I can say sincerely that this is the most upsetting book I've read in a while. Obviously Blowback has educated me about the systemic nature of American imperialism, but this book is showing me how not just most things I was told about the Korean War, but about how American foreign policy and "the system" in general are lies. It's clear to me that Syngman Rhee and Douglas MacArthur instigated the war, and were using it to, achieve their own ends, and the U.S. leadership just failed to hold MacArthur to any kind of accountability, or even basic oversight, as he was walking them toward disaster. I'm gonna be clear about another thing: I think if he'd been kept on he would've tried to draw the USSR into the war in an attempt to start World War III, and tried to turn it nuclear as well if he could achieve the preceding objectives.

There's a level of dark absurdity to the parts covering the early months of the war that makes it feel like a Dr. Strangelove-esque political satire, with General MacArthur in the role of Jack D. Ripper. But it also becomes horrifying: early on I wasn't sure whether I wanted to laugh or scream, and then I just felt like screaming. Now I feel my heart breaking as I read about war crimes, MacArthur's immoral scheming to prolong the war for his own strategic advantage, and his habit of lying to his superiors and disobeying orders like he was Julius Caesar (which he obviously thought he was). He was truly a monster and not only did he not deserve his veneration, I wouldn't mind if I never heard another positive word about that pompous, self-serving, egotistical tool.

Hey guys huge fan of block back since season 1 here. I have bought the season 2 poster merch but what I really want is a poster of this sick season 4 cover. Do you guys perhaps have a high resolution copy of it so that I can make my own since unfortunately no such merch of it exists in the store :(

"The glowing article praised the Assads as a "wildly democratic" family-focused couple who vacation in Europe, foster Christianity, are at ease with American celebrities, made theirs the "safest country in the Middle East," and want to give Syria a "brand essence." "

"In August, The Hill reported that U.S. lobbying firm Brown Lloyd James had been paid $5,000 per month by the Syrian government to arrange for and manage the Vogue article."

Quelle surprise

He discusses Cuban support for ending apartheid and his support of the PLO.

What do you think? It won’t be 6, but the results of a jihadist rule will be almost immediately perceivable, with more displaced minorities, the invasion of AANES (‘Rojava’). All the pretend Jeffersonian Democrats that the CIA have supposedly been training for over a decade will no doubt be drug kingpins, and the people of Syria will suffer.

Earlier this year when I was listening to the first four seasons of Blowback for the first time, Season 3 utterly shattered what conceptions I had about the Korean War being a "good" or even just war. I regard Seasons 1 and 3 as being historical keystones: Season 1 for the lies and crimes of the Iraq War (along the injustice and brutality of the Gulf War to boot), and Season 3 for how Korea got the way it is today, the origins of Cold War militarism, and the subsequent development of seven decades of U.S. foreign policy. A lot of my realizations didn't come all at once- partly because the Korean War is farther in the past, partly because fewer people who lived through it are alive today, partly because of the press censorship and weaker mass media of the era, partly because of the bare-bones narrative and lack of education about it. (Talk about a war whose details got shoved down the memory hole- at least in the U.S.)

Recently I read a number of Jacobin and Counterpunch articles about the Korean War (as well as reading its Wikipedia page), and I've come to realize the war birthed a lot of awful things, most of which we still live with today. In this war we see the origins of American interventionism as it's existed in subsequent decades, the birth of the American military industrial complex, and the start of "limited wars" like the Vietnam War. We see the start of the U.S. fighting wars without congressional approval, something which has only become more prevalent since then, as well as the U.S. sticking its nose into foreign conflicts for the sake of the strategic advantage of itself and its allies. Barry Goldwater's talk of using tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam and making the war more brutal in order to win it faster come directly from the rhetoric of the Korean War era. The hideous moral logic of this war extended to future U.S, wars: fighting an "unwinnable war" despite widespread public disapproval, bombing the civilian population into oblivion despite the lack of any military gain from it.

There's a reason people in the U.S. don't learn much about the details of this war: it makes them look horrible, and there's no way to spin the facts to make it look like a "good" war. It was actually the deadliest conflict of the Cold War (I didn't know it killed more people than the Vietnam War), and its percentage of civilian casualties is higher than World War II. Douglas MacArthur openly talked of using nuclear weapons to turn Korea into a irradiated wasteland, and Supreme Court Justice William Douglas said the devastation the country had suffered was far worse than those of the European cities he'd visited after World War II. Even Curtis LeMay estimated that 20 percent of the North Korean population were killed during the war.

The conduct of both the South Korean and U.S. armies during the war doesn't look good. Of civilian massacres by the two Korean armies, 82 percent were perpetrated by the South and 18 percent by the North. The U.S. army massacred civilians and covered it up (another thing which would be repeated in future U.S. wars), and commanders even urged their soldiers toward this kind of brutal action. This of course shows up the supposed "moral clarity" of the Cold War as being a complete and utter lie.

One of the most frightening aspects, in my opinion, is how retrospective opinion has framed it as a "good" war, something only possible with a lack of widespread public knowledge of its ugly details. I once bought into this (thank the indoctrination of the public school system and "liberal" histories like David McCullough's Truman), and now I thankfully see it for what it is: a dry run for the Vietnam War, as well as a model for other horrors like the Gulf War.

I don't know how true this is in other countries, but in the U.S. we tend to look at the state of foreign countries (especially those our government doesn't like) in a decontextualized way which doesn't take into account the history of how things got the way they are, and this is certainly the case with the way North Korea is presented. They're seen as a "crazy", militaristic rogue state which are hostile to the U.S. for no discernible reason, which doesn't take into account the devastation inflicted on them during the Korean War, and how said militarism is a reaction to U.S. threats and aggression. Speaking of this last point I didn't know until I listened to Blowback about the U.S.'s history of making threats to North Korea, and didn't know until recently than Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson considered using nuclear weapons against them. However alarming people may find North Korea's nuclear tests and militaristic posture, they're hardly just being irrational actors.

Vis Donald Trump's infamous "fire and fury" threats toward North Korea, at the time this was again presented in a decontextualized way: the mainstream media didn't note the history of American officials of making similar threats (something I didn't know about at the time), or how they were a horrific extension of the moral logic of U.S. foreign policy toward North Korea since 1950.

Their new house was targeted in an airstrike, and they were forced to evacuate multiple times to escape death, her and her entire family. All her children have suffered psychological harm due to the war. They had built a new house, and owned a shop but unfortunately, both were targeted and completely destroyed. Now they are displaced in an unsafe place without life necessities.

I’ve attached a link with their fundraiser and more details about her story as well as her instagram:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-doaa-reemas-and-family-rebuild-their-lives

https://www.instagram.com/free_palestine056?igsh=aW16dGxpaXVmNGNr

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After listening to seasons 1 and 4, I’ve been looking for a book that covers more of the topics addressed, specifically regarding the Bush White House. Growing up I was too young to remember most of this stuff and it’s seriously blowing my mind how much of this has been memory holed. Sure a lot of it has become horribly memified like anything else (Bush Did 9/11, Dick Cheney profited off of the Iraq War) but no depth is ever given to this stuff.

Anything about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Halliburton, Katrina, Saudi ties, is welcome. Thanks!