USA: Memorial day: Our military justice oxymoron: Why we need to be more honest and realistic about the wars we fight —- by Chris Bray

In a recent New York Times story detailing efforts to challenge the current court-martial process for U.S. soldiers whose crimes may have been influenced by their mental health, reporter Dave Phillips interviews members of politically diverse coalition of law students and former soldiers who are ‘waging a joint campaign for one of the most unlikely causes: clemency for troops convicted of killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.’

Their argument? That troops under intense pressure in combat zones are often unfairly judged and given harsh sentences because the public has sanitized and unrealistic expectations of war.”

This shared effort to re-balance postwar justice is not an unlikely cause. Rather, it’s an entirely normal cause, the nearly inevitable aftermath of a sustained war. Prolonged combat grinds down the armed forces, creating predictable crises for organizations trying to keep fighting in the face of continued losses.

The hunger for combat personnel leads to a reduction of standards, with the recruiting or retention of soldiers who aren’t psychologically fit to fight. They do improper things, or horrible things, and are tried by courts-martial. Then the war ends, and soldiers and lawyers try to clean up the result. It’s a process of cause and effect that’s about as predictable as the operation of a clock.

In World War II, soldiers initially classified by local draft boards as 4-F — unfit for military service because of mental or physical illnesses — were reclassified and drafted in the later years of the war. Among those was a small, nervous man named Eddie Slovik, a convicted petty criminal who had been in and out of jail for much of his young life. He deserted the first moment he could, hiding from combat and then plainly telling his commander that he would do it again. In one of the most famous cases in the history of military justice, Slovik was the only member of the American armed forces shot for desertion during the war.

A man who could barely function in the most ordinary circumstances as a civilian, he was sent to war and expected to adjust to it. The outcome was unsurprising.

Other soldiers executed during the war were equally unsuited to military service. Pvt. William Harrison, Jr., for example, sexually assaulted and murdered a seven year-old girl in Ireland. Walter Baldwin, who was tried in a hurry for the murder of a French citizen, and for the shooting of a second citizen who survived the attack, was a problem soldier whose final court-martial conviction was preceded by many others. In a study of World

War II military executions in Europe, the retired army officer French MacLean found evidence that Baldwin had been brought before “at least” six military courts before his execution. He was trouble as a soldier because he was troubled as a person, diagnosed by army psychiatrists as a “psychopath with emotional instability and inadequate personality.” That diagnosis preceded his deployment to France, not impeding an assignment to a war zone.

Rushing millions of men into giant armed forces, the American military ended up conducting more than 1.7 million courts-martial during World War II. After the war, the unmistakable failures and excesses of the military justice system led not only to the creation of several clemency boards, but also to the lawyer-driven, root-and-branch reform of American military law that eliminated the old Articles of War and replaced them with our current Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Later, during the Vietnam War, the desperate effort to replace combat losses led to Project 100,000 – a program that sharply lowered recruiting standards, bringing a flood of high school drop-outs into an army that often chose them for combat roles. It also led to the expansion of Officer Candidate School, and to the near-elimination of standards for completing it. Among the men commissioned as new second lieutenants in the expanded OCS was the grossly unfit William Calley, later to be the only soldier convicted for war crimes following the infamous My Lai massacre. A man who should never have been a military officer became a terrible military officer, another predictable event.

The recruiting and retention crises caused by sustained wars lead to horrifying acts, which lead to postwar attempts to reconsider the limits of justice for warriors who should never have been sent into combat. That entirely predictable reality should be baked into national policy and our shared understanding of war. The impact that it would have on military law would be enormous – and beneficial.

Read more: Our military justice oxymoron: Why we need to be more honest and realistic about the wars we fight — and the soldiers we send - Salon.com

Israeli leaders calculating number of fatalities Israel will suffer in case of conflict with Iran

Amid Israel's scramble to develop weapons to counter the threat of a massive missile bombardment by Iran, Syria and their proxies, top officials are playing a macabre numbers game about how many fatalities the Jewish state might suffer.

Israeli military doctrine has long been to take the offensive whenever possible and keep the fighting well away from the cities and towns of the Jewish state.

The age of the missile has changed that. Missiles can vault over border defenses and hit civilians with destructive power that the home front has never had to endure in any of Israel's wars since 1948.

The number of missiles, of all calibers, supposedly in the hands of Iran, Syria and their proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, has risen astronomically -- from 10,000 to at least 100,000, theoretically enough to obliterate swathes of urban Israel.

The military is working on the assumption there will be a sustained missile bombardment, lasting several weeks.

For more: Israeli leaders play macabre numbers game - UPI.com

Today Veterans Day , Remembrance Day, Armistice Day - Honoring All Who Served

Today November 11, 2011 is the day which all countries in the West have set aside where war dead are honored.

The date was declared a national holiday in many allied nations, to commemorate those members of the armed forces who were killed during war. An exception is Italy, where the end of the war is commemorated on 4 November, the day of the Armistice of Villa Giusti.

From the outset, many veterans in many countries also utilized Silence to pay homage to departed comrades. The toast of "Fallen" or "Absent Comrades" has always been honoured in silence at New Zealand veteran functions, while the news of a member’s death has similarly been observed in silence at meetings.

Similar ceremonies developed in other countries during the inter-war period. In South Africa, for example, the Memorable Order of Tin Hats had by the late 1920s developed a ceremony whereby the toast of "Fallen Comrades" was observed not only in silence but darkness, all except for the "Light of Remembrance", with the ceremony ending with the Order’s anthem "Old Soldiers Never Die". In Australia, meanwhile, the South Australian State Branch of the Returned Sailors & Soldiers' Imperial League of Australia similarly developed during the interwar period a simple ceremony of silence for departed comrades at 9 p.m., presumably to coincide with the traditional 11 a.m. time for Armistice ceremonies taking place in Europe (due to the ten-hour time difference between Eastern Australia and Europe).

In the US the Veterans Day National Ceremony is held each year on November 11th at Arlington National Cemetery . The ceremony commences precisely at 11:00 a.m. with a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns and continues inside the Memorial Amphitheater with a parade of colors by veterans' organizations and remarks from dignitaries. The ceremony is intended to honor and thank all who served in the United States Armed Forces.

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US economy: Estimated cost of post-9/11 wars: 225,000 lives, up to $4 trillion - by Deborah Baum

The cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are estimated at 225,000 lives and up to $4 trillion in U.S. spending, in a new report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. The group’s “Costs of War” project has released new figures for a range of human and economic costs associated with the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks.

Among the group’s main findings:

• The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan will cost between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans. This figure does not include substantial probable future interest on war-related debt.
• More than 31,000 people in uniform and military contractors have died, including the Iraqi and Afghan security forces and other military forces allied with the United States.
• By a very conservative estimate, 137,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by all parties to these conflicts.
• The wars have created more than 7.8 million refugees among Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis.
• Pentagon bills account for half of the budgetary costs incurred and are a fraction of the full economic cost of the wars.
• Because the war has been financed almost entirely by borrowing, $185 billion in interest has already been paid on war spending, and another $1 trillion could accrue in interest alone through 2020.
• Federal obligations to care for past and future veterans of these wars will likely total between $600-$950 billion. This number is not included in most analyses of the costs of war and will not peak until mid-century.

The Eisenhower Research Project is a new, nonpartisan, nonprofit, scholarly initiative that derives its purpose from President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, in which he warned of the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex and appealed for an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” as the only force able to balance the often contrasting demands of security and liberty in the democratic state.

 For more: Estimated cost of post-9/11 wars: 225,000 lives, up to $4 trillion | Brown University News and Events