Oh, I agree with you, lexi, it’s just that once in a while I need to vent. It’s part of hating America, doncha know.
Ha! Haven’t heard that in ages.
I’m sorry for almost hijacking. How long were we in Vietnam before most started realizing it wasn’t going to end well? These 2 and a half years in Iraq havejust flown by, at least for those of us without loved ones over there. I’ve heardsay when we leave, it will simply turn into an Iraqi civil war. All for naught.
I don’t want a fucking cookie. I want my brothers Mark and Kerry to come home safely, Mark would like a fucking apology from the government for the last-second notice that he was getting shipped back overseas instead of retiring after 25 years(causing him to lose the house in Arizona he had just started building), and Kerry would like his wife and two daughters back. This isn’t some fucking game for cookies or points, and if my so-called “bleating” gets them home one day sooner, that’s one day they aren’t risking their lives for…for…
What the flying fuck are they risking their lives for, again??
According to the link provided by Squink in another Pit thread, it already is a de facto civil war.
In answer to your question “How long were we in Vietnam before most started realizing it wasn’t going to end well?” – it was a gradual shift in public opinion, very much like what we’re seeing now with regard to Iraq. I myself was a supporter of the war in the first year or so, trusting my government to do the right thing.
I lost that trust then and have never regained it.
Saddam’s bad, m’kay? And he’s in league with Osama. And he was going to launch nook-yoo-lur missiles at us! :eek:
Please tell me again…I’m a bit gray on this…why did we send our soldiers to Iraq?
When did we get into that? 1960? It seems to me that ‘we’ (meaning not me in particular – I was too young to really know much of what was going on) realised the war was lost in 1968 after the Tet Offensive. Took us another five years to get out.
Yeah, Bush at least had an exit strategy for Vietnam. {Not my own, sadly}
That’s harsh. We did all right on dad’s pay, but he was an O3. I remember as a child collecting canned goods and clothes for Navy Relief for the families of enlisted personnel. I have a feeling that most people don’t know how little some of these guys are paid.
A bit worse than that, I fear. Our policy of a federal, democratic Iraq has us firmly on the horns of the dilemma. The Shia are, numerically, the superior faction. If we support democracy, we support the Shia’s claim to dominance. Perhaps it is possible that the Shia will let bygones be bygone, and simply ignore the oppression they suffered at the hands of the Sunni elite. I would be elated and thrilled, I do so love a miracle.
But this places us in the uncomfortable position of being seen as supporting one religious faction against another. While this is unlikely to earn us the affection of the Shia, it is almost certain to gain us the enmity of the Sunni.
As well, the Kurds may find us useful, but they have no reason whatsoever to trust us, as we have thoroughly buggered them royally many times in the past. (I’ve said before we should consider sending Henry Kissinger as Ambassador to the Kurdish Republic, they would love to get their hands…see him again.)
So…if we stay to suppress the insurgency against the legitimate elected government of Iraq we will, almost certainly, be seen as committing our military might to support Shia against Sunni.
Extra special double Not Good.
Damn, Czarcasm, my good wishes to your family. That’s horrid.
Two purple hearts? Proves he’s a godless pinko commie. Won’t someone think of the Kerrys?
That’s a very salient point, right there… in the USA, and in most “stable” Western Democracies, people kind of identify themselves as a certain follower of a given political party and then they’re happy to leave it at that. A Western citizen’s religion rarely affects the outcome of national elections - and thus, the inherent safety known as “separation of Church and State” tends to manifest itself.
Sadly, in Iraq, excluding the Kurds… the concept of political separation is 100% aligned with the country’s religious demographics… and I honestly can’t see a solution unless we were somehow able to create an overnight version of religiously independant two party electoral system. And to be honest, I can’t see that happening - which means that, by extension, Iraq is destined to become a religiously divided nation - a Middle Eastern version of Northern Ireland for want of a better description. Worse yet, at least an entire generation of industrial infrastructure will need to be built before a level of per capita wealth exists to overcome the religious power plays.
My advice to the Western World? Right Now? Accept the reality of Iraq, and cut a deal with Iran right now to recognise the Shi’ite version of Islam as the best outcome for Iraq, and then let the explosion of youth WITHIN Iran hopefully fashion a better system over the next 30 years.
The horrid part is that, compared to too many others, my family has gotten off easy. Even if this sorry excuse for a war was stopped right this second, nobody has “won” jack shit. The government is in debt, families have been torn apart, and lives have been lost, and some people still treat it has some sort of political game.
