| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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You are a mother or father of 2-3 children. You didnt support Saddam Hussein as President, but you were smart enough to keep your politics to yourself and your family. You didn't necessarily support an American invasion, but you you knew it was inevitable and you were honestly glad to see Saddam go. You are, admittedly uncertain about the future. You have been complicit, patient and even friendly with the Occupational Forces. You understand they have a tough job and you believe they aren't here to stay. You believe in some sort of democracy for your country. You've been critical of much of the resistance and even ashamed at the unIslamic behavior of some claiming to be acting in the name of Iraq. At the same time, you have understood frustrations of some of the Iraqi protestors. Note "protestors", not criminals or terrorists. You are angry that American inefficiencies with process and custom have led to thousands of Iraqi's out of work, out of money, and potentially in jail, as the coalitions forces, upon entering Iraq swept up anybody and everybody. You think Americans need to step up the effort to send the innocent back to their families. You also believe American has caused way too many innocent civilian deaths. Today, you come home from your job and your house was bombed by mistake or not, who knows. All you know, is you came home, and your entire family is dead. You get word, your mosque, though used by rebels, has been bombed. Neighbors, friends, family, your church, your town and your country have been decimated. At which point do you pick up a gun and shoot at coalitions soldiers? |
I'd use my mom's charred remains to light the first one. |
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They're so gonna come get us now. |
i was just wanting to pose the ethical dilemma to them and see where they measured up, because you know the right gets all hyper and shit about morals and crap but suddenly those morals fly out the window when we're bombing another country. What, like 'Mericans the only humans who have morals. |
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The Iraqi Inversion By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON Maybe after high-definition TV, they'll invent high-dudgeon TV, a product so realistic you can just lunge through the screen and shake the Bush officials when they say something maddening about 9/11 or Iraq, or when they engage in some egregious bit of character assassination. It would come in handy for Karen Hughes's Bush-nannying book tour and Condoleezza Rice's Clarke-riposting 9/11 commission testimony. And I was desperately wishing for it yesterday, when Donald Rumsfeld held forth at a Pentagon briefing. Even though the assumptions the Bush administration used to go to war have now proved to be astonishingly arrogant, naïve and ideological, Mr. Rumsfeld is as testy and Delphic as ever about the fragility of Iraq. "We're trying to explain how things are going, and they are going as they are going," he said, adding: "Some things are going well and some things obviously are not going well. You're going to have good days and bad days." On the road to democracy, this "is one moment, and there will be other moments. And there will be good moments and there will be less good moments." Calling the families of more than 30 young Americans killed this week in the confusing hell of Iraq must be a less good moment. Our troops in Iraq don't know who they're fighting and who they're saving. They don't know when they're coming home or when they're being forcibly re-upped by Rummy. Our diplomats in Baghdad don't know who they're handing the country over to next month. And Bush officials don't know where to go for help, since the military's tapped out, the allies have cold feet, the Arab world's angry and the rest of the globe is thinking, "You got what you deserved." Before heading out to Iraq last spring, Marine commanders explained that they would try to take a gentler approach than the Army. They would avoid using military tactics that would risk civilian casualties, learn Arabic and take off their sunglasses when talking with Iraqis. "If to kill a terrorist we have got to kill eight innocent people, you don't kill them," Maj. Gen. James Mattis told The Times's Michael Gordon. But in the wake of the Falluja horror and Shiite uprising, civility must take a back seat to stomping. The marines had to fire rockets at a mosque in Falluja used by the Shiite followers of the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and the hospitals are filled with civilians. Instead of playing soccer with kids, now the marines have to worry that the kids are the enemy, spotting targets or wielding guns. The farmers and taxicab drivers, wearing their own clothes and driving their own cars, try to murder the marines before melting back into the populace. Paul Wolfowitz assumed that the Shiites, tormented by Saddam over their religion, would be grateful, not hateful. Wrong. It isn't a cakewalk; it's chaos. Every single thing the administration calculated would happen in Iraq has turned out the opposite. The W.M.D. that supposedly threatened us did not exist. The dangerous dictator was deluded and writing romance novels. The terrorism that would be thwarted has mushroomed in Iraq and is feeding Arab radicalism. Mr. Rumsfeld thought invading Iraq would exorcise America's Vietnam syndrome, its squeamishness about using force. Instead, it has raised the specter of another Vietnam, where our courageous troops don't understand the culture, can't recognize the enemy and don't have an exit strategy. And the administration spins the war every day. Rummy also thought he could show off his transformation of the military, using a leaner force. Now even some Republicans say he is putting our troops at risk by stubbornly refusing to admit he was wrong. Dick Cheney thought fear was better than weak-kneed diplomacy, that if America whacked one Arab foe, all the others would cower. Wrong. The Iraq invasion has multiplied and emboldened our enemies. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld thought America should flex its hyperpower muscles, castrating the U.N. and blowing off multilateral arrangements. Now the administration may have to crawl back for help. The hawks thought they could establish a democracy that would produce a domino effect in the Arab world. Wrong. The dominoes are falling in a scarier direction. The president thought he could improve on the ending to his father's gulf war. Wrong again. |
Did i miss something? *key* "Instead, it has raised the specter of another Vietnam, where our courageous troops don't understand the culture, can't recognize the enemy and don't have an exit strategy. And the administration spins the war every day." |
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