The military sensed weakness, exploited it and played Barack Obama. Obama's foreign policy has been consistently hawkish despite … - Michael Hastings

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I became an actor because it was the only thing I could do. I didn't have any friends, I didn't fit in. But when I started acting everything in my life shifted and I felt happy.

Michael Hastings

The military sensed weakness, exploited it and played Barack Obama. Obama's foreign policy has been consistently hawkish despite this reluctant warrior schtick that he pulls. But at the end of the day a reluctant warrior is still a warrior. Look at the drone strikes, the tripling of the war in Afghanistan, and now Libya. I'm convinced that had Obama been in the Senate in 2003 he would have voted for the Iraq war. He's clearly easily convinced by his advisers and the Pentagon.

2003, Iraq, Military, War, Weakness

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The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America, was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.

Fighting, Known, Military, Peasants, Simple, Spending

A woman I loved [Andi Parhamovich] was killed in Baghdad in January 2007 – al-Qaeda in Iraq took credit for it … The memorial service with me crying over an empty coffin.

Baghdad, Credit, Iraq, January, Memorial

The idea of aerial military surveillance dates back to the Civil War, when both the Union and the Confederacy used hot-air balloons to spy on the other side, tracking troop movements and helping to direct artillery fire.

Balloons, Ideas, Military, Spy, Used, War

Gore Vidal, Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, talk about how the U. S. became a national security state after World War II. Essentially there's this bipartisan foreign policy elite who've been calling the shots for the last few decades and they're clearly still in control regardless of how clownish or absurd they demonstrate themselves to be. There's no shaking their orthodoxy. To me it was the most depressing thing, these full-scale military interventions firsthand for a number of years, seeing how quickly we can get involved in another war with very little debate.

Debate, Depressing, Gore, Military, Seeing, War

General McChrystal wanted to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.

General, Mcchrystal, Rolling, Rolling Stones, Stones