300 million dead

"And yet we carry on as if nothing is happening, nothing is wrong, no action need be taken."

Time to drag up that old verse:

"The best lack all conviction..."

How do I post a moment of silence?
Well spoken PZ.

And three trillion spent.

And that's just the 4000 they officially count. If you're shot in Iraq, but die on the plane to the hospital in Germany, you are not counted as a casualty in Iraq. And DoD doesn't even count dead American contractors. This whole mess has been about lies on top off lies.

We're in the same camp PZ.

Frontline is running a 2 night show on Bush's War. It's available to view online here...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/?campaign=pbshomefeatu…

I think there's enough evidence contained in this documentary to convict the neocons for warcrimes. Bastards!

I agree and have been voicing this same concern for some time now. Just what does it take to get us stirred up enough to act? $10/gallon gas? War with Iran? Rewriting of the constitution in theocratic terms?
We're like a beaten dog who has given up trying to fight back. We just accept the beatings as a part of our existence.
Republicans are bullies and Democrats are cowards. The Dems are like the school nerd who, when the bully isn't around, tells everyone that the NEXT time he sees the bully, he's going to stand up to him and fight back!. But, when the bully shows up, the nerd falls to the ground, curls up in the fetal position, and pisses his pants. It's just part of our existence.

This current administration has made damn well sure that most of the public's day-to-day lives are unaffected by this disaster. While prices are slowly and steadily rising, there still isn't a connection with the events overseas. You'll see efforts made in previous wars (victory gardens, "if you ride alone you ride with Hitler" posters produced to encourage conservation of gas, etc.) to actually involve the public in these conflicts, but this administration wants this to be dealt with out of sight, out of mind. They'll keep moving the goalposts until they are out of office, and someone else will clean up this immoral disaster. How about this for an idea? Nobody in this current adminstration (Dubya included) gets any benefits, etc. until this war is over? Have the new President place Dubya and Cheney in posts that oversee this war, and they can't retire until they make good on their promises.......put their own wages on hold!

Just to put this into perspective:

Obviously we shouldn't value the lives of a normal American the same as we value the lives of mostly barbaric, misogynistic, homophobic, chaos-loving Jihadist nutcases, who would love to see the West burned down or enslaved. (That's what all the polls done over there suggest.)

Personally, I think the average Muslim is worse than the average Nazi, and I can't bring myself to care all that much whether such people live or die.

Yup. This was the Neocon's war. 9/11 may have been Pearl Harbor, but Iraq wasn't Japan. Or Hitler's Germany. The country went along with it because it wanted a surrogate for bin Laden. Shameful.

JD, what is a "normal American"? And are you really just firing for effect, or do you truly believe that nonsense?

It's a dreary milestone and unfortunately quite a few people view it as a kind of sacred duty to continue the miserable war. After all, if we pull out, aren't we saying that our men & women died in vain? People forget that a soldier's honor lies in his or her personal conduct, not in the worth of the mission on which he or she was dispatched by a disreputable commander. That came home to me in a big way when one of my cousins was killed in Iraq and my mother reacted by saying people in the peace movement should be ashamed of themselves (or perhaps rounded up for incarceration). The people whose policies would have saved my cousin's life, they should be ashamed. The president who sent him to his death, he is an honorable and respectable leader. Mom and I had a lovely shouting match over it. [Link]

By far the best US anti-war protest placard I've seen was Will somebody PLEASE give Bush a blowjob so we can impeach him?

I'll stay out of this one other than to say that the sane citizens of the "Coalition of the Willing" countries have my sympathy: I can't imagine what it must be like to have such a war waged in my name.

What Would Jesus Bomb?

4000 dead American soldiers, that is; it's almost as if the two orders of magnitude greater number of slaughtered Iraqis, the millions of refugees, the destruction of an entire country, simply don't matter and don't count.

All the estimates of number dead, including the Roberts' group's which is the highest, are undercounts. I can say this with a great deal of confidence because the Roberts' group's papers estimate no increase in the rate of death from non-violent causes and that seems unlikely to the point of impossible, given what's become of Iraq's medical system, water supply, etc. It may well be three orders of magnitude.

9/11 may have been Pearl Harbor, but Iraq wasn't Japan.

9/11 wasn't Pearl Harbor, but be that as it may, Iraq was in no way involved in the attack. None of the attackers were Iraqi and no link between the Iraqi government and any of them has ever been found. In fact, al Qaeda hated Hussein for being a secular commie and agreed with Bush on the need for him to be overthrown. It's as if after the Pearl Harbor attack FDR had declared war--on China.

And no sign of a let up. In fact, things are getting worse today. Battles in Basra, Sadr's Mahdi milita taking over arts of Kut, more explosions in the Green Zone. Mission Fuckomplished, Georige.

One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.
Stalin was right about that, at least.

What Would Jesus Bomb?

Sheesh, that should've been "parts of Kut"

Also, Sadr has encouraged "civil disobedience" today. I'm sure that'll work out swimmingly.

This was an important article. Dugg and Stumbled.

Besides the families of killed or wounded soldiers, no one in this country has been made too uncomfortable by this 'war', at least not in ways they can directly see. There won't be real action until people are moved out of their comfort zone. Would there have been a large, visible movement against the Vietnam war if there hadn't been a draft?
Would any of you miss a week of work to march on Washington? Get arrested? I'm not sure I would. Maybe if thousands of others were doing it too.

I think JD deserves the Carolyn Hax response to any comment so obscene, so absurd, so wrong that it's almost impossible to find words to express the horror felt upon realizing that someone actually holds and expressed such a sentiment:

Wow.

The thing about this is that most Americans are so disconnected from the reality of war its not personal to them. Its war on tv. My husband served two tdy's in operation enduring freedoom so i know a little about this. Most Americans don't really understand the consequences of war. And what is equally distressing is that, while it is understanable that Americans are focused on the loss of American loss, its NEVER mentioned about the overwhelming loss of Iraqi citizen life. While parents and siblings and spouses are grieving here in Amereica, the same is going on in Iraq, but its forgotten or worse, not brought up at all. Children have been killed during this war, babies, in Iraq and very little is mentioned. Its a total disgrace.

Will somebody PLEASE give Bush a blowjob so we can impeach him?

Ugh. No. Not even for the greater good of the world in general. Can't we just impeach him for crimes against humanity instead?

Besides the families of killed or wounded soldiers, no one in this country has been made too uncomfortable by this 'war', at least not in ways they can directly see.

There are ways, but they're relatively subtle still. For example, veterans are starting to see the care they get at VAs slip as the funding disappears while the number of new patients increases. I expect that crime rates will increase as the untreated PTSD cases decompensate. And so on. But it's hard to connect those things directly to the war (wars: don't forget Afghanistan) and so US-Americans go on happily believing that it isn't their problem.

Americans are dead inside on this issue because they have become dead both intellectually and spiritually on nearly all issues.

The Moon landing was America's crowing achievement, and it was the moment that America jumped the shark. Today, there's no intellectual or spiritual capital to spend on such grand projects.

Why do I say both intellectual and spiritual? The anti-intellectualism we all know about: The double-whammy of fundamentalism and a lazy, profit-driven fourth estate has eviscerated the intellectual curiosity of the last two generations.

But religion has paradoxically become anti-spiritual. Religions today are much more about what they hate rather than what they love. The Golden Rule has never been a defining aspect of the American ethos, which is much more about individualism and self-reliance. And that essential element of spirituality -- compassion -- has essentially vanished from American religions.

People have grown up having been taught their entire lives that it is okay to be ignorant, angry, and hateful of others. And there is not a single element in American society that is teaching otherwise, not even popular entertainment: The last intellectual hero in American pop culture who had mass appeal was Mister Spock, a character created over forty years ago.

"And yet we carry on as if nothing is happening, nothing is wrong, no action need be taken."

Then take action, if you like. Rise up, and get shot down. Let Morris be the next Fallujah. And before you respond with "they would never do such a thing" or similar platitudes, re-read your own post.
Face it, people are doing nothing because there is nothing that can be done. The Iraqi people excepted, but only because they have nothing left to live for and might as well take a few Americans with them when they go.

JD,

So you think the average Muslim is worse than the average Nazi??

And, who, exactly do you mean??

Who was the average Nazi??

After WWII, the vast majority of Germans were just as happy to become an ally of the US (even the ones that weren't able to for a few decades) as they were to be a Nazi (if they ever really were a Nazi).

The only good Kraut is a dead Kraut.

The only good Jap is a dead Jap.

Just a few years later, they were friends and allies.

Don't buy all the propaganda.

What I also don't understand is why we are so fixated on the 4,000 dead American soldiers. Wartime medicine has advanced to the point where many wounded soldiers that would have died of similar injuries in wars past now survive, albeit often with debilitating handicaps. According to the US military, as of August 2007 there are nearly 30,000 wounded. Mind you some of the wounded make full recoveries, but many don't, and as far as headline statistics are concerned they count even less than Iraqi casualties. And unlike the dead, their suffering sometimes continues for a lifetime.

There's a group who on most days have a table on the sidewalk with a petition and placards calling for the impeachment of Dick Cheney and G.W., and they have been doing this for over three years.

Every week there are anti-war protests in front of our federal building calling for an end to the war, often to the point of blocking traffic.

A local peace protest organized by kids and attended by a small town mayor (of a conservative small town) attended and was a full participant.

How do we make this effective? How many letters have to be written? Or is it also the cowardice of the American people holding us back? We voted these clowns in, and we can't seem to overturn the primary process of political maneuvering to get real change.

I will be stopping by that "Impeach Cheney and Bush" table. Metta.

"Personally, I think the average Muslim is worse than the average Nazi, and I can't bring myself to care all that much whether such people live or die." I was in agreement with you till this one. By the term average are you refereeing to the average willing fanatical convert or to all the rest of the poor idiots who had no choice except to join or die.

BTW Saddam did a lot to oppress the Taliban who are the willing convert nut bags we really should be afraid of.

It's a dreary milestone and unfortunately quite a few people view it as a kind of sacred duty to continue the miserable war. After all, if we pull out, aren't we saying that our men & women died in vain?

I've been sending monthly payments to a lawyer in Nigeria. It's OK, though, because that's much better than admitting that my first payment was made in vain.

Seriously - I'm open to ideas about how to make the lives of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield/Wolfowitz/Feith/Rice/etc miserable for the rest of their (hopefully) long lives. I want to make sure that they are afraid to eat in public restaurants, for people spitting in their food. Every speaking event they do should have to be private by necessity. They should be pariahs forever.

This could very well all end if we could only catch Dubya in the act of getting a blowjob from a whitehouse intern.....

You are too national-centric. What you describe is the human condition. What made you think that there was some inherent nobility about us? The Constitution? I wished! With callous disregard for the oaths he took, it was the first thing the prime wretch shredded.

This reminds me a little of WW2. While Britain (and most of Europe) had rationing, curfews and blackouts; America actually increased its economic growth. It also helped that WW2 was right on our doorstep as opposed to an ocean away.

Now, we are all in the same position. We don't suffer from a shortage of supplies, the majority of our men are not out fighting (and women haven't had to take their jobs), our countries are growing and this war is a long, long way away. British disapproval of the war in Iraq is still high, though since Prince Harry'r return from 3 weeks on the frontline support of the soldier has grown.

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Although I'm tempted to say the latter, as anything which makes the death of hundreds of thousands of people acceptable is, well, unacceptable.

Once, four dead in Ohio could stir us. Now, four thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, it doesn't matter ... we have all become dead inside.

Not all, just many. The anger needs an outlet. What would anyone do who isn't in the position to force impeachment hearings?

Eventually a catalyst will present itself. Just hope it doesn't take the form of armed mobs looting downtowns.

I just renewed my memberships to Veterans for Peace and the ACLU this last week. I know it's not much, but any of you out there who have thought of doing so before, but haven't for whatever reason... please do similar.

Thanks PZ.

I am a member of the packerreport.com. We have a section called the Wonk for those of us who like to share our political views. There are only a few I would classify as Dem. or liberal, the rest are hard core xtian/neocon fundies. They cannot grasp that their glorious leader made a huge mistake and many still trumpet the WMD cause or when that gets shattered, they carp about how Iraq is better today than under Saddam. No matter what proof you show them they will not change their views. It's like throwing rocks at a brick wall, or if you like, arguing with IDiots.

not all americans are dead. only "people" like JD are. but one could also argue were never alive in the first place. so they can not count as casualties.

Thank you, PZ.

P(Arbitrarily selected American is less ravingly fanatical and bloodthirstily barbaric than arbitrarily selected Muslim) >> 0.5. That's one way of elaborating what I said about normal Americans and normal Muslims. So please don't go pretending that my last post is logically flawed.

I'm quite capable of explaining why I feel Muslims are on the whole worse people than Nazis. And I'm talking about the real fundamentalist Nazis. Sure, the bodycount doesn't bear out this opinion, but consider what things would be like if a present-day Muslim nation was a military superpower as Nazi Germany was.

I think the reasons why this condition exists is because the government isn't listening to the people. In an interview, Dick Cheney, in response to a question regarding how people are against the war, said, "So?" I believe this is the current administration's approach to dealing with will of the people. It doesn't matter what the people think, all that matters is their own agendas. It's sickening.

As a conservative who will reluctantly support a just war, I never supported this adventure in Iraq, having never been presented with evidence that would justify the war. And, as bad as our own casualties are, our young men are required to kill others, which inflicts pain elsewhere, and is also something that will in all likelihood haunt our own young men later in life. These are high prices. My cousin had to, under the rules of engagement, shoot a young man who had dropped his weapon and was fleeing. It had to be done but it's not a pretty thing to have to do.

You will find that other more prominent conservatives, such as Pat Buchanan, also opposed this war in Iraq. Congress, who "pre-approved" Bush to make war, deserves as much blame as the citizens of this country who, like uncritical evolanders supporting applied Darwinism in the 1930s, uncritically soaked up unethical slogans like "better there than here" which essentially means, "let's use our soldiers as terrorist honeypots in Iraq, well, because, we can."

Meanwhile over 100 unborn children are aborted each hour in the United States.(Guttmacher Institute 2008) More unborn children have been aborted in the last two days in the United States than our soldiers who have died in Iraq since the start of this conflict.

Iraq may have been the wrong battleground at the wrong time, but this conflict between the Islamic world and the Western world was inevitable. Nothing short of a paranoid isolationism could have prevented it and that ship sailed long ago. Any state that A) can't keep their nutty fundies somewhat in check or is actually RUN by the nutty fundies and B) suppresses individual liberties to the extreme will become destructive to itself and those it interacts with. We are dealing with a 7th century ideology that has access to 21st century technology. The innocent lives that have been lost are truly a tragedy, but the innocents killed by Saddam were just as tragic. The virtual genocide of the Marsh Arabs. The wholesale attacks on the Kurds. These are 2 societies that are now on the road to recovery. Iraqi society is plagued with tribalism and sect animosity that won't disappear if we pull out now. Iran won't stop arming Shia militants who are carrying out attacks on Sunni mosques. Sunni al Qaeda sympathizers won't stop targeting Shia marketplaces. Neither will let up on an organized central Iraqi government.

I understand the emotional appeal that the anti-war supporters carry. But that appeal doesn't line up with the complexities of the situation. I can virtually guarantee you that NO responsible presidential candidate will start pulling troops when those realities are made fully clear to them. Once Clinton or Obama or McCain get into office and they have those first few national security meetings, they will come to the realization that we will be in Iraq and the middle east for a very long time. Troops will draw down, yes, but we will be there. Get used to it.

Apart from JD, who is obviously retarded, the comments here in themselves, along with PZ's short post, give a certain comfort to those who don't live in America. At least there are some in America who see the horror of it all and are aghast.

To those who wonder how it all got started, well, it certainly wasn't simply down to the likes of the idiot Bush. Look at the type of thing preached by our own dear Christopher at the time:

"This will be no war, there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling
It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."

(C Hitchens 28/01/03)

And now that the bloody mess is recognised by virtually all and sundry as a bloody mess, what does the greasy imposter say? In answer to the question of how he got it so wrong on Iraq he replies "I didn't".

Don't blame Bush alone. He had help. And don't forget the names of those who helped!

I sympathize with you about the sorry state of American democracy. I continue to be amazed by my fellow countrymen who seem content to stand by and watch as all of our values and morals are thrown out the window. And for what? FEAR.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were the gift that the neoconservatives who make up the Bush Administration and the leadership of the GOP have been waiting for; their long-desired "new Pearl Harbor". The level of fear that was cultivated on that day continues to haunt us and has led us into the nightmare we've collectively experienced over the past seven years. Because of fear, many Americans were more than willing to give up their civil liberties in the name of "keeping us safe". Because of fear, Democrats in Congress lost any and all will to be an opposition party and to stand up against the neoconservatives.

