Dexter Filkins, New York Times, yesterday from Afghanistan:
And then, almost invariably, they [US and NATO troops] have cleared out, never leaving behind enough soldiers or police officers to hold the place on their own.
And so, almost always, the Taliban returned — and, after a time, so did the American and NATO troops, to clear the place all over again.
“Mowing the grass,” the soldiers and Marines derisively call it.
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, November 2009:
“Last night we carried out between 15 and 20 actions,” a top Israeli commander said of the West Bank raids, in a recent interview under military rules of anonymity. “That was a fairly typical night. It’s like throwing a blanket on a fire. If we stop for a minute, we will go backwards very quickly. We call it cutting the grass.”
…a deal is brewing that could free perhaps 1,000 Palestinian fighters, some of them planners of suicide bombings. In the Israeli military’s words, that would be a lot of new grass to cut.
Thanks to Ahmed Moor, who spotted this one.
Do you get the meaning of “mowing the grass”?
Its work that once done you can’t say “we finished the job”. You mow the grass, and a week later you have to do it again. You take a shower and a day later, you’ve got to do it again. You cut your toenails and a couple weeks later, you’ve got to do it again.
You breathe, and a few seconds later, you’ve got to do it again.
witty,
Mowing and murder both start with an ‘M’.
Just giving you a clue there sunshine.
Witty, I don’t know how stupid a blog comment can be, but surely you’ve raised the bar pretty high with that remark.
You are a moron, Witty.
So the joke is no longer killing a Turk but killing a Palestinian?
Wow, this is a breathtakingly detached post, Richard. Do you get the meaning of “mowing the grass?” It means an ongoing, systematic, dehumanized process of mass killings or illegal abductions of the indigenous population. In Gaza, it’s the casual catchphrase of an IDF soldier describing the use of US-taxpayer-funded, cutting edge weapons of mass destruction to obliterate a civilian population, ethnically cleanse the land, and call it Greater Israel. In another year or two, that could have been Ethan Bronner’s kid uttering that phrase.
Do you really consider the decimation of Gazans similar to cutting your toe-nails, or taking a breath? You’re just another desensitized, armchair neo-con rooting for the IDF to “finish the job,” annihilate those pesky indigenous Avatars, and plant flags for Judea and Sumeria.
and you claim to be a humanist and this phrase mowing the grass is about as dehumanizing as it gets. it’s like when gang bangers shoot people in the way of their targets they call them “mushrooms”…. they just pop up. shame on you
Gosh Richard, thanks! In another thread, you accuse Phil of “fascistic thinking”.
It stumped me for a while, but know I know exactly what it is.
And thanks again for the big ROTFL when a little later in this thread you will claim to be a liberal and humanitarian. And you always end up sounding like The Platters (?) “Why is everybody always pickin’ on me!”
I think that was the Coasters.
Witty. Wow. That sailed right over you didn’t it. Amazing.
Pomposity is one of the leading causes of moral blindness.
Do you get that it is people who are being mowed?
I was just about to write that.
It’s not for no reason that Death is iconically shown carrying a scythe.
link to latimes.com
The Marines of Charlie Company had just landed outside Marja and were itching for the fight with the Taliban when they learned that a group of Afghans with shovels and wheelbarrows were digging holes in the road nearby.
Were they planting explosives? You could never be certain, but the reconnaissance drones overhead thought so. Approval was given to fire a rocket at the men.
The rocket strike caused a thunderous explosion. The men dug their holes no more.
“It was pretty motivating,” said Cpl. Jonathan Lee, 30, of Orange Park, Fla.
pimple-faced kids sitting in industrial park buildings outside of Las Vegas play videogames all day for the military – just like they were doing in their Mom’s living room a year earlier … but wait, these military videogames actually involve dropping munitions from remote-piloted drones half a world away and the explosions on-screen are real people dying … ah the desensitization and dumbing-down of culture is nearly complete … these kids have been indoctrinated into the military mind-set of “just follow orders” and are now nearly two generations past a youth culture that read any books and had any understanding or interest in the human condition
ignorant soldier bees from economically-struggling families that could either take that job at WalMart or join the military now pushing buttons and manipulating joysticks that kill for the neocons
Yes radii, this has been going on for quite a long time by my research. One of the first trojan horse movies movies was all the way back in 1984, called The Last Starfighter – set in a sci-fi format –
THE LAST STAR FIGHTER
Actually there has been a long priming of turning war into games and visa-versa. The entire population in the US has been treated to a form of what one documentary has called “Militainment Inc,” which strikes the head of the nail repeatedly. There has always been glorification of war through media propaganda from the times of the printing press (and before) to the digital age, the particular target currently is focused squarely on the young. Universities are completely enmeshed with the military complex. This documentary, among other things, shows why the population can sit completely anesthetized while hundreds of thousands, even millions of people die many miles away –
MILITAINMENT INC.
