name was David Hickman, U.S. Army Specialist of the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.

This may offend some folk, but... see that underlined part ?

ZERO sympathy here, as this was the unit that participated in the complete violation of posse comitatus and the second amendment of the united states during katrina - in defiance and violation of their oath of service, the laws and customs of this county, and the purpose of their own existence.

Yeah, sure, I bet there were some courageous, upstanding members of the fucking wermacht who "just followed orders" too - they don't get a free pass for it, and neither does the eighty-second mother fucking airborne, because they did even WORSE than the dirty third, they not only put on and zipped up the jackboot of tyranny, they kicked americans in the face with it.

And that is unforgiveable - far as *I* am concerned the 82nd airborne is as much terrorists as any jihadist and should be regarded as such until such time as they should choose to redeem themselves.

So what's one more dead terrorist to me ?

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Sunday, December 18, 2011 9:13 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

Your pissiness is irrelevent here Frem, unless that guy was one of the dudes who messed up Katrina I don't want to hear it mkay? Go cool your heels.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Monday, December 19, 2011 2:09 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Course not, nobody wants to hear that these "heroic" stormtroopers will just as "heroically" disarm us and march us into the camps if ordered to do so, without question.

So long as the american people remain on their list of potential suppression missions, they're not friendlys, and I will not support them.

You wanna snap at me for it, fine - but tyranny doesn't WORK without the triggermen willing to take the tyrants orders, who are (See Also: Nuremburg Trials) every bit as guilty, especially when those orders are in direct violation of their oath of service.

And the unwillingness to call them on it, that happened before, and look what came of it.
If doing so makes you angry at me, that is a small price to pay.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 2:16 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
ZERO sympathy here,

That's your prerogative of course.

But I feel sympathy for dead terrorists.

I didn't feel sympathy for Mobutu or Pol Pot. Granted. But their order-carrying-out foot soldiers--I don't put them in the same league. I'm not mourning them, mind you.

But no more dancing over graves. Not accusing you of dancing. Just a metaphor to remind myself we are all human.

(Except for maybe Mobutu and Pol Pot.)

ETA: Just read this. Speaks to me.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ashley-judd/post_1312_b_786835.html

Quote:
My friend Victor Chan recounts in his book with the His Holiness the Dali Lama an exchange between HH DL and a fellow Lama, who had been tortured by the Chinese.

"Were you ever afraid?" HH DL asks his brother.

"No," replies the man.

"Really? You never felt fear?" presses the great spiritual leader.

Pause.

"Yes. I was afraid I would lose compassion for Chinese," is his surprising concession.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Monday, December 19, 2011 11:20 AM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

I understand what you mean Frem, crap wouldn't happen if people weren't willing to take the orders. But I'm a very time-and-place person, it didn't feel like the right time or place for that sentiment so that's why I said so. This feels like a thread for reflecting, being thankful its over for the Iraq war and thinking how it would feel to be his family and know he was the last one. That's what this thread feels like to me. That's why I wasn't happy. But that was yesterday.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Monday, December 19, 2011 11:28 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

Course not, nobody wants to hear that these "heroic" stormtroopers will just as "heroically" disarm us and march us into the camps if ordered to do so, without question.

Same thing could apply to private security outfits. Say Pinkerton or Blackwater or Whackenhut. Obviously private security is all bastards and we'd be better off with them ended.

What was it you do for a living, again?

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Monday, December 19, 2011 1:43 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Oh I feel ya, I was being harsh about it cause I think there is danger in not acknowledging the ill done by sections of society due to their employment, police as another example, and Geeze makes a good one as well.

That said, I am capable of feeling sympathetic to them as a human being, WHILE being simultaneously hostile to them as a cog in the wheels of tyranny - it's hard to explain my feelings on it since they're so different, I mean as a soldier or merc or whatnot you accept the risk of death as part of the work and it's not to me the same level of tragedy as when a civvie bites it, risks of the job you understand - but the end of a human life is always somewhat tragic after a fashion, yes.

So as a member of the 82nd airborne and as a soldier I cannot be sympathetic here, even if I didn't feel our own military had become a threat to us I would still feel it a tiny bit offensive to find the fall of a soldier doing a war tragic, in that such is part of the life - although war itself is a tragedy on greater scale.

As a man, as a human being, there's sympathy, at least one of the families I was running those fruit baskets from Second Harvest to this week is gonna need looking after for much the same reason, but not respecting the uniform and not caring for the choices a person makes doesn't make me wholly unsympathetic to them on a personal level, no.

But professionally I cannot have sympathy for potentive foes and furthermore it can be dangerous to even contemplate - a dichotomy very hard to explain in western morality which is far more black and white on things like this.

That's as well as I can explain it, I think.

ETA: Geeze, I seem to be a rare exception in that respect, as I've had more than one flaming row with potentive clients about professional conduct, since there's lines I *will* not cross, one reason I won't work for DHS/TSA despite the huge piles of money in the offering.
Hell, I refuse to even know the NAMES of my protectees here, identifying them only by unit number so that even if interrogated under oath I can stonewall attempts to hassle them or invade their privacy.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 2:00 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

The hardest part of fighting a resistance is what to do with collaborators. Frem and Dream have both displayed attitudes I consider abhorrent in this regard. Knowing where it comes from helps me to understand the vehemence, but it still makes me very uncomfortable.