The conservative media joined in the game and broadly declared as "un-American" anyone who spoke out against the loss of civil liberties or in favor of treating the so-called "unlawful combatants" with the respect and care due to them by the Geneva Convention. It is because of the paralyzing fear combined with callous opportunism from those in power that Americans are comfortable with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo - regardless of how inhumane and truly un-American these facilities are.

Fear is the reason we're in this mess and fear is the reason that we can't get out of it. We must find the courage to put the terrorist threat into perspective and understand that al Qaeda

As a conservative who will reluctantly support a just war, I never supported this adventure in Iraq, having never been presented with evidence that would justify the war.

Good for you for using your brain and not being blinded by partisan politics. Which can happen to conservatives, liberals, or moderates.

And, as bad as our own casualties are, our young men are required to kill others, which inflicts pain elsewhere, and is also something that will in all likelihood haunt our own young men later in life. These are high prices.

Indeed. A person who survives an atrocity is less likely to have PTSD later in life than one who committs an atrocity. The people who ordered young men and women to commit atrocities at Guantanemo and other places have much to answer for.

However, isn't there a standing order in the US military that a soldier is forbidden to commit a war crime? It is my understanding (though I could have it wrong, having never been in the military myself) that a soldier when ordered to commit a war crime or human rights violation is supposed to respond, "I can not do that, sir, it violates standing order XXX [whatever the number is]." I mention this not to condemn the soldiers who followed their immediate superiors' orders to commit atrocities but in case someone in the military is reading this and might find it useful to know that there may be a way he/she can resist and yet not violate his/her oath.

My cousin had to, under the rules of engagement, shoot a young man who had dropped his weapon and was fleeing. It had to be done but it's not a pretty thing to have to do.

Again, I do not want to criticize your cousin: I wasn't there, I didn't see what he/she did. But how can it be necessary to shoot a person who has dropped his weapon and is fleeing?

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

I hate the war in Iraq, that it happened at all. But other than electing people who promise to pull us out of there, what else can we at the homefront do?

*applause*

Well done, PZ.

4000 dead is significant and I feel sorry for each of their families and honored by the fallen soldiers' memory.

However, PZ, with your 'blood on our hands' pathetic emotive, let's keep things in perspective.

Only 4000 dead for a war?

That's actually extremely low, commparatively:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_death_toll

No war is worth someones's life, but this recent war is almost, statistically speaking, neglible.

Funny how you worry about war & death so much and not abortion due to someone's lack of desire to raise their misgivings?

Exactly It's tragic for ANY number of people to get killed unnecessarily, whether 4 or 400,000...It's quality, not quantity that counts. And the same goes for money too - e.g. the trillions of dollars wasted since 2003...

Biology can help explain at least some of the dumb behaviour we see, not just by our own tribe, but by other ones. We still use the reptilian and mammalian brain regions. Intelligence and science are exceptions in the world. The Iraq war is just one of hundreds of conflicts, based on outmoded aggression, territoriality, uneven distrubtion of wealth. We show alleigence to our tribes, and revernence to the powerful alpha leader, who cannot be wrong, who by default can get away with murder.

The difference is that, unlike in the past, when people fought with sticks and spears, they now do it with auomatic weapons and smart bombs. That's why dumb people like the Bushes shouldn't be let within a mile of power...

William Wallace,

"Congress, who "pre-approved" Bush to make war, deserves as much blame as the citizens of this country "

Until that statement, you sounded rational. But with it you've proven yourself an idiot. Blaming Congress for this is like blaming the DMV for someone with a driver's license committing vehicular manslaughter.

Showing more idiocy, you state "Meanwhile over 100 unborn children are aborted each hour in the United States.(Guttmacher Institute 2008) More unborn children have been aborted in the last two days in the United States than our soldiers who have died in Iraq since the start of this conflict."

The levels of stupidity in this comment are so breathtaking, that I don't even have the energy to go into it. Get some help man, you're pathetic. No, I mean really, you need professional help.

JD is just a troll looking for attention. Ignore his childish nonsense.

PZ, I saw Alexie speak my freshman year of college. That speech changed my life and politics for the better. It's nice to see him inspire righteous outrage in you and through you to your readers. Everybody hold onto that feeling. We need it.

Diane,
"Again, I do not want to criticize your cousin."

Then allow me: His cousin is a sociopath.

"But how can it be necessary to shoot a person who has dropped his weapon and is fleeing?"

Did you not read his post? It was THE RULES. Soldiers are just machines, you see, that follow instructions.

Deepsix: you want to know what happes with $10 a gallon gas? Come to the UK. $10.43 down the road from me. No-one's rioting.

There was story in the newspaper this week about a young (British) soldier who had lost an arm and both legs on active duty. The government were trying to weasel out of paying him the maximum compensation. We just read about it, shake our heads and move on.

What does it take? When does it become ethical to revolt against your government? What atrocity has to be committed to motivate someone to do so? Governments often codify our rights in a document and say, "beyond this point, we will not intrude." Has there ever been a document, written by citizens, telling their government, "beyond this point, we will not allow?"

(.)(.)

I don't know, I have some American friends that were getting pretty wound up over $6 a gallon. I just chuckled and told them to wait. She love that 13 mpg jeep then!

How do we make this effective?

Vote for Democrats, all up and down the ballot. I know it's easy to write them all off as "cowards," and I know some of them truly are, but the hard, cold facts are that the Republican Executive Branch has been lying, cheating, and stealing to consolidate its power for 7 years now, and the Republican minority in the U.S. Senate has employed the filibuster to thwart the will of the majority to an extent unprecedented in our history.

I know my congressman personally -- as a campaign volunteer, I had a tiny hand in getting him elected -- and I know him to be hardworking, committed, and definitely not a coward... but it's hard for the House to make any headway on real change in the face of almost certain filibusters and vetos.

I know folks expected everything to change after the 2006 election, but really that was only the first step. What we really need is a Democrat in the White House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate; until those conditions obtain, little will change.

I don't care how disappointed you are by a given Democratic candidate, the Dems are the only liferaft on the sinking ship that is this country.

And as for the Dem presidential nomination race... I'm an Obama partisan, but I say this to all partisans of either candidate who threaten that if their person doesn't win they'll stay home/vote Nader/vote McCain: That's a dangerously stupid position to take, and it threatens our nation with doom.

William W, why did your god stoopidly design wimmen such that every month they discard a human life? If you want to start comparing numbers, you'd better check out the wholesale slaughter committed by your idol.

I think there are all kinds of factors wrt Iraq. Heck, back in the day, you had to get right up in someone's gril to kill them. Now it's easier - plink away at a distance. And not all the blame is on those crazy tribes who all want to kill each other. Our country has been on a corporate colonialist march for decades or longer. That makes the natives restless - they see all this work, but no benefits, because they have to pay off IMF or world bank, and their puppet-in-power is beholden to his/her western overlords.

Yes it's complicated, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't get the hell out.

At the risk of derailing the topic, Fuck you, philos, if you are equating abortion to invading someone else's country and murdering children and adults.

As for this comment of yours, "Only 4000 dead for a war?"

Only 4000 Americans. I assume you think the Iraqis don't count? Because a year and a half ago there were already over 650,000 of them.

PETER McGRATH

Are you sure your figures are correct, Peter? Your figures would make it £5.21 a gallon.

I live in Northern Ireland and have just put 16 gallons of petrol in my car for £20.

You are certainly not wrong though about the soldier losing his limbs and the scummy British Government trying to get out of paying him compensation. It happens all the time. Fuckers!!

She'll

English is my first language, honestly!

Obviously we shouldn't value the lives of a normal American the same as we value the lives of mostly barbaric, misogynistic, homophobic, chaos-loving Jihadist nutcases, who would love to see the West burned down or enslaved. (That's what all the polls done over there suggest.)

Personally, I think the average Muslim is worse than the average Nazi, and I can't bring myself to care all that much whether such people live or die.

Are there really real live people who really think like that, in real life?

No human life is worth more than any other human life, and no piece of property is worth more than a human life. It is that simple.

The Continental Congress wrote:
"Prudence, indeed, ... BLAH BLAH BLAH ... security."

The colonies then proceeded to back up that pretty rhetoric with force. We do not have that option, because there is no force that can stand up to U.S. military might.

"Again, I do not want to criticize your cousin: I wasn't there, I didn't see what he/she did. But how can it be necessary to shoot a person who has dropped his weapon and is fleeing?"

IED's, suicide bombers, EFP's....

You are on patrol, an IED goes off, a guy gets up out of a ditch and runs while dropping a weapon and no one else is around...he's going to be shot. The situation changes if more people are around. Not because "it will be seen", but because of the likely hood that he is the one detonating the IED's. The popular approach is to set multiple IED's either to catch vehicles reacting to the first one, or to get the medics and EOD people that come after the first IED goes off. Most of the IED's in Iraq are command detonated. Meaning there is someone there setting it off, not pressure plate or other types of automatic detonation.

The link attributes the study to the Lancet, which "had much higher casualty numbers than other organizations".

Do us a favour and check on that.

Even so, war is war, and this war does not differ than all the other mindless wars, except it does have significantly lower numbers of deaths, delineatively speaking.

I think a major reason that the actual number of Iraqi deaths aren't talked about as much is they're harder to know. Even with the Iraq Body Count it's clearly a massive undercount and people realize that. It's a weird bit of psychology but I think you get a much bigger reaction saying "this is the 4000th death" rather than "ok, now we know more than 4000 have died".

Philos is here!

Wow! Three trolls at once.

Philos, I know you're too willfully ignorant to grasp this, but one of the reasons so many of our brave young men and women are surviving is because modern medicine can do what only years ago would have been considered miracles.

However, the rate of non-lethal casualties is equal to or higher than Vietnam, etc. many of those include brain damage. Just so you know: over 80 percent of the wounded Marines and Sailors in Iraq are found to have temporary or permanent brain damage from head wounds.

So go ahead and talk about how much better this war is. Keep caring about potential life vs adult humans. What's more important, a group of cells that has less intelligence than a fly, or that 20 year old Marine with a wife and kid who can't count to ten any more? Oh, and while your at it... go fuck yourself.

Even so, war is war, and this war does not differ than all the other mindless wars, except it does have significantly lower numbers of deaths, delineatively speaking.

Well, that makes it ok, then. A moderately large number of needless deaths is fine, compared to a larger amount of deaths by some other means. Shit, more than 4000 people die needlessly in car accidents every year, so that makes the deaths in Iraq nothing to worry about at all.

Dead inside. That's exactly it. Futile, yes. I've stopped dreaming that the people will ever really run this country. It is run by corporations and greedy, wicked men.

For starters, JD, the union of the set of Americans and the set of Muslims is not equal to zero. There's a nice little thing, what was it called again? Oh yeah. FREEDOM, of the religious variety.

I have been wondering for a long time where all the pitchforks and torches are. Shouldn't we be storming the castle by now? I have come up with a few thoughts on why nothing seems to be happening. They're appalling:

1) We are masterfully manipulated. It's too late to fool the majority that the war is winnable, just or that we are the Good Guys or that it's not putrid with misfeasance, malfeasance and corruption, but we are manipulated in ways that prevent protests from growing, news from spreading, or our representatives from feeling the heat: Subtle "just right" economic pressure to make us keep our heads down; strong correlation of authority with political persuasion to make us afraid of the disapproval of our bosses, preachers, bankers and cops; Madison Avenue controls the news, and manipulates fashion, and The Fashion right now is just not to be controversial, activist, extreme; besides, you know they're listening, they're reading your e-mail, and they have a tilting chair all ready for you in Guantanamo if you step out of line. We're all sheeple.

2) It's too big. We are faced by a gigantic mass of festering evil, and by extending Goebbel's famous admonition beyond mere lying, "They" have made it too daunting for most people to address. They are relentless, they are pervasive, they are powerful. You might swat one ant that comes in under the door, or wipe-up a little smudge of dirt on your floor, but how likely are you even TRY that when horror-movie hordes of malevolent arthropods or gouts of vile putrescence are pouring in every window, up the drains, down the chimneys.... (Yes, that's how I think of Bush &co. and their media)
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/-if_you_tell_a_lie_big_enough_and_keep_…

3) We are waiting. An election is coming. Whether you personally believe it will bring change, enough people do, evoking a natural inclination to hold our collective breath until someone will come and make it all better for us. I do believe that we have two prospective leaders who can do a lot of good, and an organization (or a "disorganization") behind them with enough good people to do a lot of repairs, but the fatigue of the public, the sheep-like faith that all we need to do is follow, will necessarily limit what will be accomplished.

We as a society are sheep. We are wet kindling. But sheep CAN be stampeded, and a good boy scout can start a fire in the rain. Keep it up PZ: I'll contribute anything I can to getting it started!

[evangelion]
I mustn't feed the trolls.
I mustn't feed the trolls.
I mustn't feed the trolls.
I mustn't feed the trolls.
I mustn't feed the trolls.
[/evangelion]

Well for those who dismiss the deaths, how do you feel about the USA borrowing cashola from Red China to fund this debacle? And I write Red because back in the day, they were not our friends (and aren't really now). Why the F would you borrow from them to fund Dick and Georgies Suckass Mid-East Adventure?

This reminds me of last April, when I had to take a hazardous chemical class for my work.

The instructor, although generally a good teacher, made a point of inappropriately (in my opinion, at least) throwing in little asides here and there referencing his very conservative political opinions. You know the kind of thing: "So who here believes in 'global warming?'" in that tone of voice that implies that anyone who raises their hand is about to get embarrassed. Of course, everyone else in the class (this being Georgia) loved him.

Anyways, one of his stories involved talking about his sister, who is currently a contracter in Iraq. Apparently she refuses to watch anything but FoxNews anymore, because when watching the other stations, "all they show is the violence and bloodshed in the cities, when really, once you get out of the cities, people see us as liberators. I wish they would show more of that."

I boiled with inner rage at the arrogance of someone who has the luxury of working in one of these supposedly peaceful hamlets, making profit off of the war, and being hailed as a "liberator," while at the same time wishing that the national media would just conveniently ignore the soldiers (a few of my friends included) actually risking their lives in those "unimportant" cities where people happen to be dying daily.

I hope that one of these days that instructor delivers that line to a class containing someone who just lost a friend or family member in Iraq. And I hope that person tears him a new asshole. Maybe then he'll learn to stick to teaching when in class, and only wank off to his personal politics when he's not speaking to a captive audience.

Bush is the worst president of all time because of the Iraq War, the loss of provacy and personal freedoms, and the current implosion of the American economy. What is worse is that Clinton and Obama are working really hard to blow what should be a slam dunk win for the Democrats.

No, I don't like war, but it's like all the necessary things in life: there will always be poverty, there will always be hunger, there will always be the uneducated. You can fight and try to wall it off, but it will always come back. You can try to enrich the poor, feed the hungry & educate the ignorant. To not do so wouldn't be a fulfilling life and it would be wrong. You can wish to not have war, until absolutely necessary, but that's not realistic.

Bushs' War?

Now, that's a joke.

Remember, both sides signed off on that.

Exclamations from the Bohemians of "Bushs' War" means to me,
"Idiot" and unknowledgable of governemnt workings.

No one, but only the diseased mind, wants war.

Only fools think they can stop the world from having war.

BWE said: "Eventually a catalyst will present itself. Just hope it doesn't take the form of armed mobs looting downtowns."

I honestly thought what happened after Hurricane Katrina might have been that catalyst. It's hard to state conclusively without experiencing such a tragedy, but I'm pretty certain that such a thorough failure to save human lives and respond with immediate relief in a major city here would have brought down the government in short order, without the added horror of an unnecessary war. There certainly would be no question of the same government being re-elected, and frankly, it looks to outsiders as if Americans could just as easily vote the Republican party in again.

9/11 wasn't Pearl Harbor, but be that as it may, Iraq was in no way involved in the attack. None of the attackers were Iraqi and no link between the Iraqi government and any of them has ever been found. In fact, al Qaeda hated Hussein for being a secular commie and agreed with Bush on the need for him to be overthrown. It's as if after the Pearl Harbor attack FDR had declared war--on China.

Well, yeah, Dianne... that's kinda what I meant. ;-)

We're like a beaten dog who has given up trying to fight back. We just accept the beatings as a part of our existence.

