I confess that I’m basing my response primarily on his similar thread of a year ago; this one looks a lot less defensible to me. Well, there’s a way to modify it to make it defensible, but even then I wouldn’t agree with it, and so I’m not going to put the proposition forward that could be defended.
Daniel
And by an odd coincidence, I just joined the boards as a Charter Member. And my nephew just recently completed his service in Iraq, and is now in Afghanistan, where he recently was awarded the Bronze Star.
So Dinsdale is wishing that my nephew and his friends in the Special Forces die. Because Dinsdale wants Bush to lose the election.
That’s how much Dinsdale values my nephew’s life.
OK, then, let’s debate in the abstract what would do the most good - if my nephew were to die at the hands of terrorists, or if my nephew got wind of what Dinsdale wished for him, came home, and knocked his fucking teeth down his filth-spewing throat?
Let’s have a nice, academic debate. How do we deal with those who, when confronted with a choice between Saddam Hussein and his forces, and the US and her allies, unhesitatingly choose Saddam?
No. What makes him at least thoroughly reprehensible is that he is not really proposing any such tradeoff. Truman had the eminently reasonable justification that Japanese capitulation in the face of fearsome weaponry would cease the war, thus directly saving lives by avoiding the need for a sea-borne invasion. Dinsdale, on the other hand, says that the deaths would result in Bush’s rejection at the polls, and hand-waves his way to the benefit, when he even bothers. In essence, he is thus saying that he believes that widespread deaths are a price worth paying for his choice to win an election. That’s what’s sick.
Munch, Dinsdale hasn’t actually specifically mentioned a pull-out, just about raising opposition to a “wasteful policy” and its proponents. It seems to me as if his goal is simply the removal of Bush. Even if we’re charitable, and assume that he’s talking about lives to be directly saved in Iraq, there are two possibilities:
[ul][li]He believes Kerry would pull out immediately, and has magical powers to preserve innocent Iraqis from the inevitable chaos that would ensue.[/li][li]He believes Kerry has magical powers that will make Iraq much safer without withdrawal; enough so to balance out the significant casualties Dinsdale desires.[/ul][/li]If neither of these is the case, then he is being a senseless partisan prick. If either of them is the case, then he is being monumentally stupid, and a senseless partisan prick. He is welcome to pick.
If I am not mistaken you have said your nephew is in SF. That being the case he is a professional soldier, highly trained, and well educated. I wish him nothing but a safe return, but if he is what I understand him to be, I doubt he would be concerned in the least about the OP. Haveing attained his level of skill he surely has learned that it is the right of the OP to say what he said, that is the reason he serves. (I know SDMB is private, and they can get rid of anyone they please, but thats not the point)
Yeah, I agree. War is hell. Of course, we could also debate in the abstract whether the parents of Seif Saleh deserved to die more than your nephew. War is hell.
Please note that where I diverge from Dinsdale is that I think we need to look for other ways to end this conflict. I emphatically, sincerely, wholeheartedly don’t want your nephew to die. But I also didn’t wish death on Hikmat Mohhamad, or Hakam Hilmi, or Abd al-Razzaq al-Lami, or Abed Hamed Mowhoush, or any of the other hundreds of Iraqi civilians that have died during this conflict.
That’s a nice, academic question which we really do need to ask, because it determines how we deal with huge swath of the Middle East. I humbly suggest that knocking their fucking teeth in isn’t going to make the situation any better.
They’re wrong. They’re horrifically wrong. But if we content ourselves to be self-righteous, we’re gonna get more of our nephews sent home in body bags. We gotta find another way.
Daniel
No, I’m not making exactly the same argument that *Dinsdale is making in the OP.
However, I know the guy, and we’ve spoken off-board, and (not to speak for you, Dinsdale; you’re certainly capable of doing that for yourself) I believe he and I share an immense frustration at seeing vast amounts of money that could be used for good spent to completely fuck up a country that needs even more vast amounts of help than the U.S. will ever be able to provide on its own.
It’s especially frustrating when one believes (and yes, it’s entirely possible that I’m projecting here) that
a) the war was sold to the U.S. electorate based on a bunch of skewed misrepresentations at best, or flat-out malicious lies at worst, and I’ve been tending more toward the latter interpretation every day;
b) one does not believe that the life of a U.S. soldier is inherently superior to the life of an Iraqi civilian, especially when the former made a choice knowing that he/she could end up in harm’s way;
c) one is incredibly frustrated at some of the most incompetent coalition-building in modern diplomatic history;
d) it’s looking more and more like really significant numbers of U.S. troops are going to die over this Godawful mess anyway, so why not have them do it sooner rather than later if one has calculated that having them do so sooner rather than later will prevent more deaths overall by changing the course of U.S. policymaking in the area, electorally or otherwise?
