Well istara, sadly, that kind of bears out my prediction in the thread created by Sam Stone prior to the war in which we were invited to make predictions on about 10 different structured categories. My greatest worry at the time was, and remains, what was going to become of the poor troops AFTER the war - insofar as it was probably going to resemble Vietnam after a while - namely, language barrier problems and an inability for the troops to be able to distinguish non-combatants from geurilla’s dressed as innocent civilians etc.
Worst of all, there are various folks in the region, it seems to me, who have some pressing agendas in seeing the US effort actually fail. As Collounsbury has pointed out countless times, there are a lot of vested interests and conflicts of interests in the region - and the mere presence of 140,000 US troops walking the streets of Iraq has provided 140,000 bullseye targets for the sabotage folks to aim at.
The mortality rate… infant birth mortality is just shocking at the moment. Poor hospital equipment… hardyly anything working and huge amounts looted and damaged by vandals. Illiteracy? Rampant. Social infrastructures? Shattered.
It all adds up to an incredibly fertile recipe for breeding amazingly bitter resentment, and those poor bastards who are the US troops on the ground are the targets.
I suspect things will get worse yet before they get better.
Quite simply, I predict it would take 1 million plus troops to bring stability to the place at the moment. Anything less than that simply allows the borders to be incredibly porous. Of course, the perverse logic to such an action is that you would ALSO radically increase the exposure of your troops to geurilla attacks.
All of which just goes to show we have absolutely no business being there.
40 years ago, when I was a child, we were involved in a guerrilla war in a foreign country that turned out to be unwinnable.
Hopefully, it won’t be a case of plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
Hopefully.
I wasn’t bashing minty. He stated that Col gave “first rate information”, and I questioned how he knew that the info was indeed first rate? After all, neither minty, no Col, can or will provide his credentials. So how do we know that Col is not indeed:
Yeah, sometimes he provides cites that agree with his POV, but then he dismisses any other cites as lies, distortions, drooling idiocy, what have you, without showing how the other cites are incorrect, other than that they don’t agree with The Great and Powerful Collounsbury. Ignore the man behind the curtain! Collounsbury has spoken! Cue flames, and big green head.
December made what IMHO is a very resoned and reasonable post. Why hasn’t anyone commented on it? You may say “Oh, it’s december, he’ll weasel or change his position” but in that’s a huge cop out. I think that many of you dismiss “december as just being december” because it’s easier for you that way. Sure a lot, if not most, of his posts are idologicaly driven glurge, and he does have a tendency to wiggle out of his position, base his arguements on what is nothing more than someone else’s opinion and slightly change what he’s saying to “prove” that his opponents are wrong, but I would estimate that about 20-25% of what he posts actually has a great deal of merit to it. By refusing to consider the merits of his points on a case by case basis, y’all are doing 2 things: #1 You’re not fighting ignorance, you’re embracing it. Beliefs and truth are forged in the fire of controversy and debate, dismissing ANY thought out of hand simply because of it’s source is doing a HUGE disservice to this process. #2 You’re being pussies. That’s right, you’re wimping out. I’ve often wondered, seriously, how all of you december bashers would react if december posted an OP; “The sky is blue”. I imagine many of you would tie yourselves in knots trying to define the sky as green, simply because “If december says it, it’s not true”. You say “We get tired of the same old thing”, but THAT’S WHAT FIGHTING IGNORANCE IS ALL ABOUT, the same old thing, day after day. By dismissing december because you’re too lazy to refute any falsehoods he posts point by point, you’re simply demonstrating that it is you who is not willing to expend the effort to defend your positions. December hangs in there, thread after thread, defending his opinion, and he is just one person. There are at least a dozen of you hard core december haters out there, why can’t y’all keep up with substance and not simply give up and resort to kindegarden insults and pre-teen inuendo? You’re never going to change december’s mind, but y’all have given up on even debating his points. Like I said, occasionally, he is right and y’all are wrong. Refusing learn from that means that y’all have voluntarily refused to consider any opinion that dosen’t mirror your own AND LEARN FROM IT. IMHO, that makes YOU the morons here.
In case anyone is interested, here is december’s post that prompted this rant:
Debate that post simply on it’s own merits, december bashers, without saying “Oh, december will weasel” or something of the sort. I fucking dare you to do it.
>> Debate that post simply on it’s own merits, december bashers, without saying “Oh, december will weasel” or something of the sort. I fucking dare you to do it.
Nope. I am not going to do it. I have wasted way too much time arguing with december and I have never seen him be resonable, with me or with others. He does not deserve to be taken seriously. He has brought it upon himself.
And BTW, as he mentions in the OP, this is the second time he starts a thread with the same topic. He wasn’t reasonable the first time around and he’s not reasonable the second time around. Why should anyone take him seriously?
I am not going to fall in the trap of wasting a lot of time arguing with him for nothing. He’s a clown looking to stir a reaction and I can decide what my reaction will be. Most of he time I decide to ignore him but I am entitled to call him a clown and an idiot. He owes me too many serious discussions to demand I take him seriously. He has ruined too many threads and has lost any right to be taken seriously.
Why the fuck don’t you do what you’re advocating everyone else should do, Weirddave? Your entire post consists of nothing but moaning about december, and the december bashers. What’s this “why hasn’t any commented on it” shit? Lots of people have commented. If you mean “why hasn’t anyone said anything positive”, then why the fuck didn’t you just say something positive?
A month ago, columnist Mark Steyn spent two weeks driving around Iraq on his own, with no bodyguards. Sounds like Baroness Amos simply isn’t as brave as Steyn.
Seriously, there’s no doubt that there’s a dangerous security situation in Iraq right now. Americans seem to be attacked on almost a daily basis. This is something our troops will have to deal with. It’s a real problem – one of many.
But, it’s separate from the OP. I didn’t mean to say that things were perfect in Iraq. I said that some allegations were exaggerated, like the stories about widespread famine and large numbers of people unable to get hospital care.
AND, contrary to your assertion, nobody has commenented on that post except sailor who only commented to say he wasn’t going to comment. I guess he agrees with december on this point as well.