I remember reading about an experiment where they would shock dogs through the floor. At first it would stop when they jumped over a net (or something like that). Then they put the control in the actions of a second dog such that nothing the first dog would do affect the situation (or something like that. It has been a long time). The dog with no control eventually would just cower when the shock started. The dog had given up hope of changing the situation. I think they had to carry the dog over the net to re-train it once it did have the control again.
So, do you feel like you have any control over the situation in Iraq (not suggesting anybody cower)? Did 2006 elections do anything? Protests? I hear many people say they are voting for McSame. Endless excuses about various RWA bullshit. I think we need a huge majority of rationalists in congress such that any president's feet are held to a very hot fire.

"Only fools think they can stop the world from having war."

And only fools think that Bush had to invade Iraq or did so for any other reason than he felt like it.

Only fools think they can stop the world from having war.

So better not try, right? Works this way, as well:

Only fools think they can stop the world from having war aborting unwanted pregnancies.

Meanwhile over 100 unborn children are aborted each hour in the United States.(

Apparently we missed one.

PZ said: I don't get it...As a nation, we stand atop a pedestal of bones ... our honor has been thrown away ... And yet we carry on as if nothing is happening, nothing is wrong, no action need be taken.

The key is exhaustion. The bad guys have put in place a simple but effective strategy, in two parts:

1) Don't do one bad thing, no no no! Do hundreds of thousands of bad things.
2) Deny them all, and let your opponents quail at the sheer labour of holding them accountable.

With a large enough scale of wrongdoing, even 1/10 of 1% of the accountability still absorbs all your opponents efforts, without noticeably affecting the wrongdoers' successes.

Noni

Did you not read his post? It was THE RULES. Soldiers are just machines, you see, that follow instructions.

Have you ever read about the Milgram experiments? People were told that they had to shock another person because it was "the rules". About 2/3 of them obeyed. And this is in a situation where the subjects were under no threat and had not been trained/brainwashed to obey their leader blindly. However, if they were given an example, i.e. if an actor playing the "subject" before them refused to continue giving the shocks, only 1/3 or so of people continued giving shocks past a certain point. So an example can reach about 1/3 of people and give them the idea that they don't have to obey rules blindly when it goes against their own morality. I don't know if that would work as well with soldiers who have been seriously brainwashed, but it might reach at least some. Which is why I asked the question: to try to open the door to the thought that maybe just because an order is given doesn't mean that it has to be obeyed. Especially when it is a war crime, such as shooting an unarmed person.

I'm also open to the idea that we haven't heard the whole story and maybe the person was a real threat. Exagerrated example: Person drops his weapon but starts running towards the atomic bomb that's sitting a few meters away with a sign on it saying, "press here to activate." Just to make up a ridiculous example. The odds are it was an unnecessary shooting, but that is not a certainty.

The Continental Congress wrote:
"Prudence, indeed, ... BLAH BLAH BLAH ... security."

The colonies then proceeded to back up that pretty rhetoric with force. We do not have that option, because there is no force that can stand up to U.S. military might.

At the time, the British military was considered equally indomitable.

And if no force can stand up to US military might, why are we still in Iraq 5 years later? Why were we fighting Vietnam for 10 years? No force is too strong that it cannot be opposed.

Governments often codify our rights in a document and say, "beyond this point, we will not intrude." Has there ever been a document, written by citizens, telling their government, "beyond this point, we will not allow?"

up until a day in September 2001 there was such a document. Seems to have gotten shredded by the fall of two towers. Whatever happened the "land of the brave"? What we are doing in Iraq is not bravery (as a nation that is. I do not mean the individual men who are there fighting and dying for us) There is a line in one of Springsteen's most recent songs, a father says to his son:

You know that flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't"

To me it is one of the saddest lines on the whole album because our leaders seem to have forgotten that and have managed to convince a huge number of the people of this country to forget it also.
It really is going to be a long walk home.

The link attributes the study to the Lancet, which "had much higher casualty numbers than other organizations".

If you read the actual article, it is clear that the numbers are an underestimate. The NEJM article's numbers are a more severe underestimate. Bush has managed to kill at least as many Iraqis as Saddam Hussein did and in a much shorter period of time. Let's hear it for American efficiency, huh?

Bushs' War?

Now, that's a joke.

Remember, both sides signed off on that.

BUllSHit!!!

Bush came into office with a preexisting hard-on for invading Iraq, and cynically used the tragedy of 9/11 as political cover for this (as we now know) otherwise unrelated war-of-choice. He and his minions emitted a continuous stream of lies -- to the American people, to the Congress, to the international community, even to each other -- to promote and justify this course of action.

The people, and especially the Congress, deserve blame for being overly credulous, and thus vulnerable to these lies and manipulations, but that doesn't make this anything other than Bush's (and his neocon pals') war.

It's awfully hard to recall this in the wake of Bush's transgressions, but we used to confidently invest a certain level of trust in our presidents when it came to the conduct of foreign policy. This was a Good Thing™, because it's pretty damn difficult to have a coherent foreign policy in a government riven with factional distrust. One of the most enduring tragedies of the Bush regime will, IMHO, turn out to be that it has left us with precisely that sort of government.

Thank you, Carlie, I was hoping someone would address that before I had to.

Hell, the Old Testament God supported and even ordered forced abortion of non-Israelite fetuses all the time...

(Hosea 9:16: Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb.) {Hosea 13:16: Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.) (Isaiah 13:18: Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children.)

Look. Abortion sucks. "Pro-choicers" don't like it any more than "pro-lifers" do. But please do not equate the difficult and often heartbreaking decision to abort a pregnancy which might break a woman's finances and/or body with a war based on lies, fought for lies, led by liars, and highly profitable to liars. Still don't like it? Do something worthwhile to stop it, like promoting sensible sex ed and helping relieve poverty, rather than spouting off about how WIMMINS IS BAD.

End of threadjack, please return to regularly scheduled and very-well spoken rant.

Dianne,
"And this is in a situation where the subjects were under no threat and had not been trained/brainwashed to obey their leader blindly."

Nice use of passive voice there. Are you suggesting soldiers have been trained? They train, yes, but it's not like Alex in A Clockwork Orange or those poor dogs referenced above. Soldiers work very hard to quell any vestiges of humaneness and independent thought. I say vestiges because one must be borderline sociopathic in the first place to take such a job. Kill just because the State says so? And I get money for college? Woohoo, sign me up!

Just have to jump in real quick and note that I am not JD. I'll always put periods in my name so you can tell us apart.
That and the fact that I have a difference of opinion with JD's statement.

Attitudes towards the situation in Iraq drive home the real difference between Christians and Humanists. Most Christians in America only care about the 4000 dead American soldiers. A Humanist will cry for all the dead without regard to their religion or nationality. Which of the two groups is the immoral group again?

J. D.

I'm also open to the idea that we haven't heard the whole story and maybe the person was a real threat.

Could be the soldiers were preparing an ambush and needed to maintain the secrecy of their position.

Any way you slice it, Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead is a great comic book.

Well, Laen got it right. I didn't make the rules, but they seem reasonable. IED goes off, hostile attempts to flee. The hostile is the weapon, whether or not he has already dropped his weapon. If the hostile wants to live, he should surrender (or not set off IEDs).

But it is duly noted that most of the people here don't shed tears for the unborn children sacrificed to the gods of convenience. Apparently, unborn children are of "lower quality" even if significantly higher quantity. Must be a tenant of applied Darwinism.

NMcC: Maybe you put 16 litres in for £20. Petrol is £1.15 a litre here now, so yup, that's £5.20 ish a gallon. I knew some people in Carlingford who could get you petrol cheap, but not that cheap ;)

Are you suggesting soldiers have been trained?

Is there any doubt? The military doesn't admit that they train soldiers to obey orders blindly and think of their unit above all else, they brag about it. Yet some people do manage to break out of that training and act like decent human beings. See, for example, Hugh Thompson's actions in the My Lai massacre. IMHO, the best thing we can do for the poor idiots who sign up--especially those caught in the poverty draft--is to help them find their way to behaving more like Thompson than, say, Lynndie England.

Dahan at #50 bleated: Blaming Congress for this [war] is like blaming the DMV for someone with a driver's license committing vehicular manslaughter.

Er, no. Sure the executive branch started the war, but congress funded it -- repeatedly. There's enough blame to go around for everyone. I realize that this inconvenient truth conflicts with your preferred narrative where republicans are cartoon bad guys and democrats are cartoon heroes, but real-world politics is way more complicated than that.

One of the challenges that Pharyngula will face as this blog attracts a wider readership is accommodating (or not) atheist readers who have views other than the currently predominate liberal viewpoint.

If the hostile wants to live, he should surrender (or not set off IEDs).

If the invader wants to live, he should not have invaded. Or so I imagine an Iraqi insurgent would say. Dumb ass thing, this war.

SteveM,
"And if no force can stand up to US military might, why are we still in Iraq 5 years later?"

Because that's what an occupying army does, it occupies. The Iraqi resistance hasn't made the slightest impact on U.S. power globally or within Iraq. Control of the oilfields, the only thing that matters to the U.S., has been constant since the war ended. Yeah, I said ended. An occupation is not a war.

Also, what's with the "we"?

One of the challenges that Pharyngula will face as this blog attracts a wider readership is accommodating (or not) atheist readers who have views other than the currently predominate liberal viewpoint.

Will they have anything to say besides indictments of liberals as sheeple? Because the ones who've come here so far haven't.

If you speak of the devil, he will come.

Just checked my email and a childhood friend was killed in Iraq yesterday. The second one.

I really have to say it. Bush, the fundie demons, and their buddies can all go to hell.

Er, no. Sure the executive branch started the war, but congress funded it -- repeatedly. There's enough blame to go around for everyone. I realize that this inconvenient truth conflicts with your preferred narrative where republicans are cartoon bad guys and democrats are cartoon heroes, but real-world politics is way more complicated than that.

Congress that until last year was majority Republican and never offered Bush a Bill he didn't sign. Even when the Democrats took the majority, then Bush's veto pen got active and with not enough of a majority to override, the republican agenda remained in force. So the blame still lies firmly at the feet of the Administration and the Republicans.

WW @ 93: Hey, I'm a "tenant of applied Darwinism" and let me tell you the rent is too high, and the heat never works right. Thanks, you guys are a great audience.

Britney Spears collapses- collective gasp fromm the nation!

4 US troops killed- collective silence.

Oprah breaks a finger nail- collective "Oh no" from the masses!

100s of thousands of dead Iraqis- collective silence.

Apple introduces its knew ipod phone- Millions rush to the store!

Bush taps our new ipod phones- Millions shrug.

1 little puppy dog is brought home by a soldier- Millions cry at the humanity of such an act!

40,000 wounded vets lose their health insurance- Millions are indifferent.

The US dollar is in its final throes, gas at all time high- Millions shriek!

PZ, now you might get a small idea of the German problem in 1945. It is hard to stop a government from within. It is hard to live with results afterwards.

If the invader wants to live, he should not have invaded. Or so I imagine an Iraqi insurgent would say. Dumb ass thing, this war.

I agree. And, I can't say that all soldiers think this way, but my guess is that many of our soldiers empathize with natives engaging in guerrilla war, even while having to kill them. It is the nature of war and occupation.

Now that we are there, I really don't have a solution.

Also, what's with the "we"?

Common english usage. It means I am referring to a group to which I belong (the U.S.). It does not necessarily include the person to whom I am speaking.

atheist readers who have views other than the currently predominate liberal viewpoint.

Will they have anything to say besides indictments of liberals as sheeple?

I don't think we need to fear any great influx of nonliberal atheists/rationalists: Atheists and rationalists love facts, and as we all know "the facts have a well-known liberal bias."

I just posted about this on my blog as well. Although it's a bit different because I was blaming politicians squarely for all of this. With the level of education we have in the US, you can't blame ignorant dolts from being blindsided and tricked, through fear, intimidation, and panic, into accepting lies that lead to a War with little end in sight and decades of ramifications. Apparently, it can cost upwards of 1 to 2 trillion dollars. What the fuck? Trillions? If you ask for 10 million one way or another in science education, the fuckers in Congress have fits. Hell, they just forced NASA to slash the Mars Rover Funding by 20 million.
Anyway, go to agnostictruth.blogspot.com to see my commentary on the current state of our "democracy".

SteveM @ 101 said: Congress that until last year was majority Republican and never offered Bush a Bill he didn't sign. Even when the Democrats took the majority, then Bush's veto pen got active and with not enough of a majority to override, the republican agenda remained in force.

Right you are. I remember the many heroic, though futile, votes by the entire Democratic Caucus against the war. The many stirring, though impotent, speeches claiming the moral high ground. The tangerine trees and marmalade skies...

Harumph.

Problem in Germany in 1945: No one clapped?

Perhaps people are beginning to get a little tired of congratulating themselves for having such virtuous beliefs as opposition to the war in Iraq?

Please congratulate me for saying something that you already know and that you already know I know. That's the foundation of a way forward right there. Or was that what got us here in the first place?

Dianne,
"The military doesn't admit that they train soldiers to obey orders blindly and think of their unit above all else, they brag about it."

Yes, I'm sure their dehumanization process is top-notch, and has only improved since Vietnam. You haven't addressed the fact that recruits are not simply volunteers, but take an active role in the process. Military training is not something you do in your sleep, or even strapped to a chair, pumped full of drugs, with your eyes propped open watching films. It's hard work that takes a conscious effort.

@ Raven (#100): My condolences. Way too much death and pain. I had a friend return safely last week; much to my relief.

Meanwhile over 100 unborn children are aborted each hour in the United States.

But far more "babies" are spontaneously aborted--at least 1 or 2 for every live birth. Is this intelligent design at work?

And let's not forget about the children and other innocents ordered to be killed in your sacred text. Or the sentiments to dash an enemy's children against the rocks. If it's divinely-ordained murder, then it's OK--right, Wallace?

So, what's not to get? We're a religious nation. And we worship our ancestors and ourselves and our "righteousness" in a narcissistic orgy of false accomplishment and self-worth. That most Americans focus on just the 4,000 is part of that failing to which we are prone (and since WWII, probably more so than most first-world nations, btw).

But, then what do you expect from a nation that celebrates Columbus day and pretends slavery "wasn't so bad?" A nation that refuses to look at it's sordid past in any rational way while engaging in unprecedented myth-building about it's people and their actions. A myth-building that derives part and parcel from the overly-religious character, including its hypocrisy, of its populace.

As for the 4,000, I'll be blunt, I do use the 4,000 dead figure as much as possible. I do ignore the Iraqi deaths. I do this because anyone who needs to be bludgeoned to see the horror and waste of war is too empathy-impaired up to get beyond his/her primitive tribalism and bringing that guilt on them will shuttle them off into cognitive-dissonance shut-down faster faster than a Bushie can say "support the troops" from the safety of his own basement.

Expecting otherwise would be insanity on my part.

So, yes, I talk (close to exclusively) about the 4,000 dead Americans. Because some of those that must be changed can at least empathize on that small ground of human understanding and worth. And maybe some small lesson or change can come out of this horror we have made.

As far as what I believe about the 4,000 dead American soldiers, I regret their unnecessary deaths to their relevant percent of the casualties and destruction committed in Iraq. I value them no less than the Iraqis who've suffered at our hands, but I do not value them any more. To do otherwise is to fall into primitive tribalism, the precursor of bigotry and racism.

I also am vocal that we're a criminal nation. Who have, for no good reason whatsoever, committed crimes against the peace, crimes against humanity and crimes against everything our country and civilization is alleged to stand for.

Well said PZ. I spent over two years in hell because my children were in this misbegotten piece of hell. Personally, I have lost all respect for anybody who ever supported the war. If you believed Bush you were unbeleivably stupid and if you did not believe him but supported the war you are just evil.

I also blame the media. Their only concern was staying off Bush's shit list and maintaining access. What use is access if you do not dig in and report the whole sordid story. A Democratic candidate for congress in my state has published a "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq" http://darcyburner.com/. She has received almost no notice in the media. Her opponent, Dave Reichert, has been one of the our ineffective congress critters and of course supports the war criminals in the white house. However, he was involved in catching the Green River Killer so of course the idiot voters made him a congressman and reelected him in 2006.

To those who say we have to stay because to pull out would be to waste the sacrifice made by those who have been murdered by Bush & Co. I say the waste has already occured. I had to face the very real possibility that my children would not come back. My opinion then and now is get us out before any other children (US or Iraqi) are killed.

SteveM,
"Common english usage. It means I am referring to a group to which I belong (the U.S.)."

Thanks for the remedial English lesson, but what I meant was, why do you identify with the State? I, too, am a subject to U.S. rule, a natural born citizen, in fact. Lived here all my life. But I certainly don't belong to it, unless perhaps in the sense of being property that the ruling class can do with as it pleases.

My condolences. Way too much death and pain.

Thanks. It is just stunning. He wasn't even a soldier, civilian aid worker.

