Agreed
What about interfering in other nations business, toppling governments and generally wanting the largest piece of their pie, Mr. Simmons? As in American Foreign Policy for the past oh…hundred years or so.
Like a true Conservative said in his book “A Foreign Policy for Americans”:
1951
“Bugger off, Lucy, we’ve had quite enough of your sarcastic banter!”
“Just so! Happily, friend Red is available to continue these negotiations…”
“Please take your seat, Mr.** Elucidator**, and let us review your generous terms for our surrender…”
And wasn’t this precisely what we warned of, we nattering nabobs of negativism? That the situation might degenerate into urban warfare with a determined and relentless foe? That we might then be moved to use inappropriate, immoral, and ineffective means?
And wasn’t our collective dread scoffed at, by hard-headed realists with a firm grasp of military reality? How is it that men can fight and study wars for better than thirty years, and not see what is apparent to a hippy? And how is it that these same men presume to instruct us to compliant silence, pointing to their vast expertise as credentials, when the wreckage of their sober professionalism burns all around us?
All of that undoubtedly is a factor. However terrorists attacks on us come relatively recently as compared with those on others.
Terrorist activities go back a long, long way. They weren’t the beginning by any means but I would call members of the original Ku Klux Klan terrorists. And the troubles in Northern Ireland resulted in bombs going off in London every now and then, and the fight against the French in North Africa and on and on.
It does seem that whenever an army occupies land that others consider theirs there are what we call terrorists and they call patriots. Maybe I should have said we should all stop doing the things that make terrorists rather than learn what makes them.
It would also help if we would stop making colossal blunders. The main beef that Al Qaeda had with us in the beginning is that we have troops in the holy land of Saudi Arabia. We have blithely assumed that because the Saudi rulers want us there, the Saudi’s want us there. That appears to be a grave miscalculation that we have made worse by ignorantly following a president who is himself ignorant, and appears to be a true believer that he is on a mission from on high, into war with a whoop and a hollar. And that has just made more terrorists.
I am not sure, but perhaps you didn’t get the overall thrust of my post.
My point was that in warfare, no matter how advanced the equipment and personnel, innocent people are bound to be killed. BUT I see no reason whatsoever why the USA did/does/will participate in a war in Iraq, so to me the collateral damage situation should not even be part of the overall (not this thread) discussion because we had/have no business ever/still being there.
You are a wise man, Mr Simmons, and I hold you in high regard.
Appreciate your response. Needless to say, I completely agree with you.
OTOH, as luc’ points out, if even the unwashed realized this was so, how has America ended like this?
Dick. Alright, alright…dick but no Cheney.
Not to worry. I’m keeping my day job.
Made me laugh out loud…thanx.
What’s the word now … oh yeah, hubris.
Hubris is bright and shiny and when it’s around it’s hard to see other things.
Winston Churchill responded to a comment that Clement Atlee was a very modest man, “Yes, and he has a lot to be modest about.” So does GW and he doesn’t know it and wouldn’t admit it if he did.
Maybe they could have done. Maybe it was possible to occupy Iraq more or less successfully. Would we be thinking like we’re thinking? I would be, no doubt, but would I didn’t like the idea to begin with. But how much of our discontent is based on how badly it was done? Didn’t bother many of us when we kicked the living snot out of Grenada, even made a Clint Eastwood war move about it.
Might we be watching our young do their overseas time in Iraq, as uneventfully as they did for a generation in Korea and Japan? If they had made a better job of doing what they never should have done, would they be getting away with it?
Sure, if things aren’t the same they are different. My probability peg on this being a success is so close to zero that I don’t think this “what if” is remotely tenable.