I might not have expressed it the same way that the OP did, but I see his point and I feel his frustration. I don’t wish innocent people death so that others might have a better life, but I wish to see the fewest people dead overall, and it’s pretty damn irrelevant to me whether they are Americans or Iraqis, especially when the Americans had a choice about being there and the Iraqis didn’t.
I should have appended to my earlier post:
I hope ALL our troops, whether they be in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere for that matter, come home safely.
I wasn’t voicing support for Dinsdale; merely pointing out that his suggestion, while cold-hearted and even evil, is not unheard of within the mainstream. Most Americans think of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a good thing.
Those of you who are or have family in Iraq have every right to beat the crap out of Dindale. I just don’t think you have the right to have him banned for what he said.
Figuratively speaking, right? 
Remind me again, which Americans had a choice about being there? Since they swore an oath to obey lawful orders, nevermind political beliefs about what the US should or should not be doing (I for one do not think this war should have happened in the first place, I think it is mainly being pursued to distract the country from other things) but that Bush has the authority to order soldiers to fight in Iraq, is indisputable. Therefore there choice is go to war or go to jail. Same choice Iraqi’s have, submit or die. Not a great choice for either group.
All of them. There are many reasons why I chose not to join the military, but chief among them was the great possibility that some yahoo would send me into an unethical war.
Many Iraqi soldiers, however, only got the choice of joining the army or having their whole families executed. These were the guys the US military killed by the hundreds in the first few days of the war, guys who really, really didn’t have a choice about whether they’d be there.
Daniel
As we can all see, stupidity and astoundingly bad manners are no grounds for disqualification around here, although some of us do seem eager to see other voices stilled. Dinsdale’s posting in GD is offensive on many levels, but the Admins acted quickly to quash it and, I assume, put out a private message pointing out the level of assholery our friend displayed in his approach to the matter. None the less, our friend Milum looks to be unseemly gleeful about the whole thing.
Quite frankly you would think the fatalities among American service people would start some stirrings of the idea that just maybe we have gotten ourselves into a hole that is some what deeper than we had anticipated. That is the problem with this war thing. It is young men (and for the most part the dead are men and often pitifully young) who pay the price for national policy. Just how much blood and how much treasure and how much prestige are we willing to give up to occupy Iraq? Should all this have been anticipated when our President decided that a policy of containment need to be replaced with a policy of elimination? How many of our people do we have to ship home in a box before we seriously question whether this adventure was necessary? How many dead will it take before the Party of Lincoln takes a critical look at where their President has taken the nation and seems bound and determined to take it in the future?
It is bizarre that anyone would cite these beliefs/emotions/speculations (by the way, what crystal ball told you that “really significant numbers of U.S. troops are doing to die…anyway”?) as justifications for wanting an explosion in the number of U.S. military casualties.
What all this appears to come down to is wanting the certainty of a spectacular U.S. failure in Iraq, ostensibly so that GWB et al can do no further harm. The consequences of such a failure would be disastrous for the Iraqi people, but I guess that doesn’t matter if one sufficiently hates GWB.
And whether or not one believes that this was a stupid and ill-conceived war, can one possibly be convinced that the death rate among Iraqis is higher now than it was under Saddam?
LHOD beat me to it, but I’d like to add that although jail may suck, it ain’t death and therefore has somewhat less finality. If you aren’t willing to risk bodily harm or death, then don’t join the military. As it stands now, Americans have that choice.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Did you read the quote I posted above from the GD thread? Maybe I didn’t make it completely clear, but that quote was from Disndale. So, you are correct in that it wasn’t in the GD OP, but ir was a follow-up point made by him later in the thread.
It might be better if you didn’t talk out of your ass. I actually took many Iraqi’s prisoner, and am well aware of their dilema. I have shared the little rations I had with them and given them some of the few smokes I had. I even encountered an American citizen who had been visiting his family in Iraq, when the war started and had been forced at gunpoint to fight against Americans. I mention this not to try to brag but to illustrate that I know what they faced.
I am glad that you had the foresight to consider such esoteric issues when deciding to not serve in the military. I hope you chose to serve your country in some other fashion, and not just be a freeloader, enjoying the freedoms that others suffer and die to provide.
