Anniversaries may be artificial milestones marking a distance on a road from the past, but they also remind us of where we are now: enmired in the fifth year of a hideous and vicious war, a war whose disastrous consequences were foreseen by many but disregarded by a compliant press and credulous public. No one -- no politician or citizen -- should be able to say they were deceived. They allowed themselves to be deceived. Almost a quarter of the US Senate voted against the use of force resolution, without benefit of hindsight. Many of you understood, too. We started it, anyway. We should end it. Now.
But what about those Muslims? The ones bent on destroying our freedoms, our liberties, our whole way of life? We've met them before. Except they were called Germans or Japanese or the Viet Cong. In 1917 and 1918 a German was like today's Muslim. President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat and one of the country's worst presidents, launched a vicious campaign of persecution and abnegation of civil liberties against German Americans. Not incidentally, he covered up evidence of the gathering influenza pandemic because it hurt the war effort. A pious Christian, he was also a white supremacist and anti labor. A real sweetheart. He and George W. would have been soulmates.
And he whipped up hatred and fear against German-Americans. The Huns. Murderers. Destroyers of civilization, freedom, liberty. The Germans (click here). But that was then. Now it's the Muslims.
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Yep, we have met them before in the 8th century. They marched out of Asia into Europe and almost took it completely until the Spanish started fighting as a nation along with all of the other Europeans. Later led to the Crusades. Wonder what their military spending level was then?
I don't intend to create or jump into a pissing match here but, in hindsight, several things went wrong. First, one can forgive the administration not having a war objective early on after 9/11 but sometime someone has to put together a coherant objective. If you don't have an objective its hard to achieve it. Second, someone needs to game out what the world looks like at the end of this war. What constitutes victory, and how do we know when we are there. A generic war against "terrorism" is somewhat silly IMO. Wars are fought against regimes, governments, or multinational organizations / entities. Terrorism is a tactic. One does not fight a war against a tactic. The Iraqi mess has suceeded primarily in attracting every seventeen year old Jihadist wannabe to Iraq. Now there is a larger problem than before. It also had the unfortunate consequence of knocking out both Saddam and the Taliban that helped check Iran regionally. Finally, calling this a 'long war' with the premise of a generational struggle against 'terrorism' or Islamists or whatever creates problems in terms of republican governance. Temporary wartime measures limiting civil liberties, government accountability, etc. take on an air of permancy degrading democratic goverment. You wind up with generations acclimated to just a little more tyranny. The Islamist terrorists are real enough and dangerous enough but this is probably not the best way to fight them. I have often said, only half in jest, that beer and pornography was the best way to get at them. Let them see the pleasure of decadence.
carl: Pornography is already a way of life for the men. Have heard stories (not verifiable) from soldiers, that they discover Muslim men indulging it quite frequently.
Also heard one thought today, it takes approximately nine years to quell an insurgency. That's all I caught, that one line.
Let us not condemn all Muslims out of hand.
Saudi Arabia contains about half of world oil reserves. It is a kingdom established under the Saud family with an independent (not state controlled) fundamentalist Wahhabi Muslim religion. I understand that religious independence was part of a deal made between Wahhabi Imams & the Saudi family at the time Saudi Arabia was fighting for independence of Turkey. Not unsurprisingly, the Saudi family is a much coveted friend of the USA. The Arab inhabitants of Saudi Arabia are a tribal culture.
Iran is the home to one of the oldest civilizations (Sassanid) on the planet. It is a Shia Muslim state, is neither Arab or tribal, and is traditionally at odds with Saudi Arabia. Anybody who would be best friends with Saudi Arabia had best not be friends with Iran. Here is an alternate view of Iran by an Israeli writing under the nom de blog "Samson Blinded" .
Read between the lines. According to Samson Blinded, Iran ain't necessarily bad guys.
There is a possibility that Iraq went terrorist because of corruption in high places. Literally $Billions have been stolen while our attention was diverted by terrorist activity. (as any follower of Doonesbury would know). Find the person responsible for hamstringing the army, and that person's lobbyist is probably employed by those who stole the $billions.
I often get accused of being a doomsday person, a fatalist, and a fear monger. On the other hand non of the normal drivel accomodates the particular situation we are in over in Iraq. It aint Vietnam, but its V.nam like. All I can hear is that we should leave. Ok, I buy that but no one can say when or that the region will be stabilized when we do....