Bluntly, yeah, I think they would. Polk was a warmonger of a similar stripe, but his war was militarily *successful * and his historical ranking is positive (albeit obscure). Just look at all that land the Mexicans didn’t really need after all. Isn’t it better off under our benevolent control? McKinley was another - his warmongering succeeded too. Look at all those colonies that Spain wasn’t doing anything useful with. Doesn’t it make your heart beat faster to think of all those Puerto Ricans and Filipinos saluting Old Glory? Or even all the many other administrations that embraced more scattershot genocide and concentration camp tactics against Indians who happened to be, annoyingly, there first. Hell, yes, we rationalize acts of any degree of immorality, if the results are positive, or at least favor “our team”. That’s the human spirit. We’re a selfish lot by nature. That’s why our democratic institutions are built around the concept of not letting anybody get away with too much - that’s the only way it can work.
I do think it’s plausible that an Iraqi war of liberation could have been waged and succeeded, and I think history grad students will be writing theses about it a century from now. But it would have taken a clear, overarching, but realistic and history-based understanding of the region and its people and their thinking, and a grand strategy based on it explained to the country’s Board of Directors (to wit, us voters) and acceptedm and by our fellow industrial-military democracies and other nations in the region. It would have taken the half million or so troops that the military planners said they needed. It would have taken keeping the civilian administrative institutions, and the Iraqi army, intact and functioning, just with new caretaker management and de-Baathification of the second-level types who would take over next. It would have taken no distraction from the real police action to round up Bin Laden and Al Qaeda that this administration also bungled. It, above all, had to be based on truth and without any possible confusion about it being a war of liberation rather than subjugation.
Maybe it couldn’t have been done, maybe the degree of commitment beyond that required by the successful decade-long containment strategy could not have been obtained. But I do think it’s plausible. And all it would have taken to do that is a serious, responsible adult in the Oval Office - a President as good as James K. Polk. And a populace less easily scared and fooled, less willing to be lied to by people we had a right to trust.
My gut feeling is, any administration capable of doing it right and succeeding would have weighed the plusses and minuses and decided the game wasn’t worth the candle.
The administration will, trot out Gen. Patraeus In Sept. to declare great progress. It does not matter whether it is real or not. But, if the bomb away all the bridges and main roads ,there will be less movement possible. Isolating neighborhoods and preventing civilian movement will make it possible to claim progress. Bombing the shit out of Baghdad will cause even more hatred ,but the political expediency demands it. The long range is for more American distrust and greater AlQueda membership.
First of all, your excellent link-filled post didn’t come until after all my bitching at you. I have no problem with that post, and commend you on your research and thoroughness.
Second of all, I don’t think IntelSoldier was saying that airstrikes haven’t killed Iraqi civilians, but rather was correcting the idea that they were being used indiscriminately without any regard to potential target identification errors. Since he was asserting first-hand experience, I think it’s a useful contribution to the discussion rather than trolling. And not particularly hard to rebut, as the point of both the OP and your follow-up links was that even with the best intentions of targeting insurgents, many civilians end up dead which is highly counterproductive to long-term success.
It’s not about how outraged you are and whether it’s appropriate for you to be so. I think you are 100% right to be as outraged as you are and, like EddyTeddyFreddy, I admire the fact that you’ve had the passion to sustain that outrage throughout the past six years. It’s the times when I see you adopting a zealot mentality of “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” that I take exception to.
Here’s a recent example. You hijack a thread to rant against Bush, and then accuse those who complain about your behavior of defending mass murder. What the hell is that? I mean seriously, re-read that thread and tell me that was a reasonable or even remotely productive contribution to that discussion.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I don’t hate you, I’m not going to try to ban you. For someone who attacks others so freely, you certainly don’t take bitching at yourself very well. You were posting in a way that was annoying me and (I believe) harming a cause that I support, so I spoke up. For what it’s worth, I was sort of a dick about it and wish I had handled it differently.
it is, quite bluntly, the same tactic that the Bush administration used to justify/argue the Iraq invasion. Anyone who wasnt ‘with them’ was an enemy, anyone who dared to suggest that invading Iraq might not be a good idea was justifying the murderous regime of SH. and ** Giraffe** is right to call you out on the tactic.
we’re supposed to be better than that.
