The Opinionated Bastard

very optimisitc, but at some point reality will trump wishful hopes every time. again, analysis is only as good as predicition, and the pro-war with iraq folks have a miserbale record.

remember. initial predictions?

1.) war would cost 17 bil (wolfowitz) 2.) US soldiers would be celebrated as liberators(Cheney) 3.) we know where the WMDs are (Rumsfeld) 4.) The smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud (the Whole administration)

again, woe unto any nation that thinks war is peace and rationalizes ultra violence at every turn. war is the ultimate entropic force against order and the results of violence are never certain. I really do think the militarist ideology is destroying US hegemony.

and in any event, iraq is getting worse and the iraqi people are fighting us. believe what you want but it is telling that insurgents can operate at will without being turned in by “90% of the iraqi people”….maybe the assertions you believe in come from Bush lies?

ernie

you cant invade a nation, kill 100,000 civilians, torture innocent people and have hillbilliy soldiers abuse young girls and not expect the male folk to start making IEDs.

tariq aziz told america “in vietnam you had the jungles, in iraq you will have our cities” he was right. in fact all the assertions iraq made pre-war came out right (i.e. no WMDs and mass resistance) while all Bush Inc claims have been completely off the radar. this is a very telling fact about the reality under which the pro-bush movement works.

Or perhaps reality will trump doom and gloom.

I read all the Prez’s speeches on Iraq, and he said Iraq would be difficult, but that leaving it alone would be more dangerous.

So sure, you can dig up various members of the administration who said one thing or another, but I can dig up quotes from Clinton saying how dangerous Saddam was too… The line that came out of the administration was none of that stuff you mentioned except perhaps the liberators part, and I would say that they welcomed us more as liberators than as occupiers, and that becomes more true every day as we keep our word by turning more and more of Iraq back over to the Iraqis.

At any rate, I disagree with your assessment that Iraq is getting worse. It certainly seems that way from the news, but when you dig into where/when these attacks are happening more and more of the country seems to be stabilizing.

As far as the insurgents getting turned in by the Iraqis, it all comes down to SWET: Sewer, Water, Electricity and Trash. When we get those basic services up and running in an area, the insurgents end up being forced out.

I suggest you Google for Carnival of the Liberated and read what some of the Iraqi bloggers are posting. Its pretty interesting stuff. Its not pro-US either, its a mixture, but its a mixture you wont get from the New York Times. Or read those “In the Red Zone” links I keep posting.

Also, your 100,000 number is from the now-discredited Lancet paper which actually stated 8-100,000 which is a pretty wide range. No doubt some Iraqis died, but 100,000 is too large. Look at the number who died under Saddam.

And “hillbilly soldiers abusing young girls”? That sets my teeth on edge. No doubt it happens, but first the blatant slam on our soldiers by calling them hillbillies, then the total ignorance of how bad things were under Saddam.

Its people like you Ernie who come of as such total snobs towards the military that drive me up a tree. Have you ever talked to someone in the service? Jeesh. Come on, we have an Army depot 3 miles out of town. Are we overrun with hillbillies?

And if our soldiers have to be perfect, then we might as well disband the military, because its not going to happen. You might think that’s a good thing, but I suggest you go watch Hotel Rwanda on video. If we want to prevent evils like genocide in places like Rwanda or now Darfur, that means sending young boys with guns to shoot people. Those soldiers wont be angels, but saying that our soldiers are no different then Nazis just makes you sound like an idiot. Intent matters, and there’s a world of difference between a country that intentionally sends soldiers to another country to rape, pillage and steal (like Iraq did in 1980 and 1991), and a country that has a few bad eggs.