I want to hear something other than "We are outta here". So if anyone has something up their sleeve such as the illustrious Democratic Party that saw the same intel that was cooked or not, please submit it. Leaving would ensure WWIV is on a countdown unless Iran is brought down. I am listening.
Randy: Remember a significant percentage (almost half) of Democrats did not vote to authorize the use of force. That was a Republican game. Too many Democrats did, and those that are unrepentant will not be forgiven by me (e.g., Hilary). What's wrong with "out now"? A lot better than "in, now" and the region is now already unstable because of our presence. When we leave Iraq's neighbors will see to it that stability is restored since that is in their interest. Iran wins big, we lose and the Sunnis lose. That's the game the neocons and Bush played on our behalf. They lost everything.
revere: You might like Mayor Rocky Anderson (D) Salt Lake City. He's been on the impeach Bush and stop the war now bandwagon for quite awhile.
He was in D.C. last week and also in Salt Lake City today hosting a large anti-war demonstration.
Randy, it isn't going to be stabilized, whether we stay or go.
Saddam Hussein, butcher that he was, together with his thugs, was also the linchpin holding that particular state together.
When we decapitated Iraq's government, all we had to replace it with were a bunch of exiled scam artists like Chalabi, who couldn't get their act together because they lacked even the most marginal competence. At government, that is; as liars and thieves, they were pretty good.
Bremer added gasoline to the bonfire by turning about half a million military age men into instant unemployed.
The bombing of the Golden Temple at Samarra made what will happen next inevitable.
They are well into a particularly ugly and long-lasting civil war. We cannot stop it or even slow it down. The 160,000 odd troops we presently have in Iraq isn't enough even to control the city of Baghdad, let alone hold down the country. As the last four years should have taught us all by now. It took Saddam half a million, and his people had Arabic as a milk language and had home ground advantage to boot. As we do not.
That place is going down the tubes. They won't stop killing each other until either all sides have lost too much blood, or until one group, most probably the Shiites, manage to kill and/or extrude all the others.
Our people?? Hell, almost none of them even so much as speaks Arabic! All they are going to do is run around kicking in doors, to find out, six or twelve or eighteen months later, that they were being used as pawns to settle scores for Iraqi locals.
If anybody is going to "win" anything from this, it's going to be Iran. And even that is by no means certain. Wait until the Kurds make it official, and then the Turks intervene. The Iranians may have precious little to take away from what Chalabi and the neocons have handed them.
Lea: I do like him. Have been following him for a year or more. He is quite something.
"Wait until the Kurds make it official"
One of the few bright spots in the mess which we have made in Iraq has been the caution and discipline of the Kurds.
The Turks are (rightly) eager to join EU. We threw spanners in the works but have managed only to delay accession. The Turks will not throw it away by starting a pointless civil war.
We poured arms into Kurdistan, ostensibly to harrass Iraqi Arabs. They have been careful not to make gratuitous enemies, neither Arabi nor Turkce. They have kept the weapons for the most part in Iraq but they have also demonstrated that they can shift rapidly into Anatolya.
If Europa fulfills her promise, in a generation or two, there will a chunk of Anatolya, plus northern Iraq, probably bits of Iran and Syria, called formally or informally Kurdistan. If it does not have a separate parliament, it will have quotas in EU institutions and a consensus-veto in Istanbul.
The current Kurdish leadership appears content to wait. The current Turkish leadership appears nostalgic for past glory, but aware that it is incompatible with being European. Aware too that genocide is no longer possible.
The only question in my mind is, can outside meddlers (we) destablize the truce?
So IMO Charles makes the most sense but urp, its the same thing I said. We cant have Iran controlling 1/3rd of the worlds oil. Thus it leaves it up to the US to establish if nothing else a NATO goal..... the Straits stay open. No change, business as usual? The French are now having to pay for their oil like the rest of us, J. Chirac is outta there. Merkel is in Germany and just about all of the junior members of NATO are on board so will sanctions work? I doubt it. Civil war Charles?. Yep, so who do we support Shia or Sunni?
Either way we are going to be there for a while.
Thanks so much for the YouTube link to John McCutcheon's song, "Christmas in the Trenches" (one of my favorites).
My copy is so old it's on a 33 rpm record album. You remember those, right?
bc: Unfortunately, I remember 78s, too.
And the 45's, revere....