But in point of fact, none of the soldiers chose to be there. Some may foolishly have wanted to go, but the fact of the matter is they could not be there unless they were sent. They do not choose to go, they are ordered to go.
I think you are missing the point I am trying to make, or I am not making it well.
No crystal ball, just common sense. Every death is significant, but things there sure ain’t looking up in terms of hopes for the survival of U.S. troops (or Iraqis, for that matter) if the U.S. continues with its current behavior in Iraq. From where I’m standing on the sidelines, things are looking worse with every passing day in terms of sniper attacks, suicide attacks, and such on U.S. troops, not better, and quite a number of attacks have taken Iraqis civilians, too.
It’s not a partisan issue; I’d be just as pissed if a non-Republican President had gotten the U.S. (not to mention Iraq) into this mess. Believe me, I wish things were looking better than they are in Iraq, but one of my issues with the invasion all along was that it seemed like there was no postwar reconstruction or exit strategy in place. So far I’m right, but Lord knows I wish I weren’t.
As for the death rate being higher under Saddam Hussein, perhaps so, but to me random and chaotic violence is in some ways even worse than targeted violence. And well, I wouldn’t like to think we’re using the Hussein regime as our favorite yardstick for comparison.
Yep, that settles it. Tons more casualties are inevitable. So let’s bring 'em on right now. :rolleyes:
The “exit strategy” is certainly murky, but are you really suggesting there has been no postwar reconstruction? Assuming you have been completely out of touch since the invasion, here’s a portal to get you started on what’s been happening.
True, as long as one wasn’t a member of a group targeted for genocide, or managed to avoid pissing off Saddam or his homicidal brood in some way, or wasn’t in the military and liable to be sent off to fight one of his imperialistic wars, life was secure and grand.
I really did think Dinsdale couldn’t be serious at first. A utilitarian argument regarding maximum lives saved is acceptable. I suggest that anyone who makes such an argument, however, explains it clearly enough so that it doesn’t come across simply as “I hope people die”.
I’m seeing my friend Dinsdale’s post as being along the lines of Swift’s A Modest Proposal, born of frustration and anger and not meant literally but which, unlike Swift, could have been stated better. His explanation shows he is still angry and frustrated and I recommend he step away from the issue until he recovers his composure.
I can understand his anger but I can also understand the anger of those who have taken him literally. This war is a volatile issue and being a veteran or having family in harm’s way can make one all the more sensitive. However, without putting words in his mouth but with taking some of the words out of it that I don’t think he really, deep down, means, I believe his goal and the goal of the rest of us is to get as many of those kids back here safe and sound while not leaving Iraq chaotic AND while providing for the needs of our own citizens. It’s a tall order and one that the current administration is not attempting to fill, even partially, thus the source of his anger.
And, of course, Dinsdale and the rest of you are free to tell me how full of shit you think I am. It’s a free country.
(And Dinsdale, as an attorney I think you are familiar enough with the phrase “fighting words” to know that no jury would convict somebody who followed through on a threat to punch you in the mouth. Legally speaking, you asked for it.)
Go ahead, roll your eyes all you want; eye-rolling isn’t going to save anyone’s life, either. If you have a grand (and workable) plan to diminish the senseless violence in Iraq, I’d love to hear it.
You assume incorrectly, and in any case I never said there has been no reconstruction. I said that specific details of reconstruction plans were rather scarce before the invasion, as was any semblance of an exit strategy. I would have liked to think that with all the experienced and highly educated people in the Depts. Of State and Defense, maybe there actually was a plan, but for whatever political or military reasons they felt it shouldn’t be shared with the public at that time. But I was skeptical, and so far it seems I’ve been right.
The lack of an exit strategy currently leads me believe there was never any intent at all to have the U.S. military out of Iraq quickly. That opinion hasn’t changed recently, and so far I don’t see any reason why it should change.
You’re putting words in my mouth again. I never intimated any of the above; thus the phrasing “in some ways.” I’ve been reading the fucking human rights reports on Iraq since I entered the workforce after college, and at one time part of my duties was to ensure the efficient processing of political asylum cases for Immigration Court, including ones on Iraq. I’ve read testimony from Iraqis that would make your hair curl. One of my cousins, a journalist, rolled into Baghdad on a tank with the 3rd Infantry, and when I tried to get him to talk specifics about the experience the last time I saw him, he wouldn’t do it in front of his kids because they are too young to be exposed to stuff like that. I’m well aware of what was, and is, going on there. Go condescend to someone else.