This isn’t a fucking game, or some sort of politico-philosophical circle jerk. We are attacking people that didn’t attack us and had no real intention or means to attack us, but now have a damn good reason to attack us.
The hostility you are displaying here, as we have repeatedly pointed out to you and those like you, is based in “cognitive dissonance.” Just below the surface of your mind, you are wrestling with the realization that you were wrong to trust the Bush Administration, you were wrong to argue in favor of the war, and you are actively wrong even now for continuing to support this administration which itself has been wrong about absolutely everything in this conflict at every turn. You are, understandably, angry with yourself for having bought into such ignorant, short-sighted foolishness. However, in order to process this anger, you must admit that you were and are wrong, which people like you are unable to do. And therefore you deal with the anger and hostility by dumping it haphazardly onto convenient targets, irrational as it might be to do so.
Have therapy.
See, this is why you’re stupid. You don’t see it as a global crisis, you’re just bitter that “the bad guys” have scored some imaginary points. You don’t see it as a debate over issues, just some pissing contest.
It’s the bleating of sheep that were eager to be led to the slaughter that created the here-and-now.
“Yeah, yeah, so you were right. Big fuckin’ deal. Changes nothing.” If folks worked things through for themselves instead of swallowing and regurgitating talking points, the here-and-now wouldn’t be quite so fucked up.
“We gotta do it! WMDs! Mushroom cloud!”
“Cakewalk! Welcomed as liberators! Spreading freedom!”
Yes, we were all pretty surprised by that. We were all expecting little girls with flowers.
Dear Metacom, the thread you’ve linked was election related. Who won in 2004 is not the issue at hand in the OP.
To Squink, I wasn’t made aware of what the plan, however I’d like to think that no President from either side of the aisle would have wanted the protracted situation in which we now seem to find ourselves.
To Princhester, is it your national pastime to make ignorant statements to others on message boards? I have no fingers in my ears. Would you care to take yours out of your arse? I’m not the hawk you think me to be. With misgivings I supported Mr. Bush in November, and I don’t apologize for that. It’s one thing to say “don’t do that” and in that breath give yourself carte blanche to ridicule whatever transpires from that juncture forward, which is the comfortable seat you’ve prepared for yourself. I agree that there are many things this administration has done with which I do not agree, but they don’t call me up to ask my opinion, ya know?
mhendo I didn’t insult you. Are you capable of engaging in conversation without being an ass? Neither side of the argument has been absolute. You felt we shouldn’t have, I felt we should, and we both based our opinion on sources that we trusted. Now it is learned that data on which those decisions were made was flawed. I’m willing to reconsider how I’d have felt, given new information, hence my allusion to gray.
I’m not happy about what’s taking place in Iraq, but I don’t feel any better about it by treating you like shit, and wish you’d grow the fuck up and adopt a similar posture.
To Czarcasm I’d like your brothers to return home safely, also. What we’re there for isn’t definable to me, and the top folks never asked my opinion, anyway. I remember reading that “it’s for the oil” which I guess is true, given that prices haven’t increased over the last year. Perhaps getting rid of Saddam was a waste of time-the Sunni are pissed that they aren’t in the driver seat any more and will do anything to derail progress. I respect your frustration and desire to have your kin out of harms way. Sometimes it doesn’t work that way, though.
The fire department where I was a paramedic years ago said goodbye to a member of the PAANG last week who was killed on 9 August 2005 in Bayji, Iraq. He enlisted after 9/11 because he felt an obligation to protect and serve. I respect his decision, and thank him for his dedication to preserving the freedom I enjoy.
Sure you did.
You basically accused those of us who were pointing out the errors and inadequacies of the Administration of engaging in nothing more than self-congratulatory back-slapping, and also suggested that we had nothing to offer in the “here and now.”
I merely pointed out that all of the arguments that allow us our current hindsight were, in fact, at one time very current policy positions that, if heeded, might have led to less of a fucking disaster than is currently the situation in Iraq.
I’ll stop if you will. Tool.
Except that the fuck-ups in Iraq have now far exceeded anything that can be excused by a mere reference to “flawed” sources of information. The flawed intelligence fuck-up was relevant to the reasons for going to war in the first place, but the fuck-ups since then have been more a product of incompetence on the part of the administration and its advisers. There came a time, quite a while ago, when Bush supporters could no longer reasonably excuse the failures of administration policy by pointing to the foul-ups of the intelligence community. It’s time for the Bush administration—and by extension, its supporters—to actually accept some responsibilty for the problems, rather than simply engaging in finger-pointing.
And yet that’s exactly what you did in your first post to this thread.
Physician, heal thyself.
Fuckwit.