Before the war, Baghdad was a beautiful city. Saddam was a big problem. But, half the work force was women. Half the college students were women. They did not have to wear Habibs and cover up.
Now in a land of resources there are long lines for expensive gas. The Al qaeda which had no presence is everywhere. One hour of electricity a day. Garbage everywhere. There was no neighbor conflict based on religion.
We bombed the place for openers. Now we want to do it again. Insurgency wars are over the hearts and minds of the citizens. We are failing miserably in that regard.
That is the fatal flaw in our tactics. Bombing will only make it worse.
The fatal flaw? If only…
A timely update to the discussion. This morning I heard from the BBC (via NPR) that we have managed to blow up a Mosque and kill seven children. The governments take was that they knew there were terrorists there (they said Al Qaeda), that the children had been kept inside (so they were not seen by military observers), and that the terrorists were using them as human shields. A spokesman for the military said, “This illustrates their depraved indifference to human life” (from memory).
So, our careful observation can’t let us know that a Mosque, that contains a Muslim school, contains children. They are using human shields, but are so incompetent that they don’t let anyone know they are there (think Dr. Strangelove where the Russians don’t let anyone know about their doomsday device), and we blow them up. Thus, our blowing up school children illustrates how little they care for human life. Gotta love it.
Link. For clarity this was in Afghanistan, not Iraq.
Giraffe,
IMO, your example of my latest “hijack” is a poor one for it was initially one post rebutting a claim made by another poster on the very same thread. IOW, no hijack but rather very much on topic.
Now, said poster stated that “Bush-bashing got old three years ago” (or words to that effect, paraphrasing here) and I simply said that it’s plain stupid to say so. After all, the man is still in charge, the carnage is raging and he keeps adding fuel to the fire – thus why the pass? And that’s pretty much all I had to say or would have said. Note as well, that a bit after my own post, tagos also made pretty much the same perfectly logical observation.
Ironically enough, again, that was all I had to say or would have said – perfectly reasonable in my estimation. But then came the train of posts denouncing me for thread-shitting, de-railing and so forth…while they where doing the exact same thing!
Secondly, yes, pretty much at this point it is a matter of “us vs them.”! How anyone cannot possibly see that is beyond me. I mean, if after all the evidence shown and the daily carnage serving as a constant reminder of what a mess BushCo has made of Iraq (with all the ramifications implied throughout the MENA region) someone still supports the war effort how could I possibly be anything other than against him/her? And yes, I firmly believe that Bush (and many on his staff) is a mass-murderer due to the illegal actions that have led to the death of so so many innocent people – that the UN or the international community have little power to stop him or take him to task, doesn’t make him any less of one. Hell, look at what Castro has done on the other side for all these years. Thus it only follows, that if you’re still with him, you’re either a fool or aligned with a murderer.
As for being thin-skinned or thinking that you hate me, certainly not on the first account, it’s just that I can snipe back pretty well myself, and I’ll take your word on the second score.
As for the way you did it, well yes, I certainly agree and said as much, it was not near your usual high standards, but hey! everyone can have an off day – 'cept luc’ of course. And like I also said, you’ve posted nothing that’ll change the nature or tenor of my posting here. That’s why I brought-up the “Mod-stick” allusion, because as long as I am within the rules, I’ll keep posting as is my wont.
Lastly, as to the quality of my posts, I do the best I can with what is not my first language, but if you take 30 minutes or so going through my posting history, I’ll think you’d notice that I am the furthest from a drive-by poster. Rather the opposite in fact – most of my posts come in bunches. Once I get involved with a thread topic, I’m rather bulldoggish about letting go. And you’ll also find plenty of cites backing-up what I write in many/most of those threads.
Having said, I am willing and able to forget this ever took place. And I also wouldn’t mind getting back on topic. flight’s post being yet another illustration of the absurdity exposed in the OP.
~Red
Iraq now ranked second among world’s failed states
Thanks Og for Sudan!