Just out of curiosity, PZ, how would you end the war if it were within your power? Would you simply start pulling out troops today ASAP, start a several-months-long phased pull-out or what?

Brownian @ 99: Will they have anything to say besides indictments of liberals as sheeple? Because the ones who've come here so far haven't.

Ouch, you got me there.

The left-radicals who post here don't go in for the sheeple slams, and generally get a pass on bad behavior. Moderates, like me, are generally more restrained (mea culpa...), but get hit from both sides. Conservatives like JD and WW...

Not sure if I'm feeding a troll or not so in advance I'm sorry if I did.

"The military doesn't admit that they train soldiers to obey orders blindly and think of their unit above all else, they brag about it."

Bullshit. Technically it's mission first, but even that is the "party line" semi-bullshit.

You join to serve you're country, or for college money, or for a career, or because you are a kid that thinks it sounds fun. When you fight it's for your buddies left and right.

Maybe you are more comfortable thinking all soldiers are brainwashed robots that follow orders blindly. Maybe you've watched to many movies. The reality is you've got kids that aren't old enough to drink having to make life and death decisions every minute of every day. Is that car coming at the convey just ignoring traffic rules like 90% of Iraqi's or is he trying to blow us up. Does that guy in the window 200 meters away have an RPG or a broom? That guy shot at us and ran into a house is he alone or are there women and kids in there? You have an enemy that targets civilians, let me say that again, targets civilians, you think they don't hide in the crowd before they shoot at us? You think they don't shoot from occupied houses and run? There are real war crimes, the Marines that raped that girl and killed her family, abuse of prisoners, and plenty of others I'm sure. Trust me if you had mindless robots fighting in Iraq there wouldn't be a country left. We have rules of engagement and for the most part they are followed, which trust me costs lives because our enemies know them and use them against us.

At what point is a willingness to meddle in someone elses affairs justifiable? We were attacked by terrorists. I think that justified some level of response. How do you determine how much response is proper?

Our response destroyed a government because it was felt that that government was directly supporting terror in such a way that it had to go away.

If you destroy a government, some kind of government will take its place. without controlling the situation, how do you know that it will be any better?

You don't. So by dismantling their government, we were committing ourselves to longterm intervention, at the horrific cost that has incurred.

Would it mitigate the loss of life by leaving now, or would it be worse? I don't think that is an easy question to answer.

Anon: You haven't addressed the fact that recruits are not simply volunteers, but take an active role in the process. Military training is not something you do in your sleep, or even strapped to a chair, pumped full of drugs, with your eyes propped open watching films. It's hard work that takes a conscious effort.

I'm sure some people join the military because they are psychopaths who want to kill or blind patriots who don't think that the "enemy" has any humanity worth talking about. But the majority are probably people looking to escape poverty or get money for college or who join in a haze of romantic patriotic desire to "protect the nation" that has little relation to the reality of what soldiers, especially soldiers for a superpower, actually do. By the time they find out what is really involved it is very hard to get out for reasons both psychological and practical. Some strong minded people do escape with more or less damage. But blaming everyone who fails is a bit like blaming people who can't run Olympic speed sprints for not escaping when they are being chased by hungry wolves. Even if they did go out into the wilderness intentionally, knowing that there were starving wolves out there.

Yeah, some soldiers are hopeless psychopaths that can't be reached. But not all are. Why not concentrate on the ones who aren't, encourage them to refuse criminal orders, act decently, etc? I won't suggest that one ought to encourage them to go AWOL, since it is illegal to encourage soldiers to desert, but I'll just point out that this organization among others, can sometimes help people who have enlisted, perhaps under false pretenses, and find themselves in a difficult situation.

Not that I don't have sympathy for all of these people, but I can't say that I feel any sort of blame or responsibility for them.

I didn't vote for any of the folks in office, and I certainly didn't ask anyone to begin this barbarism-- in short, I tried to take care of myself and my family in the place I live. It always seems that when international relations backfire and wars claim lives, people start pointing fingers at the "apathetic" citizens like myself and saying how we could have done more to stop these acts of stupidity.

Seems to me that the more "active" folks could have done a lot LESS, and not started this dumbf**kery in the first place.

gmd @115 wrote: Personally, I have lost all respect for anybody who ever supported the war. If you believed Bush you were unbeleivably stupid and if you did not believe him but supported the war you are just evil.

Well, that certainly gives people a motivation to change their minds and their publicly-stated opinions. But please, continue the on your path of moral absolutism, and don't forget to denigrate communications professionals, PR yuppies, etc, at every opportunity. Because being able to say you were right all along (nyah, nyah), is more important than welcoming people to the cause and achieving goals.

Moderates, like me, are generally more restrained (mea culpa...), but get hit from both sides.

Et tu, Bureaucrate? ;)

Well said, PZ.

As a youngster, I lived in Germany during WWII.
After I immigrated to America, I was often asked:
"How could Germans just sit by as that was happening?"

Now you know!

I was wrong.

I was hood-winked and not sufficiently skeptical before the war. Also, Ken Alibek's book Biohazard really convinced that Hussein had the capability and the weapons.

And I was young and naive enough to think our government would not lie to us to get us into a war where American soldiers would actually be killed.

DianeM,
"Why not concentrate on the ones who aren't, encourage them to refuse criminal orders, act decently, etc? I won't suggest that one ought to encourage them to go AWOL, since it is illegal to encourage soldiers to desert..."

Why not encourage them to obey the law rather than orders? Well, given that lawmakers and warmakers are the same bunch of people, it would make no difference, that's why.

Iraq may have been the wrong battleground at the wrong time, but this conflict between the Islamic world and the Western world was inevitable. Nothing short of a paranoid isolationism could have prevented it and that ship sailed long ago. Any state that A) can't keep their nutty fundies somewhat in check or is actually RUN by the nutty fundies and B) suppresses individual liberties to the extreme will become destructive to itself and those it interacts with.

What an incredible moron.

Dude, you are talking about Saudi Arabia, not about Iraq. Saddam suppressed all opposition, including the religious opposition, and bin Laden called Saddam an "apostate and communist" -- that's a death sentence.

Are you really too fucking stupid to understand that evil can fight against evil without the fabric of spacetime ripping apart in the process? Saddam was evil, and bin Laden is evil, but they still aren't the same thing.

and I can't bring myself to care all that much whether such people live or die.

You are saying there are people we should not regard as people. You are saying there are people we should have no compassion at all with. What is more, you are saying that whole religious communities, not even "just" nations, should be punished collectively. That way lies National Socialism. Or Stalinism -- you choose.

Not to mention other forms of madness. By your logic, the whole area from Morocco to Indonesia should be nuked till it glows in the dark, right? Then what is that tiny conventional war in Iraq good for? By your own "logic" of a dangerous madman, you are defending the wrong war here.

Well we godless Europeans will be happy to try them in the Hague for crimes against humanity, yes along with one Tony Blair (at the very least). But there is the small matter of that bill that passed your houses granting your military the right (the arrogance of it!) to invade the Hague if any Americans are ever arraigned there.

Which would be fine, the International Criminal Court in the Hague is a court of last resort. It tries people who have not been prosecuted by their own countries or where there is no chance of a fair trial or any sort of trial in their own countries or it would cause instability to do so (Charles Taylor for eg).

Henry Kissinger dare not travel to most countries outwith the US for fear of arrrest. Why? because you have failed to bring him to task yourselves.

So, one word of advice you may have to give the members of the soon to depart administration is: don't leave home. Clean your house or the world might just do it for you. You wouldn't want us to have to ask the Russians and/or the Chinese to help us fend of a US invasion, now would you?

The war is a terrible waste, but we're stuck with it. We simply don't have a solution. We don't applaud the statement that it was all a bad idea because it just reminds us that we don't have a solution.

Here's why we can't morally "pull out" of Iraq: we would be leaving the country in anarchy. Yes, even worse than it is right now.

Let's not delude ourselves, we have neither moral authority nor rational ability to solve this situation. All we have are guns. As much as many Iraqis hate it, as much as we all hate to see ourselves and our loved ones die, we cannot walk away whistling and turn a blind eye when the death toll climbs even more quickly.

We're stuck in this situation because some of us handed too much power to a posse of pillocks with the political grace of a mad bull in a china shop. It's not fair that we're all paying for it, and there will never be a way to make it fair or right. We hate to be reminded of this. It's depressing. Numbingly depressing.

Sure, some are simply ignorant. But those of us who aren't can't just walk around screaming about the god-awful nature of the whole thing--we can't afford that kind of vanity at a time when what we really need to do is pull our heads together and answer the real question:

Where do we go from here?

Just out of curiosity, PZ, how would you end the war if it were within your power?

I'm not PZ, but I'll answer anyway.

First, I'd go to the UN and beg, absolutely BEG for help. I'd admit to having done a horrible wrong, offer to pay, offer whatever they want in return for help so that this slaughter of innocents can end. The US is too identified with the crimes of the Bush administration for US troops to ever be an effective peacekeeping force. Other countries will have to do the frontline work. Probably other Arabic countries. This sucks because it means putting more innocent people in danger, but I don't see any way that US troops can do much besides make things worse at this point. Second, I'd spend whatever was needed for reconstruction of Iraq. Get the country back into as good of shape as possible as quickly as possible. And make sure that the profits go to Iraqis. No US companies should have contracts unless they're working for free. Third, I'd offer any Iraqis who want it the right to immigrate to the US. With a startup package so that they won't appear in the US destitute. Fourth, I'd strongly encourage other members of the coalition of the fools to join in: they were led, but they followed with their eyes open. Not sure that this would work and it'd be expensive, but at least it wouldn't continue the current state of anarchy and violence.

Also this,
"But the majority are probably people looking to escape poverty or get money for college or who join in a haze of romantic patriotic desire to "protect the nation" that has little relation to the reality of what soldiers, especially soldiers for a superpower, actually do."

What soldiers actually do is kill for the State. Is anyone, no matter how poor or uneducated or ignorant of imperial realpolitik, truly unaware of that fact?

Any state that A) can't keep their nutty fundies somewhat in check or is actually RUN by the nutty fundies and B) suppresses individual liberties to the extreme will become destructive to itself and those it interacts with.

We're talking about the US here, right?

Thanks for the remedial English lesson, but what I meant was, why do you identify with the State?

At the risk of again teaching remedial English, usually when someone says "what do you mean 'we'", they are objecting to being unfairly included in the speaker's group. I was just making it clear that I wasn't necessarily including you in my use of "we".

As for why do I identify with the State? Because I am a citizen, I vote, I still believe that the Constitution means something. I think it is possible to be a member of a group while not being of the same opinion as the group in all things. I think there is still hope for this nation to return to its ideals and foundation.

At what point is a willingness to meddle in someone elses affairs justifiable? We were attacked by terrorists. I think that justified some level of response. How do you determine how much response is proper?

Well, responding to the right people would be a good place to start.

I'm not entirely sure it is legal to advocate throwing Bush et al to the ICC and I'm writing from the US, so I'm not suggesting that. Right now. Ask me again in June when I hope to be back in Europe and more sure of my rights to free speech (or at least the indifference of the local government to nasty comments made about the American one) and the answer might be different.

Body of War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HZuQkITY64

"Those weapons of mass destruction gotta be somewhere."

The crowd laughs uproariously. Ha ha ha.

I despise that man and his enablers. I despise him and them every frigging day.

NMcC: Maybe you put 16 litres in for £20. Petrol is £1.15 a litre here now, so yup, that's £5.20 ish a gallon. I knew some people in Carlingford who could get you petrol cheap, but not that cheap ;)

PETER McGRATH

Of course, I immediately realised I was talking nonsense as I'd forgotten to convert to litres. I didn't know how to change my comment however, so I was hoping you wouldn't notice it - drat!!

....slinks away sheepishly....:-)

Want to see demonstrations in the streets, colleges taken hostage, love-in's, all the protest we were familiar with during Viet Name?

Draft one college student.

Our government is playing the apathy of the average American by insulating them from being sent to their deaths by the roll of a die. Until Americans realize that we are all in this together, there will be no uprising.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney giggles about his "volunteer Army" crack.

At what point is a willingness to meddle in someone elses affairs justifiable? We were attacked by terrorists. I think that justified some level of response. How do you determine how much response is proper?

How often does it need to be explained to you that neither bin Laden nor any of the 9/11 hijackers came from Iraq or had any friendly ties with it? Haven't you even read comment number 9?

Our response destroyed a government because it was felt that that government was directly supporting terror in such a way that it had to go away.

No, ignoramus. Your government illegally started a war because it said it felt the victim was supporting terror, which was already known to be a lie. (Does "yellowcake" ring a bell?)

So by dismantling their government, we were committing ourselves to longterm intervention

Get out, get the UN in instead, and pay for that. The UN at least knows how to deal with this kind of situation.

What soldiers actually do is kill for the State. Is anyone, no matter how poor or uneducated or ignorant of imperial realpolitik, truly unaware of that fact?

Yes. Especially after a recruiter gets ahold of them while they're in high school and makes war sound like the best role playing game ever.

I think most of us are suffering from war fatigue here in the US. I know that doesn't speak well of us--we're fatigued by news of the war and the debate about the war, but for the most part we have little sense of what it's like for the people in Iraq actually suffering the war. And it's all too easy to shift attention to things that affect us more immediately, like the economy. And for that, yes, we should feel angry and ashamed.

But I'm actually more optimistic right now than I have been for a long time. I think the big lesson learned from the '06 election is that talk doesn't matter. The administration just ignored the results as if nothing had happened. The only thing that will make a difference is getting the current administration out of office. And so debate about the war has trailed off, but that doesn't mean that people have forgotten. The big, really big story of the primary season has been the Democratic voter turnout. There is no doubt in my mind that the Democratic presidential nominee will not just win the election in the fall, but will also have solid Democratic majorities in the House and Senate to work with.

That doesn't mean it will be easy to extricate ourselves from Iraq; that is going to be a painful process no matter what. But it does mean that there will no longer be an administration blocking investigations into the conduct of the war. And as various congressional inquiries begin uncovering the details of all the wrongdoing, Bush's policies will be thoroughly repudiated, even for moderate Republicans who won't be able to turn a blind eye anymore. And that will mark the beginning of our country's restoration.

Republican politicians like to talk about making sure that the 4,000 soldiers killed in the war have not died in vain. They have not, but not for the reason the politicians would like to believe. The soldiers have died in order to remind us of the consequences of arrogance and blindly following ideological goals. It's a very bitter lesson, but evidently one which must be re-learned every generation or two.

SteveM,
"I think it is possible to be a member of a group while not being of the same opinion as the group in all things."

You'll be of the same opinion on things that really matter, or at least act as if you were, because if you don't our masters will have you imprisoned or killed. See, e.g. post #137.

yes along with one Tony Blair (at the very least).

Aznar, Berluscolini.

Not sure that this would work and it'd be expensive

I can't possibly imagine it would cost 2, let alone 3, trillion dollars. Even if it doesn't work directly as a financial investment like the Marshall Plan did, that is.

My cousin had to, under the rules of engagement, shoot a young man who had dropped his weapon and was fleeing. It had to be done but it's not a pretty thing to have to do.

Swell. I know of nineteen people who had to, under the rules of engagement established by their mentors, had to fly airplanes into buildings filled with civilians. It had to be done, but it's not a pretty thing to have to do.

Oh, wiat - I'm sorry. I'm comparing Arab terrorists with American troops. How foolish of me - American troops have killed far more civilians than Arab terrorists...

The UN is not a solution to the problem. It hasn't been a solution to any substantial problem for nearly 50 years. UN "Peacekeepers" have caused more problems in Africa (Dafur anyone?) than they have solved problems. The UN is a collection of disparate nations which all have vastly competing interests. That will never lead to any kind of unified solution. Not to mention the fact that the UN is mostly controlled by the security council. And there are enough veto nations that have no interest in solving Iraq (China, Russia) to kill any encompassing measure to solve the problem. We can beg all we want. It would only happen with out and out BRIBERY (ie, here's the keys to the Iraqi oil fields, Putin). Arab states are not the solution, they would invariably be fraught with the very same tribalism that is the source of much of the violence in Iraq in the first place. (This conflict did not start nor will it end with the US involvement in Iraq. Hint: It's a theological disagreement that's approx 700 years old.) Which Arab nations would provide this help? Iran? You just guaranteed suppression of Sunnis and Kurds. Saudia Arabia? Sorry Shia, you get the heel of the boot once again. Jordan? Same deal, Shia get the business end. All 3? Yeah, that would be a fabulous way to start a pan-arabic war.

As for excluding US companies from involvement in Iraq, that idea is almost impossible. While Iraq has an abundance of fossil fuel resources, these do not spring fully formed from the ground. Infrastructure and delivery is necessary that Iraq simply doesn't have. They will need to get it from some outside source and that source will almost assuredly have to be Western or Russian.