My recommendation is that everyone watch this all the way through, you will come out the other side much more aware of the current terrain. How this is used to prop up thew entire military industrial complex.
Iran is the cookie on Super Mario’s trail (sorry, I don’t know any other video games; point is, Iran is the motivating boogey-man du jour according that Renaissance man at the helm of the US war machine, David Petraeus:
Hillary is doing a reprise of April Gillaspie this weekend as she travels to the Gulf States to urge them to take up arms against the “threat” posed by Iran. Anyone seen Dennis Ross lately?
We are governed by bloodthirsty bastards, and we have not the courage of Iran’s protesters. We cheer them on, like some spectacle in the Coliseum, so that we might experience the thrill of dealing death, and imagine ourselves courageous.
Bloodthirsty greedy bastards. Who else is going to sell the Arab states those weapons, those air forces?
The military-industrial complex sits with its pockets full of oil money and cheering on war.
Thanks, VR. Excellent film. I recognised a lot of parallels to Israeli TV coverage of the Gaza massacre.
Everyone sees the implication of referring to people as “grass,” worthless casualties – animals – wholly other creatures – cockroaches – insignificant, is the idea it (grass) implies. Not worthy of a thought, similar to when you mow grass – just a common chore – stepping on a bug.
Bronner has no qualms about using this language, used by the occupation forces of Israel. Whether we talk of either area, neither is legitimate.
You like the phrase. Its a good tool for ridicule.
I do not go on to elaborate the atrocities that are committed against the Palestinians in the same vein, like Bronner does. Did you read the article? I did when it was published, it has not changed since then.
RW you are so unaware. This is not ridicule. We are responding in horror at the desensitization that comes with war. In war the enemy is often dehumanized in order to make it more acceptable to kill them. This simile of equating the killing of masses of other human beings to mowing grass is the ultimate dehumanization. I have heard you going on about accepting the others humanity as the only road to peace in the IP wars and then you now show us that you are totally unaware of the blatant dehumanization of our Moslem opponents that these statements represent. Many here accuse you of hypocrisy; I happen to believe you are so thoroughly indoctrinated into the Zionist mindset that you have lost the ability to think clearly. Surely if you had any sense of awareness you would have remained silent and not publicly exposed yourself as a fool.
Superb rebuttal syvanen,
You point out the nauseating hypocrisy, and sanctimonious double standards that Witty uses to litter this blog.
Remember that anti-semitic movie all German cinema-goers were treated to, back in the day, the one depicting jews as scurrying rats?
I think Witty referred to himself as a “humanist zionist.” No doubt one with a well-trimmed lawn and neatly-clipped cuticles. What a pathetic joke.
‘ You cut your toenails and a couple weeks later, you’ve got to do it again.’ and that breathing comment..as if murdering palestinians was just a perfectly natural necessary self sustaining requirement of life.
Actually cutting the grass reminds me of the words of Defense Minister General Dayan, authenticated by historians and by General Dayan’s daughter Yael Dayan, at one time a member of Parliament, and published in the newspaper Yediot Ahronot. He asserted the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland.
“I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let’s talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was.”
everyone knows mowing the grass stimulates growth. it has served israel very well.
So is this mere coincidence or was the terminology born out of the same stink tank in DC or Hertzeliya?
Surely, troop morale does involve some degree of dehumanization of the enemy, you know, to “pump them up for battle”.
Here’s a little Mondoweiss bait re. the special relationship — from the NYT’s story about the Denied-Tenure-Professor-Murders-Colleagues:
Apparently, the good professor had shot her brother earlier in her life, but the case may not have been pursued properly by law enforcement. Then the following, read to the end:
“But Mr. Polio, 87, [former police chief] reached at home on Saturday, called even the suggestion of a cover-up laughable and said that the case had been handled lawfully. He said he remembered there being a shooting and recalled that Dr. Bishop and her brother had been “horsing around.”
“Everything was done that should have been done under the circumstances,” Mr. Polio said in a phone interview. “She was questioned, and then turned over to her mother. The determination was made that we were going to turn the inquiry over to the district attorney.”
The district attorney at the time was Bill Delahunt, who is now a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts. Mr. Delahunt was traveling in Israel and could not be reached.”
link to nytimes.com
In the British campaigns in India, the word was “mopping up”
as in
“On the 6th of January, a British force under Sir Hugh Rose, accompanied by Hamilton, marched northwards towards Jhansi, mopping up as they went ”
link to copsey-family.org
Spilling is a more accurate term, blood for someone else to mop up.
A tour of the checkpoints in the occupied territories:
link to jkcook.net
Read the caption below the photo:
link to jkcook.net
Nazareth Under Siege
link to jkcook.net
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Israel is the model for the US in so many things.. from extra-judicial assassinations, to torture, to the security apparatuses.. and it is failing in ways just like its model.
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