My reticence to skewer people who fall into pigeonholes is probably also a source of frustration to would-be allies in various causes that I find worthy of support. I need a lot of evidence before I can condone dropping the hammer on someone, be it in violence or even verbal condemnation.

This trait is not useful in a resistance action.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Thursday, December 22, 2011 12:38 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
The hardest part of fighting a resistance is what to do with collaborators. Frem and Dream have both displayed attitudes I consider abhorrent in this regard. Knowing where it comes from helps me to understand the vehemence, but it still makes me very uncomfortable.

I'm not comfortable with it either, but having looked at it from both a contemporary and historial point of view, having seen how getting a free pass enables them and allows them to do ever more harm...
*sigh*
Sometimes there aren't any pleasant answers.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Thursday, December 22, 2011 12:55 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Great video, Frem. Chain of obedience. Whoa, well said.

But, I have to say, there are 3 types of obedience. Obedience because of belief in authority (like those creepy kids HK posted a video to). Obedience from laziness, because living outside of obedience requires tremendous sacrifices and changes in lifestyle. And obedience from fear of severe retaliation and torture.

I have some sympathy for people in category two, like myself. I have tremendous sympathy for people in category three.

Not all obeyers are the same. I am reluctant to judge them, perhaps, because I don't care to judge myself. I know I am guilty of being in the chain of obedience.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Thursday, December 22, 2011 8:06 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Well that's the thing - most people when they think of defiance get great grand notions about epic last stands and all that merry rot, which can be useful, but martyrs are often less helpful than living folk unwilling to play along.

It's the LITTLE things, you see - foot dragging, slackerdom, minor incompetence, forgetting details, there's just so MANY ways one can all but unattributably dump sand in the gears...
And they don't, they don't even think to do it - both out of a combination of that stupid all-or-nothing black and white thinking, and conditioned acceptance of even the most brazenly illegitimate authority, cause true authority is earned, other people give it to you by proxy in order to serve their interests, and can revoke it at any moment that you fail to do this.

That is why I make it abundantly clear to my security people that they HAVE no authority beyond that which is voluntarily given to them by those people they are protecting, because what they do not have, they cannot misuse, and the only way *TO* get it is by professional appearance and conduct - threats and intimidation simply do not work when you have nothing to threaten them WITH but your disapproval, save in rare cases where you have earned their respect first, and even then shouldn't be a first resort because the first makes you look like a bratty little tattletale, and the second only works on someone via guilt in most cases - my disapproving glares regarding public drunken-stupid behavior are usually enough to chill it on the spot not because of any inherent threat but because it reminds them they look a fool to others and shames them into cooling it off.

And I *DO* have my petty defiances, even on a professional level, which the folks who own the sites put up with even if it irritates them cause they understand the necessity - such as how none of us know the residents names, only the unit number, because that allows for all manner of stonewalling petty little privacy invasions and abuses, up to and including those by law and government cause without a NAME, it's a hell of a lot harder to put the screws to someone.
"Who ? never heard of em."
"Yeah, maybe they were, maybe they weren't, people move in and out of here all the time you know."
"I have no idea who you're talking about."
"Couldn't tell you, sorry."
And it don't even screw up pizza delivery cause THEY use addresses.

But in the end, it's the LITTLE things.

Quote:
When Malwa soldiers rousted the stablekeeper in Kausambi, and questioned him, he said nothing. The soldiers did not question him for very long. They were bored and inattentive, having already visited five stables in the great city that morning, and with more to come. So the stablekeeper was able to satisfy them soon enough.
No, he had not seen any young noblewoman—or soldiers—leaving on horseback.
He could not tell the difference between Kushans and any other steppe barbarians, anyway. The savages all looked alike to him.
The soldiers, peasants from the Gangetic plain, smiled. Nodded.
He had seen nothing. Heard nothing. Knew nothing.
The soldiers, satisfied, went on their way.
The plans and schemes of tyrants are broken by many things. They shatter against cliffs of heroic struggle. They rupture on reefs of open resistance. And they are slowly eroded, bit by little bit, on the very beaches where they measure triumph, by countless grains of sand. By the stubborn little decencies of humble little men.
-David Drake: In the Heart of Darkness

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Friday, December 23, 2011 3:21 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
It's the LITTLE things, you see - foot dragging, slackerdom, minor incompetence, forgetting details, there's just so MANY ways one can all but unattributably dump sand in the gears...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Robert Mendelsohn, MD, calls it "shuffling." Slaves used to do it. As much as they could get away with. They even do it in the military.

I have to admit, I am rubbish at deceptive and sly stuff like that. I'm more of a take-myself-out-of-the-equation sort of person. A lot of boycotting.

But yeah, I can see how shuffling is very applicable in certain chains of obedience. I guess I DO do some of it already.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Friday, December 23, 2011 12:06 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
But yeah, I can see how shuffling is very applicable in certain chains of obedience. I guess I DO do some of it already.

I see a LOT of it, but then I'm lookin at it from point-blank range often as not.

While that warms my heart, what does not is those who revel in being informers (Adrian Lamos) using the mechanisms of State as a weapon in petty squabbles, or as a venue and outlet for hate, intolerance and flat-out bullying others.

That's one reason I tend not to do "sides", cause most of the time the power of the State is like a machinegun sitting in the center of the table, and the "sides" are just fighting over who gets to point it at who - whereas *I* want that fucking thing off the table completely.

Right now though, best one can hope for at the moment is that whoever winds up aiming it at you has the common fucking decency to miss on purpose.

And I DO encourage that, oh yes.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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