The situation is far far more complex than the "evil" US government and the "innocent" Iraq people narrative. At the moment, the US military has the best shot at reducing the level of violence. I will repeat, when the new president is sworn into office, this is the message they will hear from military and intelligence officials. We will be there for the foreseeable future. Get used to it.

Blah, blah blah! All talk, no action -- the mental-masturbation of the learned (heavy sigh). The shame for this war is spread far wider and deeper than most (especially Americans) believe.

I would (sadly, but with near certainty) suggest that the overwhelming majority of the privileged readers of this fine blog have, in the final analysis, done nothing of consequence and sacrifice to stand up for what they know to be more right and just (and allow me to repeat just for emphasis' sake "NOTHING" in shrill, screamin' accusatorial cruise-lock).

Enough with the stats, the history of lies, the ... -- these have now more than adequately been recorded. Each new tidbit simply adds to the illusory pile of distracting fodder for more self-stroking, hedonistic "blah-blah".

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. (Thomas Jefferson)

... personal and coordinated "action" - for whatever you see as "the fittest" attribute of humanity that you wish to see survive. Some pursuits are more important than pure intellectual thrill.

UN is mostly controlled by the security council.

Time to dump the security council. It was always a dumb idea and it's even dumber now.

At the moment, the US military has the best shot at reducing the level of violence.

I'm not at all convinced. Right now, the US's presence only seems to be making the violence worse. Pulling out altogether and letting the inevitable anarchy occur and resolve might be preferable to the current situation. Vietnam eventually improved once the US left, though at considerable cost to the Vietnamese people. But would Vietnam be better off now if the US had just stayed there and continued the violence?

Why does it matter anyway? Our lives all have no meaning and the only condemnation for their actions will be some jerk wad historian in 2,000 years saying that what they did was "wrong and immoral." Get used to it, people abuse, manipulate, and murder other people. Theres nothing you can do about it, but join in the fun, otherwise your acting against your own animalistic impulses and desires.

there is a solution

1.split iraq 1/3 sunnj 1/3 shia 1/ 3 curds.
2.build HUGE minefields around borders
4.give each one 1 tril. dollar
3.destroy all armored vehicles in the country
5.withdraw all forces

"I would (sadly, but with near certainty) suggest that the overwhelming majority of the privileged readers of this fine blog have, in the final analysis, done nothing of consequence and sacrifice to stand up for what they know to be more right and just (and allow me to repeat just for emphasis' sake "NOTHING" in shrill, screamin' accusatorial cruise-lock)."

Guilty as charged! When there's nothing to do, I'm content to do nothing. Others may prefer to make a symbolic but utterly futile gesture of defiance, which is fine. If that gives them meaning. As for Anonymous, he's going to surf the Internet and fap.

Dianne:

I'm not PZ, but I'll answer anyway.

And what a fucking brilliant answer! Spot on in every detail; exactly what we need to do, both in practical and moral terms.

Where do you live? Does your state by any chance have a Republican senator you might be persuaded to run against? Seriously....

Our lives all have no meaning and the only condemnation for their actions will be some jerk wad historian in 2,000 years saying that what they did was "wrong and immoral."

Historians will condemn him? Not according to Bush:

And I guess my one thought I wanted to leave with those who still hurt is that one day people will look back at this moment in history and say, thank God there were courageous people willing to serve,...

This is Bush's favorite ploy: point to a rosy future where his actions will magically appear justified and his reputation will be vindicated.

Sidney Blumenthal nailed this idiotic delusion a while ago (Salon - "Bush's stairway to paradise"):

"You can't possibly figure out the history of the Bush presidency -- until I'm dead," he told Robert Draper, his authorized biographer, in an interview for "Dead Certain."
[...]
History has become a magical incantation for him, a kind of prayerful refuge where he is safe from having to think in the present. For Bush, history is supernatural, a deus ex machina, nothing less than a kind of divine intervention enabling him to enter presidential Valhalla. Through his fantasy about history as afterlife -- the stairway to paradise -- he rationalizes his current course.
[...]
He has entered a phase of decadent perversity, where he accelerates his errors to vindicate his folly. As the sands of time run down, he has decided that no matter what he does, history will finally judge him as heroic.

Good reading.

I have opposed this war since before it began. For 3 years I wrote to both of my Senators and to my representative; first, urging them not to vote for the 'authorization of force'; then berating them for being either gullible or cowardly when they voted for the resolution; then, finally, urging them to stop funding the war. In November 2006 I had a brief hope that a new Democratic majority in the house would finally bring an end to the occupation. But no, all we've heard since 2006 is that the Democrats can't override a veto. Never do we hear our elected representatives say that they will simply decline to authorize a budget for the war - a tactic that would be veto-proof and would require only a simple majority in one house of Congress.

So now, PZ, you wonder what is wrong with Americans? Just what is it you expect us to do? Frankly, I'm despondent. Going to another minuscule anti-war protest just isn't going to cut it. Writing more letters and emails to my 'representatives' accomplishes nothing. My clue-bag is empty, and I would dearly love to hear any ideas.

Also, I wish to take issue with the phrase 'the disastrous conduct of the wasteful war in Iraq': this is exactly how the right-wing would like to portray this war, as merely 'disastrous', as 'wasteful'. But this war has been a criminal enterprise from the start. For Bush and his friends in the oil industry it has been anything but 'disastrous'. And since the conduct of this war has resulted in the massive transfer of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to corporations such as KBR, Halliburton, and Blackwater, the administration certainly doesn't see it as 'wasteful'. It has achieved all the desired ends.

Private to Brownian: Yes, even me. Thanks for the smile, and the quote. Thanks also for generally being a voice of reason and moderation.

@ 12 -

Wow, talk about belling the cat. Good luck finding a taker.

Nice article. Agree with it and most of the comments.
I enjoy this site for the, generally, intelligent and polite rapport.
However, a comment like:

"Apparently we missed one."

I find abhorrent and vile - made to anyone. I actually have your book, and looked forward to sensitive and well written read. Now that you have revealed a rather different side to your personality, the book will hit the trash can.

I would ... suggest that the overwhelming majority of the privileged readers of this fine blog have ... done nothing of consequence and sacrifice to stand up for what they know to be more right and just

Well, I haven't quite my job and taken to the streets wearing sackcloth and ashes, if that's what you mean, but I have been donating an increasing amount of money, time, and shoeleather to helping elect good candidates who oppose the war. That may seem trivial to you, but like SteveM (@135) I still believe in the Constitution, and I think the best way to change the behavior of the government is to change the government.

blah, blah, blah, typical ignorant macho platitudes from the "Oft Wrong" class who are too cowardly to truly support the war they love.

Posted by: CB | March 25, 2008 11:05 AM

Spoken like a true ignoramus. Dude, after CENTURIES of colonialism, invasion, slaughter and exploitation it's no wonder they hate us.

Bureaucratus Minimis,

"I realize that this inconvenient truth conflicts with your preferred narrative where republicans are cartoon bad guys and democrats are cartoon heroes..."

A lame and ignorant attempt at discourse. Most of my family are Republicans. My father-in-law, a former Marine like myself, has actually cast one of the electoral votes for the RNC in Michigan. And almost to a person they're aware that this fiasco is Bush's administration's doing and despise him and it for that fact. I've voted for a Republican before, although not recently. Can you say the same about any Democrats? Thought not. Crawl back under your pile of stupidity,

"American troops have killed far more civilians than Arab terrorists..."

Bullshit. Arab terrorists set off bombs in public, kill police, kill far more Iraqis than they kill US troops their enemies. US troops don't kill anywhere near as many people as the terrorists do. Look at the recent bombings, hell look at any report on US troops getting attacked and you'll see the far larger number of Iraqi's killed by the attack than US troops.

As for Dianne and Anonymous...well there's no point in trying to discuss this with people who can't conceive of honorable soldiers. Oh well. Enjoy your life.

[i]Time to dump the security council. It was always a dumb idea and it's even dumber now.[/i]

How exactly do you propose to accomplish this feat? There are many who believe that new realities don't justify Russia keeping a security council seat. But yet they have it. Because they have veto power. I'm not an expert on UN bylaws but I do know the security council is an integral part of the organization of the UN and has been since its founding from the dust of the League of Nations. The SC will not simply drop their power willingly.

[i]I'm not at all convinced. Right now, the US's presence only seems to be making the violence worse. Pulling out altogether and letting the inevitable anarchy occur and resolve might be preferable to the current situation.[/i]

Then you have resolved yourself that one of the "tribes" will come out on top. Likely this would be the Shia as they would have the numbers and the most foreign support (Iran would pour weapons over the border to insure that the Shia prevailed). Now the Shia have been living under the thumb of the Sunni minority since Saddam seized power. The level of acrimony and hatred is very intense as they continue to uncover mass graves. You would almost assuredly be consigning the Sunnis (most of them innocent citizens) to oppression. In addition, the Kurds have been in conflict with the Iranians (there are a number of Kurdish factions in Iran as well as Iraq). They have begun to exert a considerable amount of autonomy and are building a military to protect themselves. There's another war. Should the Shia under the influence of Iran gain too much power, the other Sunni OPEC nations (Saudia Arabia, Oman, Yemen, etc) would get very nervous. You see where I'm going.

[i]But would Vietnam be better off now if the US had just stayed there and continued the violence?[/i]

Debatable. Remember, almost 2 million people died in the killing fields of Cambodia to the Khymer Rouge. While it's impossible to replay history in that way, it is at least feasible that a US military presence in Vietnam would have prevented Pol Pot's campaign against Vietnam.

"I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that many of you are more upset with the fact that I said shit, than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."

-Anthony Campolo

Remember, almost 2 million people died in the killing fields of Cambodia to the Khymer Rouge.

Ah, yes. Pol Pot. Good friend of that hero of freedom, Ronald Reagan, who funded him in later years at least.

While it's impossible to replay history in that way, it is at least feasible that a US military presence in Vietnam would have prevented Pol Pot's campaign against Vietnam.

Actually, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia is what ended Pol Pot's campaign. (So I suppose one can't say that an invasion never did any good...) The Khmer Rouge came to power in the days after the US bombed Cambodia, creating civil disruption and a power vacuum. How was a US presence supposed to help matters?

Better be careful PZ. The IDers have called homeland security for less.....

Good job, keep it up.

In 2002 Americans marched in protest against the impending Iraq war by the hundreds of thousands and were ignored. In 2006 voters demanded a change of course from Congress and got approximately nothing. This is not because we didn't yell loud enough; it's because the people with their hands on the levers of power weren't listening. Of course we don't continue to protest. We tried that and it didn't work.

Take a look around the political landscape. The 'old media' that failed so spectacularly before the war are being held accountable by the blogosphere. Fox News and Bill O'Reilly are shrivelling. Barack Obama has raised $192 million and Hillary Clinton $151 million from individual contributions alone (McCain is at $58 million from individual contributions). Primary turnout among young voters has skyrocketed and they're voting Democratic by a huge margin.

So PZ, let me assure you: we care.

OTOH, all this kvetching about the war may be moot, if we end up with a global climate apocalypse instead.

(Yes, I know a single event like this doesn't necessarily mean anything; it's just that this headline leapt out at me, given the conversation we were having here.)

"there's no point in trying to discuss this with people who can't conceive of honorable soldiers"

Anonymous can conceive of such. And should I find myself being tortured in a military prison someday, it will doubtless come as a great comfort that my jailers are honorable men. And brave, yes, mustn't forget brave. My screams will be of joy that America's Best and Brightest lavish such attention on a dishonorable coward like me.

My cousin had to, under the rules of engagement, shoot a young man who had dropped his weapon and was fleeing. It had to be done but it's not a pretty thing to have to do.

Spare me the fucking whine. He didn't have to pull the trigger, he choose to and now you're whitewashing his killing:

In a squad of 10 men, on average fewer than three ever fired their weapons in combat. Day in, day out -- it did not matter how long they had been soldiers, how many months of combat they had seen, or even that the enemy was about to overrun their position. This was what the highly regarded Brigadier General Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, better known as S.L.A. Marshall, or "Slam," concluded in a series of military journal articles and in his book, Men Against Fire, about America's World War II soldiers.

Actually, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia is what ended Pol Pot's campaign. (So I suppose one can't say that an invasion never did any good...) The Khmer Rouge came to power in the days after the US bombed Cambodia, creating civil disruption and a power vacuum.

Indeed, the invasion and bombing of Cambodia was a ruinous mistake. However, the massacre of the civilian population did not end with the US retreat. The invasion of Cambodia by the Vietnamese army did not occur until 1979, 4 years after the US troops left. Again, it's impossible to replay history, but had American troops remained in the area, they would have possibly been in a position to mitigate the notorious "Killing Fields". If we just yank out our troops now, we would create a 21st century version. The only difference is it would be oil funded and stretch across most of the middle east.

I am pretty disturbed by the way American soldiers tend to handle things in Iraq.

Right now I'm a draftee in the German military. We were instructed in the rules of engagement for Kosovo and Afghanistan and were shown some footage of actual combat situations in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

The things we saw from Iraq were the worst. An American patrol, consisting of several armed HMMWVs, was leaving a military base. In front of this base was a crowd protesting against the American presence in Iraq. The crowd was not armed and behaved peacefully until the patrol drove by. Right then some civillians began to throw rocks at the general direction of the patrol. This prompted one HMMWV to open fire. The first salvo went above the people's heads, only to be followed almost immediately by a second salvo, this time cutting right into the mass. More than 80 people dead, a lot more wounded.

This was an example for us on how not to act. Oh and by the way, every instruction on rules of engagement which I've received so far explicitly forbid shooting unarmed people in the back. It doesn't matter whether they are combatants who just dropped their weapon or non-combatants.

Again, it's impossible to replay history, but had American troops remained in the area, they would have possibly been in a position to mitigate the notorious "Killing Fields".

Why do you say that? That is, is there any reason to think that they would have mitigated the massacres? I'm sorry, it's hard to ask this question without sounding snide, but I'm curious as to whether there is any definite evidence that a US presence would have decreased the amount of violence or not. It certainly didn't stop the violence in Vietnam (My Lai, anyone?). It didn't stop the violence in Chile when Pinochet came to power. In fact, Central and South America seem to be doing much better now that the US is no longer paying close attention to them: Brazil and Argentina are no longer in debt to the IMF, many countries have improved their standards of living, etc. Not that they're all in such great shape, but compared to, say, the 1980s, things look much better. On the other hand, there's the Congo...

I think I saw a TED video once of a guy who was incredibly optimistic about the human race, because he could show you how wars have become(bar a potential nuclear one)drastically less lethal and destructive. In Medieval and ancient times, a city conquered was looted and its entire population raped, something that would make WWII pale in comparison, and more modern wars like the Balkans or Iraq are even less lethal to the population.
He noted, however, that human rationality is increasing at an even faster rate (for some segments of the population, anyway) so even when, say, the Iraqi war ranks as one of the less destructive wars ever, we still see it as a heinous catastrophe.
Not saying that the Iraqi war was in any way justified, or that the human and economic costs have not been horrendous, but a good sense of perspective should at least take a bit of undeserved guilt off of enlightened yanks.

"A lame and ignorant attempt at discourse. Most of my family are Republicans."

Thank them for me for belonging to the group that is principally responsible for fucking over this country.

DCP

I'd be interested to know where the video you are talking about took place. I've never heard anything about it. Do you know anything more about it?

German ROE doesn't let you ever shoot someone in the back? Are you sure? So if a guy shoots at you, runs with his back to you to a position further away, shoots then again goes to move away you aren't allowed to shoot until he turns around? Are you sure? I'll ask some of the German Army guys around post but I doubt that is true.

I'm curious as to whether there is any definite evidence that a US presence would have decreased the amount of violence or not.

Well, we seem to be having such success in Iraq, right? Well, except for the daily dead bodies found around Baghdad, the sectarian killings occurring all across Iraq, and the de-homogenization of communities, yadda yadda yadda. Yep, seems that a US military presence would've kept Pol Pot from killing even a single person.

/snark off

Oh and by the way, every instruction on rules of engagement which I've received so far explicitly forbid shooting unarmed people in the back. It doesn't matter whether they are combatants who just dropped their weapon...

Is this the French military?

Ah, Francophobia, so original on your part Willy. What's next, gonna tell us all we hate America and want to terrorists to win?

Yeah, lousy damn Frogs. If only they had ever done anything to help US! WW, you are an assmunch.

CalGeorge,

"Thank them for me for belonging to the group that is principally responsible for fucking over this country."

Fuck you too bitch. Why the vitriolic attack by you?

