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Headlines : GovernmentThe Mega-Bunker of Baghdad
“The new American Embassy in Baghdad will be the largest, least welcoming, and most lavish embassy in the world: a $600 million massively fortified compound with 619 blast-resistant apartments and a food court fit for a shopping mall.”
It wasn’t that long ago when U.S. politicians spat in disgust, the words of how Saddam Hussein had illustrated his excess by building massive palaces.
Welcome to fortress America, now at a war theatre near you.
[Posted By antiguanoctane]Republished from Vanity Fair
When the new American Embassy in Baghdad entered the planning stage, more than three years ago, U.S. officials inside the Green Zone were still insisting that great progress was being made in the construction of a new Iraq. I remember a surreal press conference in which a U.S. spokesman named Dan Senor, full of governmental conceits, described the marvelous developments he personally had observed during a recent sortie (under heavy escort) into the city. His idea now was to set the press straight on realities outside the Green Zone gates. Senor was well groomed and precocious, fresh into the world, and he had acquired a taste for appearing on TV. The assembled reporters were by contrast a disheveled and unwashed lot, but they included serious people of deep experience, many of whom lived fully exposed to Iraq, and knew that society there was unraveling fast. Some realized already that the war had been lost, though such were the attitudes of the citizenry back home that they could not yet even imply this in print.
Posted by antiguanoctane
hunter & gatherer of real news from real sources. keeper of THE INFO ZONE.
Sounds like a crusader castle, doesn’t it…
they didn’t work out so well last time around…
what is that above picture??
and MAN, i hate it when people talk about the war being “won or lost”. What the fuck does that even mean in the current conflict (slaughter). It’s not even a war.
That pic looks like Krak de Chevaliers, a castle built by the Crusaders in Syria. And yeah, for what it’s worth the new U.S embassy does seem like a Crusader fortress. It too has been constructed by someone suffering religious delusions, causing the deaths of thousands.
When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.
Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.
Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.
Sun Tzu
He was a wise man, Sun Tzu, all told. I haven’t read The Art of War yet, but I’m getting around to thinking it’s high time I did.
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War online
What is Wu-Wei (nondoing)?
Linked with the human behavior, nondoing refers to not forcing the things on their way, on the action without effort or going with the grain.