In response to this thread:
I know it is psychically rewarding to say I told you so and rub their nose in it but its counterproductive.
So what if they don’t really think that invading Iraq was a bad idea in the first place, we all want to get out of there as honorably as we can.
I blame the neocons, they represent almost every bad change I have seen for over a decade. And I think they have hoodwinked a lot of good Americans.
That’s not true at all.
These would be easy things to do were honor the general impluse. There is no attempt to salvage honor here. The impluse is juvenile; to avoid embarrassment.
More, I think that they empowered a lot of bad ones. Like elucidator you err in generosity, assuming a lack of god-given intellect, when the fault was not in the stars, but an act of volition, a postive decision to act on the vile impulse. The majority of Americans did that and it is recorded. Mirabile dictu.
So you are saying that in order for the US to regain honor in this, the troops ordered to Iraq must stand trial?
What charges? Who is to try them?
Not saying ‘I told you so’ is a social nicety.
The causing of 650,000 needless deaths and the destruction of a nation is not a social nicety. The matter is so heinous that strong issue must be taken.
What did this have to do with your other two points?
Why on earth would you expect US Troops to surrender for following lawful orders?
You might hate what they did, but blame the leaders and people in power. The soldiers have handled themselves far better than most armies in the history of warfare. The killing was set off our toppling a government of people that apparently were only kept from each other’s throat by an iron-fisted despot. Our leaders failed to build a large enough coalition and provide enough peacekeeping troops to give Iraq a chance to transition to a new secular government. We are responsible for lighting the match that has set off the civil war. However, how many of the 650,000 dead were directly caused by US troops.
Of course our leadership is also responsible for starting this war under false pretenses and rushing into faster than there was any excuse for. For this, I would accept a war-crime tribunal for the senior Bush officials in two years. Let the truth come out.
Our soldiers with exceptions have handled their mission very well.
Jim
I’m going to jump right on the bandwagon we’ve got going here that is questioning what on earth Sevastopol is talking about. The best I can extrapolate myself is that they (he? she? I apologize, I’m unfamiliar with ya’) are trying to say that the troops have been involved in an unjust war and therefore the deaths that were incurred were therefore unjust and should be paid for. Right?
That makes no sense. If the righteousness of a war is our weighing mechanism, it’s a fairly weak one. Should we go back and try every American that was involved in Vietnam? Just the ones that volunteered, not the draftees?
What about the Americans that dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Should they have been tried?
I suppose my point is just that what many of our soldiers are doing is just the nature of the beast. This nation (along with the just about all the rest) cannot exist without a military. Unfortunately, the nature of war will always be a violent one, so how can we expect people to volunteer to serve and defend if we are going to incessantly call them murderers and threaten them with trial?
Don’t get me wrong, there have been some people that have done some very, very bad things in Iraq. Those people- that raped and murdered (murdered is obviously being used to describe that which was outside the orders, etc.)- they need to stand trial and pay greatly for what they have done. But the general ranks? The grunts? Hell, the cooks and doctors? They’ve done nothing wrong (in regard to the rules of war and what we now apply as the rules of engagement) and shouldn’t be given a consideration for crimes.
I honestly have no idea how you are making the point which you are.
If Bush were held accountable for tricking us into this war, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. However, I am not so sure that you can blame the soldiers, the individual actions of the soldiers are not illegal or even particularly immoral (although I would like to think I would do what that Hawaiian guy is doing (I forget his name but he’s the first commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq (he asked to be sent to Afghanistan instead) and he is being courtnartialed for it).
BTW, Vietnam was not a pre-emptive unilateral war of agression, we were coming to the aid of allies in Vietnam.