I won't be such an asshole to my family. What I've done and will continue to do is try to show them how the Republican party has screwed them and all of us over. To some extent I've been able to help them see how they've been led by irrational fears. I won't disown them. Ignorance can be cured ya know, if people aren't willfully ignorant.

My cousin had to, under the rules of engagement....

Spare me the fucking whine.

Y'all can all spare me the fucking back-and-forth about this one soldier's moment of anguish: The larger picture is that whenever you send heavily armed, very young men (and women) into the chaos and terror of combat, some of them will end up doing terrible things. Some of that can be written off as the acts of sociopaths, but some of it will always be either the temporary moral lapses of otherwise good people, or honest but horrifying errors. Those soldiers will be haunted, and potentially emotionally destroyed, by "what they did in the war."

That is, I believe, a largely unacknowledged category of casualty: When we send our young people to war, we're putting not just their bodies in harm's way, but their souls (and I mean that word in an entirely nontheistic sense).

This cost, like all the other human costs of war, must be included in a leader's calculation of whether the objective of a potential conflict is worth the risks. I don't think Bush, damn him to nonexistent Hell, ever thought once, let alone twice, about this issue.

DCP, sorry about that I mis-read your post. The question I asked isn't related to what you said. My mistake.

US army ROE is virtually the same, 99.9% of the time you are right you cannot shoot an unarmed person in the back.

I'm still interested if you know anything about that video you watched though.

German ROE doesn't let you ever shoot someone in the back? Are you sure?

Read much? DCP specifically said the RoE forbids them from shooting unarmed people in the back.

Ooops! Laen, you corrected your error while I was still in the process of typing my peevish snark; please forgive me.

Also, let me take this moment to thank you for sharing your perspective. Plenty of us civilians are frustrated with this damn war, but it's always advisable for us to pay attention to the voices of those who actually know what the Hell they're talking about.

I'd be interested to know where the video you are talking about took place. I've never heard anything about it. Do you know anything more about it?

I don't know where it took place, sorry.

German ROE doesn't let you ever shoot someone in the back? Are you sure? So if a guy shoots at you, runs with his back to you to a position further away, shoots then again goes to move away you aren't allowed to shoot until he turns around? Are you sure? I'll ask some of the German Army guys around post but I doubt that is true.

It depends on the situation. I guess they are nation-specific. Also those ROEs we were instructed in were for Afghanistan and Kosovo. While we were training actual military combat, like something that would happen in Iraq, we were not considered to act according to these specific rules.

Why do you say that? That is, is there any reason to think that they would have mitigated the massacres?

Again, hard to really know if we WOULD have. But from a practical perspective, had we remained mobilized in the region, we would have at the very least been in a position to make demand that we had the ability to make good on. Think of the situation after the Korean War. Our continued presence stayed the hand of the North. With our withdrawal, the US was in no position to influence the Kymer Rouge at all.

Regardless, it's idle speculation. It doesn't address the very real issues of a US troop exit from Iraq that I laid out.

#30 has it dead to rights. Americans care more about sex and other peoples' sexual activity than they are about violence, injustice, stratification of wealth, health care, etc. They care more about Britney's breakdown and Spitzer's whores.

The American people have no one to blame but themselves ultimately, because it is us that got fat on cheeseburgers and sitcoms. We bought the "greed is good" mantra and haven't looked back because it felt so good. Fat countries are lazy ones. People are complacent. People are disconnected. Back when people had to fight for rights, the opposing force was so much more obvious and direct. These days the oppressing entity can sneak along behind curtains and through shadows because we're all stuck in front of computer monitors.

Sad to say, but we will not rise up until there's an event that affects probably a good 70% of us in a very stark way. Planning for the future and solving problems before they occur - the liberal way - is no longer respected. Stop gaps are better solutions that allow us time to finish our XBOX360 game.

I know this is all pessimism, but it's the truth. There are a lot of armchair quarterbacks and no one willing to step up. Let someone else do it. Dreaming is now treasonous. Questioning the basis of problems demands immediate rebuke.

Here's to hoping my fellow citizens make me eat these words in November.

#48

Even so, war is war, and this war does not differ than all the other mindless wars, except it does have significantly lower numbers of deaths, delineatively speaking.

Philos, I can't believe you're just counting YOUR side's losses.

#67
The reason why so few American soldiers died in the war, is the huge difference in training, weaponry and basically, money, between the Iraqis and American soldiers. It's like armors and swords against sticks and stones.

NP Bill, thankfully I was reading the follow up posts when I noticed it.

=)

Civilians aren't the only ones frustrated with the war in Iraq. They just don't have a chain of command to report to when they voice opinions contrary to the party line. Oh, and everyone listens too damn much to the officers picked to talk to the media by the people in charge of the war. But that's a different issue. =)

Bill, do you think if you flatter Laen enough he'll spare you when the time comes? Fat chance of that.

Blue,
"Sad to say, but we will not rise up until there's an event that affects probably a good 70% of us in a very stark way."

Sadder to say, when you rise up you will be shot down by the likes of Laen. People in Iraq have been rising up for several years now with nothing to show for it.

Thank you, PZ. That exact thought has been running through my head for a year or two now, every time the Internet starts buzzing about the number of American soldiers dead.

I feel sorrow for the American soldiers and their families, but it angers me that their lives are considered more valuable than the lives of the people they were ostensibly sent to liberate.

Of course there are historical precedents for American apathy.

Does any know why the American citizens didn't protest too vigorously against the American occupation of the Philippines a century ago?

At least, the protests were not vigorous enough to change public policy under McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft. And Taft was at one point the Governor-General of the Philippines.

Are there any lessons there we could learn?

Dahan # 161: A lame and ignorant attempt at discourse. Most of my family are Republicans. My father-in-law, a former Marine like myself, has actually cast one of the electoral votes for the RNC in Michigan.

Apologize for characterizing your earlier post as "bleating" in light of your military service. That doesn't mean I'll agree with you, but earns my respect FWIW. Sorry I hadn't read the entire thread.

And almost to a person they're aware that this fiasco is Bush's administration's doing and despise him and it for that fact.

And I never said that the current administration doesn't bear primary responsibility for the current war. I also believe that the Democratic party and ultimately the US electorate also bear secondary responsibility.

I've voted for a Republican before, although not recently. Can you say the same about any Democrats? Thought not. Crawl back under your pile of stupidity,

I'm a non-partisan moderate, and have voted for candidates of both parties recently.

p.s. As a South African, I should mention that attitudes like JD's above are the reason people's hearts are hardening towards the USA all over the world.

Pre-9/11 and all the bullshit that it was used as a reason for, I was aware of some of the USA's failings but still saw it as a kind of Camelot, touched by evil but ultimately idealistic and noble, if flawed. Bush, the Internet and the increasingly hostile non-US press have disabused me of that impression.

Its only the fact that some of the finest people I've ever known in the flesh were idealistic, learned and intelligent Americans that I appreciate that there are at least two Americas and feel anger only to a part of your nation. But I regularly come into contact with people without similar exposure who hate the USA for Iraq and similar foreign policy failures.

In case anyone's interested (and isn't already aware), last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday Democracy Now! showed portions of the testimony from Iraq Veterans Against the War's "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan," which took place the previous weekend. They can be watched online at democracynow.org.

Any state that A) can't keep their nutty fundies somewhat in check or is actually RUN by the nutty fundies and B) suppresses individual liberties to the extreme will become destructive to itself and those it interacts with.

The irony meter is pegged out right now.

The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
'They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
'In a just cause: they lead the last attack
'On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
'New right to breed an honourable race,
'They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'
'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
'And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
'A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.'
And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'
Siegfried Sassoon

Moses wrote:

He didn't have to pull the trigger, he choose to and now you're whitewashing his killing:

I think you need should go to westpoint, become a military policy wonk where you can help develop and defend a different set of rules of engagement. Meanwhile, take this quiz.

Killing a guerrilla fleeing after engaging in warfare is fully justified under current rules as I understand them.

Mind you, I am and was from the beginning against the war in Iraq, and am also annoyed by sound-bite conservatives that supported the war.

Bill Dauphin

Those soldiers will be haunted, and potentially emotionally destroyed, by "what they did in the war."
That is, I believe, a largely unacknowledged category of casualty: When we send our young people to war, we're putting not just their bodies in harm's way, but their souls...

Exactly. This was the point. In war, soldiers are called to do horrible things. (Do you know what a special forces team are supposed to do when behind enemy lines on a covert mission, and are discovered by a civilian, even a child?)

Most often, the significance of these acts do not become apparent until much later in life.

Bruno, I'll see your Sassoon and raise you Wilfred Owen:

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

But I regularly come into contact with people without similar exposure who hate the USA for Iraq and similar foreign policy failures.

This is a great fear of mine: In addition to all the direct costs of this war in lives interrupted, shattered, or lost, there is the lingering cost of the squandered good will of our (former) friends around the world, and the opportunity cost of all the good we might have done had we not betrayed the world's trust.

Anonymous, you actually have to, you know, do something to be shot by the military. You are safe at home from us evil soldiers. I'm sure the secret police have looked at you and deemed you a non-threat.

But simply pulling out of Iraq won't end the violence, won't bring the refugees back, and won't restore order to a shattered region.

While I opposed the Iraq war starting, it's now too late to back out. To pull out now would waste those hundreds of thousands killed, wounded, or displaced. We can't just back out.

Oh, and great post. You did a fantastic job writing that.

Laen is correct, Anonymous. It won't be soldiers shooting you, it'll be Blackwater mercenaries*.

* What? That's exactly what they are.

To pull out now would waste those hundreds of thousands killed, wounded, or displaced.

Too late. The dead are already wasted. Keep digging, eh?

"Anonymous, you actually have to, you know, do something to be shot by the military."

I know, I have to do something really heinous like, say, be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Right now mainland U.S. is not the wrong place, but things change.

In war we see the death of nations

The only reason I listen to the news anymore is in the hope that one day soon I'll hear: "In a shocking announcement today George Bush, Dick Cheney and various members of the white house have been arrested"

But, PZ, have you thought about how expressing your opposition to the Iraq war so forthrightly will weaken your position as one a spokesperson for science? You're not framing this right!

PS: (and I wish I didn't have to say this) that was irony.

And back when I was preaching this at the START of the war I was labelled a traitor.

And back in the mid 80s when I warned of probable global climate change I was labelled a crank.

And back when...

Look, we can only try for so long and care for so long while we are being ignored or berated before we stop. It's a learned response. Where are the impeachments that I supported? Where is the help for New Orleans? Where is the aid for Darfur? And tell me again why when no one else seems to care why should I?

I would LOVE it if I had the will to keep on pushing this rock uphill for all eternity but it's time to measure results. Let's see, I managed to move the rock - exactly 0 feet.

As to the unacknowledged casualties of war: my father is now 87. He enlisted in 1939, at eighteen, in the British Territorial Army. He manned ack-ack guns and watched his friends blown to bits (and cleaned up the bits). He became a commando, and when commandos were put in such dangerous situations that virtually every commando was killed or wounded within three actions, he survived to his seventh action before being shot through the head. Yet of everything he did, he had not known he had personally harmed anyone until a couple of days before he was wounded. He tossed a grenade in the house, popped in after it went off, and looked into the eyes of a youth, blond-haired, blue-eyed like him, even younger than he, watched the blood pouring out of his chest. And the war, he said, "died" for him.

As I said, he's 87 now, and he still can't sleep well, and he dreams of this long-dead German youth, a boy like him, a boy who never grew up.

In my experience, most of those who are gung-ho for war are those who haven't experienced it; most of those who have, hate war with a depth and profoundity which the chickenhawks will never understand.

Moses wrote:
He didn't have to pull the trigger, he choose to and now you're whitewashing his killing:

I think you need should go to westpoint, become a military policy wonk where you can help develop and defend a different set of rules of engagement. Meanwhile, take this quiz.

Posted by: William Wallace | March 25, 2008 4:19 PM

I was in the military, douche bag. I speak exactly of what I know. And you, in your cowardice, will never know.

So, really, fuck off. You're just another Internet tough-guy pussy. A war-supporting gutless coward who white-washes the choice to kill another human being. Because, like it or not, you mythological cousin or whatever talking point person you made up for your Internet tough-guy persona had a CHOICE.

Men have DIED to exercise that choice. Better the grave than to take the life of another. Even in combat.

And just because the ROE says you can shoot someone doesn't make it better. It doesn't make the victim alive again and creates a second victim, one who may be forced to live the heinous act for the rest of his life. Always wondering "did I do the right thing."

So don't give me that pithy salve for your guilty conscience. I don't buy off on fluffy bunnies and "ROE justified" killing. The enemy dropped his weapon, turned and ran, and no matter what post-facto rationalizations you try to sell like psychopathic snake-oil your cousin shot him in the back.

Someone died because some power-mad fuck, and this time it was ours, decided war was the answer. And your cousin pulled the trigger.

It's not glorious. It's not right. It's a fucking tragic waste. No matter how much you and the other chest-beaters try to make it glorious or justified.

And you don't like it, too bad. War is where the rubber of ethics and morality hits the road and the men are separated from the animals. Congratulations, you and the rest of the wing-nuts fail the test.

Oh, and BTW, it's WEST POINT. Two words. Not one. If you're going to pretend to be an Internet warrior, have a clue.

Maybe I missed something, but where did the 300 million dead come from? Last time I checked the Iraq body count, the number was around 90,000. That's still proportionally outrageous, but much lower than 300 million.

... ... ...

Oh... it just occurred to me the US population is around 300 million. I suppose that answers my original question. *slaps forehead*

But then the number should be much higher; this war goes far beyond the United States alone. Maybe the number should be closer to about 3 billion dead.

Well anyhow, I fully understand the reasoning behind this blog entry. College students around the US (myself included) mourned when the Virginia Tech shooter took the lives of 30+ individuals... all the while ignoring tragedies happening elsewhere in the world.

We can be so ethnocentric sometimes.

I disagree with most of PZ's statements here, seeing it mostly as simply the state of things. The mass media is still controlled by special interests, like in the 60's and before, and our representatives are still wall-eyed, looking out for their own interests.
Tactics have changed, and opposition to the Vietnam War took a decade to build (and there is no draft to force young people to take notice). The mass media did everything it could to sell, then excuse, then ignore that war, before the potential sales to the anti-war consumers was too tempting to pass up any longer. As for ordinary people, I remember as a child in the 70's - at the height of the protests - that the "silent majority" was very close enough to being a partial truth (the ignorant and the stupid, plus the safely vicious were worth 40% or more then) that no "just folks" politician could go against the war.

Things are better, in most ways, today. The fuckwits and monsters (= the Republican Party in its entirely now, when there used to be decent people among them) no longer believe their own narratives, but rather seek to spin events to trick the comfortably numb 30% that decide elections.
Such a life of lies is, for anyone with residual humanity, tiring in the extreme. More and more will give it up, if only to recover their desire for that comfortable sofa-in-front-of-the-TV that is their mind.

This sort of boo-hooing is pointless. Frankly, the fight against creationists is far more hopeless than the soon-to-be-successful struggle against the crime that is the "Iraq War".

May we see Bush and Rummy, at least, in shackles at the Hague before I die! (Say within 20 years.)

A mentally unstable individual wrote:

It's not glorious. It's not right. It's a fucking tragic waste. No matter how much you and the other chest-beaters try to make it glorious or justified.

Who said it was glorious?

Justified, I think so. The combatant could have surrendered. You don't think it was justified. You think it was sociopathic. You're not stuck in Iraq being targeted with IEDs. You're at Pharyngula, acting like a sociopath. The irony.

Hairhead

As I said, he's 87 now, and he still can't sleep well, and he dreams of this long-dead German youth, a boy like him, a boy who never grew up.

Tragedy. I do believe my cousin will, as he earns wisdom, come to regret shooting the fleeing combatant.

I previously wrote:

And, as bad as our own casualties are, our young men are required to kill others, which inflicts pain elsewhere, and is also something that will in all likelihood haunt our own young men later in life. These are high prices. My cousin had to, under the rules of engagement, shoot a young man who had dropped his weapon and was fleeing. It had to be done but it's not a pretty thing to have to do.

My head kind of simultaneously melted and exploded over the war a week or so ago. I was down in DC and had a lovely time with a guy who had earlier been at a funeral at Arlington. He was telling me about going to those funerals, watching parents, etc. burying his friends, and being pressured to enlist.

"I don't want to be a number" he said.

And to know how this nation has destroyed Iraq, not just getting rid of Hussein and invading for bullshit lies, but just destroyed so much of the infrastructure in addition to the chaos the invasion and occupation have produced.