“hillbilly soldiers” comes from fact. who is the mass that make up the PFCs? poor undecuated kids. what are they trained to do? kill people. these arent the citizen soldiers of antiquity. to believe these kids never abuse people over seas is ignorance, these are the same kids that commit crimes here and are forced into the military by judges…jail or the military son!

of course, not all, but many are like this, this is FACT. these arent ROTC offciers, these are underclass kids with no life experience or education and they are trained to kill and dominate…so you think few abuses have taken place huh? well many of these young men abuse women and kill here, so i dont see the controversy here.

unless…you hold the military as being a holy entity not to be desecrated. if this is the case, i understand your argument very well. but again the military are in essence hired killers, so invoking virtue on it universally is suspect.

but yes, i do know people from the military, many over the years. i know emotional crushed viet vets, i know an anthrax vaccine sick vet, and i know many criminal types who went into the military, types i wouldnt expect too much virtue from.

now for the lancet report, i havent seen anything discrediting this report. lancet is a prestigious medical journal so i doubt their claims are “political”

as for sewer. elect, gas..infrastructure, the US shouldnt have bombed these out in gulf war 1, which led to the deaths of 500k- a million iraqis. (nobody knows because nobody counts and america really doesnt care…then we wonder why “terrorists” find it justified to kill us…go figure). 1 iraqi civilian dead is wrong, let alone any unknown amounts. we like to blame the deaths under sanctions on Saddam but common sense tells us that sanctions are meant to kill civilians, it is the modern version of the military seige.why does the US openly claim not to count iraqi dead? nobody cares? so in our attempts to monopolize the representation of civilization, beauty, love and virtue, we may need to utilize some self relection.

now, if demanding minimal and reasonable morality is “snobbery”, then so be it. the US public mind, in its militarist worship mode has some real moral problems for sure.

finally, i dont condemn of blame the ignorant soldier, riddled with fear for his crimes he commits in theatre. i blame the civilian leadership and thier deadly policies. i blame an enthralled totalitarian US public who send them there under blind obedience to violent authority. I blame those who think murder is “just the way it is”. I blame those who refuse to stand up and be real citizens.

ernie

Well Ernie, you’re just wrong.

The military overall, is better educated then the populace overall. Strange but true, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Remember though that the military draws from the populace, and they have a strong education value in the military, so that helps improve on the basic population stats.

In the lancet report is says 8,000 to 100,000, its just that the media picked the 100,000 number because it was more controversial…again, relying on the media for information is bad…

As far as counting the Iraqi dead, Saddam didn’t do a census since 1978, so no one, not even him has any idea even how many Iraqis there are…

im not saying the whole military is uneducated. to drop bombs from a B1 bomber takes a lot of physics and mathematics and advanced degrees (usually).

what im saying is the 19 yr old PFC who is kicking down iraqi doors at night, scared as hell, comes disproportionately from a poor and uneducated background.(these kids arent from rich families, nor graduated #1 in their class) i wouldnt expect these kids to be founts of virute. very frightened people do horrible things sometimes.

its not about education, but ethics. Our ethical understandings are very low in this era and the outlook isnt bright.

the “real world” to the mass is murder. it just is…we are fallen from grace..bad bad people…what a nice self fulfilling prophecy for those who stockpile thousands of nuclear weapons. (while bemoaning the insanity of others possessing such weapons)

ya, this dont look good for sure.

ernie

Even the new recruits are better educated then the populace overall for that age, because a higher proportion of them are high school graduates. (Maybe even all? I think it might even be a requirement for enlistment?)

That’s one of the arguments against the draft from the DODs point of view: the IQ of the soldiers would go down…

The Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) will win the war, not the US and their allies. The insurgents are getting smarter by the day, not the US soldiers- who continually complain about this and about that-..’we are not supposed to be here for this long,’ ‘it’s not supposed to be like this,’ i wanna go home,’ and so on. What kind of soldiers are they? They should do there job, they are getting paid our tax money for God’s sake, they are getting thousands of pounds for what, complaining. If you can’t do the job, then get another job you idiot. If they carry on like this, then Zaqarwi will be victorious sooner than we think. 10 years is what I predict will be the result. I wish it was different, but Zaqarwi will win. Sorry guys and girls, that’s reality.