Clusterfuck in every way. More lives destroyed--beyond the deaths--than we can imagine, and we as a nation are going to be dealing with that for decades, as will Iraq.

The Hague. Send Shrubbie, Cheney, Rice et. al--and yes that includes Colin Powell!--over. NOW!

Well written PZ.

Well done, it's nice to see my thoughts expressed so well.

Once, four dead in Ohio could stir us. Now, four thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, it doesn't matter ... we have all become dead inside.

The difference between four dead in Ohio stopping the Vietnam War and four thousand dead in Iraq is that we no longer feel able to change anything. We voted out the Republicans, and the war goes on. Three fourths of us are against the war and Cheney says, 'So?'

I can't speak for everybody, but I feel disenfranchised and powerless. And the longer I live (I'm 55) the more so I feel.

So I focus on planting blueberries instead. I'll go vote in November, but I no longer hold any illusions that it will make a difference.

300 million dead? Wouldn't tha be a demographic disaster of such proportions we would see the region overrun by marching populations and the wholescale readjustment of borders? I mean, what you've basically done is wipe out the population of the region, and a large swath of territory around it. With 300 million dead Iraq and iran now lie empty, and colonists from India are establishing settlements in the ruins of Basra and Tehran.

The lack of audience response Alexie commented on may not result from acceptance or apathy but from fear of nonconformity to the right-wing norm that pervades US society these days. Back in the days of "4 dead in Ohio", there weren't legions of right-wing attack hawks in every neighborhood bullying people into keeping pro-peace positions to themselves. There weren't hundreds of right-wing radio shows lying and telling people how to think about every issue they come across. People weren't faced with crazed "single-issue" nutcases changing every topic back to the subject of abortion. They also hadn't become inured to violence by years of violent movie and TV entertainment, or isolated from each other by being propagandized into spending most of their time sitting in front of computers. There also wasn't this immobilizing, sickeningly widespread belief that "it's always been this way; man is ever the same; there's nothing we can do." I am always shocked to hear Americans say that the only thing one can do about anything social or political is wait for the next election cycle, as if the criminals causing all the havoc and death wait.

No. More. Fucking. War.

Eddie Vedder - No More (Official Video)

I speak for a man who gave for this land
Took a bullet in the back for his pay
Spilled his blood in the dirt and the dust
He's back to say:

What he has seen is hard to believe
And it does no good to just pray
He asks of us to stand
And we must end this war today

With his mind, he's saying, "No more!"
With his heart, he's saying, "No more!"
With his life he's saying, "No more war!"

With his eyes, he's saying, "No more!"
With his body, he's saying, "No more!"
With his voice, he's saying, "No more war!"

Yeah, nothing's too good for a veteran
Yeah, this is what they say
So nothing is what they will get
And there's no American way

The lies we were told to get us to go
Were criminal (?)... let us be straight
Let's get to the point where our voices get heard
And I know what I'll say

With his mind, he's saying, "No more!"
With his heart, he's saying, "No more!"
With his life he's saying, "No more war!"

With his eyes, he's saying, "No more!"
With his voice, he's saying, "No more!"
With his body, he's saying, "No more war!"

No more innocents dying
No more terror rising
No more eulogizing
No more evangelizing
No more presidents lying
No more war

With our minds, we're saying, "No more!"
With our hearts, we're saying, "No more!"
With our lives, we're saying, "No more war!"

PZ,

Given your position on the war, I'm find it rather surprising how you ripped on the only anti-war candidate in the Republican party. Did you support Gravel or Kucinich on the Democrat's slate?

-jcr

Alan (#221)

300 million dead?

Forgive me if I'm misreading the tone of your comment, but I believe PZ was exercising a bit of poetic license. The 300 million refers to the population of the United States. "Once, four dead in Ohio could stir us. Now, four thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, it doesn't matter ... we have all become dead inside."

JCR:

Given your position on the war, I'm find it rather surprising how you ripped on the only anti-war candidate in the Republican party.

Surprising? That PZ ripped a Dominionist? C'mon now.

Still, you do have a point. Huckabee might have been a pretty interesting candidate if he'd been a liberal xian or an agnostic or something. I did one of those "vote the issues, not the candidates" website surveys, and I learned that I had a surprising amount of overlap with the Huckleberry on a variety of issues. Scary, isn't it? LOL.

I voted for Gravel in the MA primary. Sort of a conscience vote. He got creamed, of course, but what the heck.

Moses (#147),Some new debate re. Men Against Fire, see http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/03autumn/chambers.pdf

Re #39
JD,
I'm glad to see that your full frontal lobotomy was very successful!

Beautifully put. This war is just atrocious. I can't believe I live in this world where this terrible war is going on and no one seems to give it a second thought in their daily lives anymore.

4.000 dead.

We lost more than that in the first week at Normandy.

It could have been done at far less cost if Hitler had been stopped 6 or 7 years earlier.

Wilfred Owen, first world war poet:

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,-
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.'
'None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

'I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now....'

If this is the way america is going to go on , then god help the globe!

GET READY FOR WAR ON AMERICAN SOIL. WHEN THE POWERS THAT BE DECIDE THEY HAVE IRAQ AND IRAN UNDER CONTROL, THEY WILL TURN THEIR ATTENTION TO YOU. AND WHILE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY ARE STARVING ON THE STREET, YOUR GOVERNMENT WILL CONTINUE FUNDING WARS. OUR MONEY IS WORTHLESS. THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP COUNTRIES ACCEPTING OUR MONEY, WHICH IS BACKED BY NOTHING, IS FORCE. SO OUR ONLY OPTION IS TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD, OR ACCEPT THE FACT THAT WE'RE FAT, LAZY AND BROKE AND START DONG SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

This is evolution - survival of the fittest. Get over it. We are random happenings. These things drive the change process. We are evolving into a higher state. Why are you amazed?

I guess this is a comedy site. There is no way that 300 million people (10x the population of Iraq and roughly equal to the entire population of the US), ~5% of the population of the world, have been killed in Iraq. You should be ashamed of yourself for even posting this crap.

The stupid people are coming out to play. Here's a hint: you said, "roughly equal to the entire population of the US"; now read the last 6 words of my article. You can put the two together. Sure. Sure you can. Try.

If you still can't figure it out, go back to watching Fox News.

"I guess this is a comedy site. There is no way that 300 million people (10x the population of Iraq and roughly equal to the entire population of the US), ~5% of the population of the world, have been killed in Iraq. You should be ashamed of yourself for even posting this crap."

My IQ just dropped a notch.

Does anyone know of a good action plan to prevent things like the Iraq War from being able to happen again? I've had enough of lists of their crimes. We need a national project to amend the Constitution to fix this. I'd like it to include:

1. Make it harder for the media to lie to us, and give them incentives to report honestly, or punish them for malpractice. The media are the major actor in keeping us divided and confused, this has got to stop.
2. Make it harder for the president to start a war.
3. Make it harder for the government to continue a war.

To me, this means making the government more responsive to people.

I think we are talking about reducing the power of corporations, esp. TV, radio and other media corporations. It's hard to change the Constitution, but we need to fix this problem.

To Chakolate in 220:

You wrote:

I'll go vote in November, but I no longer hold any
illusions that it will make a difference.

Do you think Gore would have invaded Iraq? Don't substitute one illusion for another. Don't throw away the tools you have, however imperfect.

It just makes me laugh. We american citizens just wonder why everydody hates us now. Talk about Frenchophobia. Some just dont get over the fact that the french TOLD us war in Irak wasn't a good thing. Goddammit. What do you expect? America's just looking more and more stupid from the outside.
EVERYBODY knew Irak had nothing to do with 9/11. That it was all just a big heavy lie.
I guess propaganda worls just as well in this country as it used to in german Nazi area.

We need a national project to amend the Constitution to fix this. I'd like it to include:

1. Make it harder for the media to lie to us, and give them incentives to report honestly, or punish them for malpractice. The media are the major actor in keeping us divided and confused, this has got to stop.

You want to amend the Constitution to "[m]ake it harder for the media to lie to us"??? You mean you want to repeal the First Amendment? Sounds like a classic case of cure-is-worse-than-the-disease syndrome to me, and only slightly less horrifying that Mike Huckabee's plan to god-ify the Constitution.

As an undergraduate, I was privileged to take a couple courses taught by the brilliant Professor Ross Lence, who was absolutely adamant in making the distinction between constitutional and statutory issues. Incentivizing "good" behavior and punishing "bad" behavior clearly falls under the latter purview, not the former. You need a statute -- an act of Congress -- to accomplish your stated goals, not an amendment... but any such statute had better be carefully crafted, or it will be nullified as violating the very First Amendment that I don't want you repealing!!!

You all have a bunch of damning comments about the war, and our government. It is really easy to judge. Good job judging. Why doesn't anybody here create a logical plan to do something about this? Nobody here has done a single thing to make a difference with our government's actions, we complain all day. There is enough complaining to go around, but if any of you complainers actually had the sense to do something logical about it, then you would have a right to an opinion. As it is, the problem will subside, and we will think that things will get better, and none of you will do a damn thing about the next war which should be coming up like clockwork in the next couple of years. And neither will I...

one dead person is a tragedy; one million people dead is a statistic.

I love how the left continue to try to make it sound like the deaths in Iraq are directly caused by the American troops there. We aren't going out to kill Iraqis, but we are forced to defend ourselves and the Iraqi people from people who are out to kill them for what ever reason.

What happened is we removed a dictator, which allowed all these scumbags to go around and create their own brand of secular violence to push what ever agenda they want. Problem is most of us armchair quarterbacks in America feel that it's time to blame the American troops for the deaths, with out realizing it's the insurgents, the terrorists, or the "freedom fighters" who are attacking innocent Iraqis.

But hey we should have left Saddam in power, right? Because when he gassed the 5000 Kurds in the province of Halabja that was A-OK because it was his own people and he was president! Let the violent dictator remain in power because he keeps others violence down, and keeps everything looking as good as always!

And now that he's out of power we should stop trying to help the Iraqi government to form, because that will REALLY indenture good will. No one could hate us if we just let some other dictator gain power. Let's be honest, even before 9/11 the world tolerated America, but hated us because we were "top dog". The world is never going to be thrilled to be in 2nd or 3rd place, and anything in the world that's wrong will be our fault until we collapse. We just have to suck it up and deal with it.

Nobody here has done a single thing to make a difference with our government's actions

Speak for yourself!

The obvious and most politically uncorrect answer is that back in the 60's and 70's, the war was judged to be immoral by the jewish media. So therefore the public was galvanized by a media assault.
Fast forward to the current war, which is clearly a war in Israels interests, and there is noi media assault. The public is not galvanized, just numbed and dumbed by the jewish media that now supports this conflict.

History has plenty of tales of psychopathic mass-murderers as leaders, starting wars and justifying the killing of people for profit, yet time and again, they still get into power and immunize themselves against the very laws, the judges and organizations that should bring them to face justice. Criminals in government bonding together through the blood of others.

When one of you sends me a youtube video of YOU PERSONALLY telling the families of the 6000 Kurds that died during Saddam's gassing of Iraq that there was NO justice in going into Iraq...I'll believe some of this.

For Pete's sake Pete, your jew bating will go nowhere here.

Over There, as soon as you post a You Tube video of You personally telling the families of every other victim of oppressive regimes that US forces are coming to give them justice.

And please remember, when Saddam did most of his attacks on the Kurds, he was a US ally.

congrats to the us people for standing idle by when your government managed take the 9/11 tragedy and turn it into even more deaths. Even if you only count the american way, that is only counting americans, the new Ubermench apparently.

This is probably a good time to apologise to the parts of the world that didnt support the war, and hence was called covards when they actually did the right thing based on the facts that were available at the time. The last 7 years, will probably be described as the dark years of US history. If you keep going down this path, it will wont be described at all, thee wont be anyone left...

"We all have blood on our hands, and no one cares."

Timothy McVeigh cared, and we labeled him a lunatic.

Ted Kaczynski cared, and we labeled him a lunatic as well.

When talking proves futile, what is the solution for an emasculated and effeminate society?

Ask the Founding Fathers, my friend.

What happened is we removed a dictator, which allowed all these scumbags to go around and create their own brand of secular violence to push what ever agenda they want. Problem is most of us armchair quarterbacks in America feel that it's time to blame the American troops for the deaths, with out realizing it's the insurgents, the terrorists, or the "freedom fighters" who are attacking innocent Iraqis.

But hey we should have left Saddam in power, right? Because when he gassed the 5000 Kurds in the province of Halabja that was A-OK because it was his own people and he was president! Let the violent dictator remain in power because he keeps others violence down, and keeps everything looking as good as always!

There's not much to think about. This war has caused 1.2 million Iraqi deaths.

It was badly executed and doomed to failure before it even began.

The arrogance of the people who perpetrated this war blinded them to the fact that removing a dictator and leaving a power vacuum would have disastrous results.

Iraq was not a threat to us. In fact, its very weakness is what made it a perfect target for American aggression.

If it had been a real threat, there would have been no talk about a quick war costing a few billion dollars.

Yes, Bush is to blame for making Iraq one of the most dangerous countries on earth. He destroyed the country's infrastructure and introduced a level of chaos into Iraqi society that led to the mass daily slaughter that continues today. The only way he managed to bring a measure of control was by ghettoizing an entire city. How would you like to be ghettoized?

If his cause had been at all just, he would not have had to lie to the American people.

A foreign policy focused on removing all the world's dictators would destroy this country for good.

This is probably a good time to apologise to the parts of the world that didnt support the war, and hence was called covards when they actually did the right thing based on the facts that were available at the time.

You mean like this? "Maines also retracted her earlier apology to Bush, stating, 'I apologized for disrespecting the office of the President, but I don't feel that way anymore. I don't feel he is owed any respect whatsoever.'"

The notion that no Americans feel any sense of responsibility or shame for the damage done to the world in our name by this illegitimate government is bogus. IMHO, the best thing I can do to apologize to the world is work as hard as I can to replace the current U.S. government with a new, more rational one that will work to end the war and begin the process of repairing the damage.

And I've been doing that.

90% of these comments demonstrate why 9/11 happened. After the attack, people screamed and hollered at the government for not taking the steps necessary to prevent it.

And, yet, when the government takes the necessary steps to prevent a repeat, these same people scream and holler about American imperialism and unjust wars.

Just some points of order.

Iraq trained terrorists (not all terrorists are al qaeda).
Iraq had WMD and used them.
Iraq invaded a peaceful neighboring nation.
Iraq attempted to assassinate a former U.S. president.
Iraq routinely fired on American aircraft after the gulf war.
Iraq was actively working on a nuclear weapons program (the Israelis bombed their test reactor some years earlier).

In other words, Iraq had all the warning signs that it was preparing something like a 9/11.

Iraq was told to provide definitive proof they had scrapped their WMD. If they would have, Saddam would still be in power. Iraq refused. In retrospect, it looks like Saddam didn't have the WMD, but wanted his regional neighbors to THINK he did. The end result? He was successul in his bluff, and we, Britain, France, Germany and Italy all thought he had them.

So, we took out the threat before it got too big.

This is not hard to figure out. Unless you are a dipstick who thinks the world would be puppy dogs and butterflies if the United States no longer existed.

How is this science-related?

There is some pretty good evidence that the UK and US governments knew Irag had no WMDs and still they went into war. His bluff didn't fool anyone except those that wanted to be fooled.

If Bush & co were so concerned with the 'War on Terror' and WMDs then why did they not invade Afganisatn, Iran or North Korea?

Janine, no "jew-baiting" here, whatever that means. I suspose you fall into the vast majority of americans who are spoon fed their opiniolns by the Mass Media. Critical thinking is a rarity these days, and for anyone not capable of it these days is in dire straits.

frgough, total bullshit. It's the US behaviour that led to 9/11. Take your list and apply it to the US.
US trained Bin Laden to start with
US invaded Irak, oh and Viet-nam too btw, and what elses? Build up the list please.
US helped overthrow countless ELECTED governments over the world
And the list can go on.
Now if our nation was as peace willing as it says, none of this (9/11, death of our civil liberties (Patriot act and so on), Irak,... would have happened.
GET REAL please. Some of us really need to open their eyes.

Sorry I forgot something : UN inspectors DID visit Irak and HAD the dreedom to check what they wanted. Their report was just totaly ignored.

"We all have blood on our hands, and no one cares."

Timothy McVeigh cared, and we labeled him a lunatic.

Ted Kaczynski cared, and we labeled him a lunatic as well.

When talking proves futile, what is the solution for an emasculated and effeminate society?

Left out a few heroes there, John.

Seventeen Arab terrorists took out the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 people and we labeled them terrorists, murders, and lunatics.

Cho Seung killed 33 students and we labeled him a lunatic.

Matthew Murray shot up a church and killed 6 people and we labeled him a lunatic.

John has a strange set of heroes. They are all mass murders, lunatics, and terrorists. The trolls and dumb people are indeed here.

The obvious and most politically uncorrect answer is that back in the 60's and 70's, the war was judged to be immoral by the jewish media. So therefore the public was galvanized by a media assault.
Fast forward to the current war, which is clearly a war in Israels interests, and there is noi media assault. The public is not galvanized, just numbed and dumbed by the jewish media that now supports this conflict.

Posted by: Pete

Janine, no "jew-baiting" here, whatever that means. I suspose you fall into the vast majority of americans who are spoon fed their opiniolns by the Mass Media. Critical thinking is a rarity these days, and for anyone not capable of it these days is in dire straits.

Posted by: Pete

Why Pete, you are so correct. If I were capable of critical thought, I would be able to see that we live in ZOG.

This all I have to say to you, you fucking twit.

"then why did they not invade Afganisatn"

Uh, ahem...

Iraq trained terrorists (not all terrorists are al qaeda).
Iraq had WMD and used them.
Iraq invaded a peaceful neighboring nation.
Iraq attempted to assassinate a former U.S. president.
Iraq routinely fired on American aircraft after the gulf war.
Iraq was actively working on a nuclear weapons program (the Israelis bombed their test reactor some years earlier).

Do you channel all the other Bush talking points as well?

This stuff has been debunked again and again. Go do some REAL research. It's all on the web.

Lie by lie (Mother Jones).

Chart of Bush Lies about Iraq (BuzzFlash).

Bush's Lies About Iraq (The Nation)

And on and on...

This post really attracted the WATBs and the stupid.

Reading comprension is pretty low with this bunch and they have the sociopolitical understanding of 9 year olds.

geeze...

comprension + he = comprehension

You are assuming ALOT in your argument. You assume we fundamentally agree with you when --thank God for freedom-- we don't. The Iraq war, despite how it started, is now OUR WAR --like it or not. Simply leaving will create a power vacuum and killing field of huge proportions --just like Cambodia after we ran from Vietnam. In the movie "The Patriot" did you like what the French did for us? Did you like that a foreign country wanted US to be free? I know, that's different, we're white anglo-Saxon protestants --us now trying to free Muslims "is different". It always amuses me how liberals assume our freedoms and use it (esp. freedom of speech) yet don't understand that we could be freeing millions of Iraqis --I sorry Mr Liberal man that they are Muslim and not lilly white. It always amazes me that almost NO liberal has served in the military --and they should be ashamed.

The thing I notice about Americans is that the vast majority of them are always and everywhere in favor of war--for any reason or no reason, on any pretext or palpable lack thereof. They are in favor of war in the same way they are in favor of sporting events, church attendance, and fourth-of-July cookouts--probably for many of the same reasons. You don't have to persuade Americans much, when it comes to going to war; they are automatically in favor of it. Dissuading Americans, when it comes to going to war, or ending an existing war, is an uphill kind of deal.

Why? There's the belief in American supremacy and the desire to assert it. When the US government asserts military force, it makes Americans feel powerful and allows them to indulge in Walter Mitty fantasties of glory far removed from the drab and deeply powerless and utterly impotent existence that is their real lives. Plus killing others always seems like a good idea to Americans: Those others are nearly sure to have valuable stuff of some kind that can be expropriated--and even if they don't, why, if there are fewer "others," that means "more for me." Americans are the good guys--God's chosen people actually--and we deserve it all. The Bible tells them so, and--not coincidentally--their churches tell them so, and the churches immediately get behind the latest war, beating the drums from the pulpit.

Like it or not, this is the moral basis many--nay, most--Americans operate from. To present moral arguments against war to an American is futile. There is simply no morality there to appeal to. Economic aruguments will seem absurd to them. After all, they are going to "win," at which point they'll get all the marbles.

Democracy NEVER succeeded when tried to be force-fed to a nation. No "forced" democracy has ever worked. Democracy must be gained by the nations. It's the only way they will keep it alive. Of course we can help, but most of it must be aquired by the nations themselves.That's what History shows us.

It always amazes me that almost NO liberal has served in the military

Hmmm. I know of one or two. Please provide evidence supporting your assertion, please.

J Black, I was preparing to respond to some of your "thoughts," but then I got to the end of your post, where you forfeited any claim to considered discourse with this little nugget of ignorant slander:

It always amazes me that almost NO liberal has served in the military

John Kerry and Max Cleland will be around to speak to you about this any day now... but don't worry: If they start to get violent, I'm sure war heroes like George W. Bush and Darth Cheney will protect you.

These idiots thought we could go into Iraq and invade, the Iraqi people will jump up and embrace democracy, the other nations around the world would hold hands to promote democracy and rally behind us. And from there terrorism would be defeated. That never happened. It was all a badly conceived fantasy and we have still yet to fight terrorism. It might have been successful at some levels had it not been so misguided but now the situation has gotten five times worse. You can't engineer a democracy and it will never stop terrorism, it has nothing to do with terrorism. I am just going to get out of the way. Let the morons pounding their chest with their patriotic bravado sink with the ship as they pretend they are fighting nazis when if fact they are sticking fingers in a dyke. Its just utter stupidity.

I am a CONSERVATIVE

It may be hard to believe, but I both see and understand your points of view, your arguments, and your passion. I really do. (There's a "but" coming...)

(here it comes) But, I disagree.

4,000 dead. That's a lot. That's 1,000 more than 9/11. That is 4,000 dead in 5 years. That is 800 dead a year. That's about 2 a day.

In 2006 alone, 42,642 Americans died from Auto Collisions. In ONE year, 42,642 Americans died, meaninglessly, on the way to starbucks, or home from the bar, or street racing. They died for nothing. Absolutely nothing. 42,642 Americans in one year for NOTHING!

Is there a public outcry? No. Does these deaths help our economy or keep us safe in our beds? No. (Well, it helps the auto industry which helps the economy. And the funeral services industry...) Do these deaths in any way produce anything good? I extremely doubt it.

42,642 American deaths in 2006 for nothing. And that is JUST car crashes.

I will not go into how INCREDIBLE it is that there is ONLY 4,000 soldier deaths in 5 years. In the history of all war, there has never been a better trained army that produced so much while losing so little of their own soldiers.

4,000 dead. (if American, a Soldier, and on Iraqi soil) First of all, they all knew about the reasons for war, the dangers, etc. and still they volunteered to keep us safe. (Which incidentally was the last decision they were able to make - they follow orders, it keeps them and their mates alive)

Our soldiers know the risks, the mission, and the cause and they stood up and said, "Yes I Will. Even though I may die, or be maimed, I will go." And I - and you - can't thank them enough.

They go because they believe in the grand picture. It doesn't matter if there were WMD's. It doesn't matter if it's for oil. It doesn't matter if Sadaam was a murderous dictator. The grand picture is that right now, to keep America safe, this is what needs to happen.

I ABSOLUTELY agree that we need to have alternative fuels, or hydrogen powered everything. I want to see us off oil, so we can get out of everyone's hair - except to keep us safe. I want a full reckoning of the House of Saud. I want the smallest bill I've got to be the power bill - for car, house, everything. I want us safe, happy, the world our friend, and lots of cash to buy cool electronic gadgets. Unfortunately, I can't have all that now, and to get it will take dark times, dark measures, and losses.

I suppose my point for all this is: don't use 4,000 as a rally number. Forget the war and concentrate on the REAL menace to America: the gasoline powered car. It kills 42,642 Americans a year. It makes us do bad things to bad people in other parts of the world. It's dragging down our economy. Let's find a new power source and changeover quickly.

DOWN with the REAL enemy of America: the GAS Powered Car.

The Iraq war, despite how it started, is now OUR WAR --like it or not. Simply leaving will create a power vacuum and killing field of huge proportions

You know, I agree. I fear the events that may swiftly unfold there upon our departure. I fear a situation that will have even the most ferverent chickenhawk neocon looking back on the Hussein era with a wistful longing.

--just like Cambodia after we ran from Vietnam.

Indeed. Vietnam: like Iraq, another place we shouldn't have been in the first place. What's interesting is how you war-mongers are so... selective... when it comes to learning the lessons so generously served up by our own recent history.

Kseniya:

1 minute apart! Great minds think alike, eh?

George:

In 2006 alone, 42,642 Americans died from Auto Collisions. In ONE year, 42,642 Americans died, meaninglessly.... They died for nothing. Absolutely nothing.

They did not die for nothing; they died in the process of moving around, which activity has a great number of benefits, both economic and intangible. Contrast that to the invasion of Iraq, whose net "benefit" is an enormous negative number.

Moreover, if you norm the number of auto deaths to any reasonable measure of the scale of personal transportation as an activity (e.g., total trips, total number of participants, seat-miles, etc.), I suspect you'll find that the specific risk of personal transportation is vastly lower than that of our shameful misadventure in Iraq.

Forget the war and concentrate on the REAL menace to America: the gasoline powered car. It kills 42,642 Americans a year.

You're conflating largely unrelated issues here: There are plenty of good geopolitical, economic, and environmental reasons to want to wean ourselves from "fossil" fuels, but very few of the deaths you cite are directly related to gasoline. If a drunk driver runs a red light and t-bones your car, it hardly matters whether his/her weapon was powered by hydrocarbons or electrons.

I'd love to see development of alternatives to our current modes of personal transportation, but that concern has very little bearing on my criticism of an immoral and disastrous war.

It always amazes me that almost NO liberal has served in the military --and they should be ashamed.

Posted by: J Black

What universe do you live in? Just within my family, my grandfather was a paratrooper who jumped into Normandy. Guess what? He hated Eisenhower and really despised Reagan. I have a brother who served in the Army Reserves. He does not seem to be too impressed by the need to be in Iraq.

As for the the many people who brought this war to fruition, I have on name for them, chickenhawks. Let's hear for Dick "I had other priorities" Cheney. Let's talk George "AWOL" Bush. Let's talk Tom "Too many minorities volunteered" DeLay.

J Black, just an other shit for brains blowhard.

This is a good place for some Robert Bly:

Counting Small-boned Bodies

Let's count the bodies over again.

If we could only make the bodies smaller
The size of skulls
We could make a whole plain white with skulls in the moonlight!

If we could only make the bodies smaller
Maybe we could get
A whole year's kill in front of us on a desk!

If we could only make the bodies smaller
We could fit
A body into a finger-ring for a keepsake forever.

Simply leaving will create a power vacuum and killing field of huge proportions --just like Cambodia after we ran from Vietnam.

Your overly simplistic analysis facilely ignores the effect that 2 million tonnes of American bombs had in galvanizing Cambodian peasant support for the Khmer Rouge against the foreigners.

Before the air strikes, the KR was just a ragtag group of ivory-tower intellectuals, back from Paris and struggling to gain traction among a populace to whom they were almost totally irrelevant. After enough peasants and their draft animals were killed and their crops destroyed from air bombings, however, the KR marched into Phnom Penh in 1975 to the almost universal acclaim of the ethnic Khmer peasants.

A lot of right-wingers prefer to overlook this history, though, which is not particularly surprising.

#22: We also forget about the troops who will have to live with the images and guilt of what they've seen. Ultimately, supporting the troops means not subjecting them to that for made up bullshit reasons. Or oil.

Again, it's impossible to replay history, but had American troops remained in the area, they would have possibly been in a position to mitigate the notorious "Killing Fields".

Hubristic fantasy. With the chaos of the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees into Phnom Penh, and the support among those peasants for the KR generated by the very airstrikes the refugees were fleeing and the concomitant anti-US sentiment, no way would the US have been in a position to send the number of troops that would have been required to even have a prayer of controlling the situation.

The US managed the situation in the worst way possible, and then, when reality could no longer be deferred, cut and ran. If instead, we'd written every man, woman, and child in the area a check for $3000, we could have spent the same amount of money to keep them in fish sauce and Barcaloungers for life [h/t the Straight Dope, by Cecil Adams; I would link, but I'm tired of moderation purgatory], the geopolitics would have turned out better b/c the Viet Cong and KR wouldn't have gotten the traction they did, and a lot of innocent people on both sides would still be alive.

its all good, the population is too high anyway.

Janine, you know when the insults start flying, you have nothing intelligent to say. Go back to your couch, grab your wine, and veg out to CNN and American Idol. Everything will be ok.

Pete you fucking twit. Amazing just how well you know what I like. You have such an eye for clarity.
Fuck off.

"I suppose my point for all this is: don't use 4,000 as a rally number."

You are completely neglecting consideration of the wounded. And the familes shattered by loss of a loved one in a war that was unnecessary. This tragedy directly affects millions of people here and in Iraq.

The focus on America's dead is taking a very limited view of things: this war has caused approximately 1,204,000 deaths (1.2 million Iraqis + 4,000 Americans).

Pretty shocking. But it was worth it, right? We "took out" Saddam, who in his wildest dreams could not have brought about that amount of mayhem and destruction. We have Bush to thank for that.

We have Bush to thank for that.

Not to mention all the apologists who say that we "had" to get Saddam, "because he killed so many Iraqis".

I do believe Bush has now killed far more Iraqis than Saddam ever did; fortunately for him, however, logic is not the apologists' strong suit.

The estimate floating around for the death toll for the Iran-Iraq war is 1 million.

At the very least Bush is on the same level as Saddam in terms of the damage he has done.

We also can't forget to count the people we killed with sanctions.

I know its pretty crazy these days. Reading and hearing all crappy and tragic things that are happening with the money and power we give to our government. It easy to see that most people are apathetic and really don't care as long as they can't feel the impact. But then I go to allot of shows (concerts)where people really do care and are singing there hearts about all the sh*t going on in the world. Makes you feel better that at least your not alone and there maybe some hope for better days. People are out there we just have to find each other and speak out.
If you like music check out:Strike anywhere, Rise against, Anti-flag, Pennywise etc..

Sorry, American Idol not your bag? Forget it. Just nod back off in front of your TV to whatever you prefer. It's all the same formulaic bullshit anyway.

After reading these liberal views, I find a pattern. First, hatred of the U.S.A. and secondly the desire to make ones views the only view. Each liberal view is supported by a person that feels his idea should be respected as if he or she were king. Liberals do not like war, no one does! But the sad fact of life is that war is an extension of politics. It is the route governments take when opponents will not negotiate.

Post by John # 250 leaves me with a really uncomfortable feeling. Anarchy? maybe lunatic. These men were fanatical terrorists. Killing and maiming innocent people becuase they loathed America and Americans so much. I do not see the lefts willingness to force their will on the majority, any different then Hitler. At least Hitler convinced the masses to follow him. The left comes up with a crazy idea that the general public rejects, and they try and force it down our necks.

Get 4000 people together, (optional: get them camouflage gear), get them to Washington DC, get them to lie down and play dead in a big empty space...

And do the same for each big city, simultaneously...

Because I don't live there, I can't do that. Who wants to organize this? PLEASE DO IT

what do you do when activism is dead? I marched against the war three times. twice before it started. I never thought the war was a good idea. but it didn't make a difference. millions across the globe marched against the war and it didn't make a difference. not a single person that I have talked to in real life supports the war at all, but it doesn't matter. there are people who have made protesting the war their full time job. but it doesn't matter what we *think* or what we *say*. you have two choices now and neither is very pretty. since most Americans are weak and medicated with entertainment, that makes apathy and finger pointing the standard option. care to suggest something else?

After reading these liberal views, I find a pattern. First, hatred of the U.S.A. ...

Is your reading of this discussion really that unsophisticated, or are you just being gratuitously provocative?

Though I admit I may have missed one among the 287 comments here (so far), I can't recall a comment that I took as expressing hatred of the U.S.... including those originating from nationals of other nations, who owe us no particular loyalty and have good reasons to hate us at this moment in history.

Speaking as one who's been pretty critcal, I can tell you that the failures of our current administration (esp. this horrific war) are all the more painful to me specifically because I love my country.

...and secondly the desire to make ones views the only view. Each liberal view is supported by a person that feels his idea should be respected as if he or she were king.

Hmmm.... It seems to me that anyone who actually believes in what he's saying will say it with some confidence. Funny how liberals' confidence always gets spun as authoritarian, while the blustering certainty of the Limbaughs, Hannitys, and Coulters of the world gets celebrated as spirited defense of liberty.

Oh, by the way... BITE ME!

Yet the rest of the world is watching. Even though the US is still an empire with incredible powers, it won't be much longer. The inaction of americans is in part apathy at being impotent, rules by a social-darwinist oligarch corporate fascist class, and everyone is in SUPPORT of the underlying capitalist ideal. And americans think nobody can make them suffer because they have more guns.

So excuse me as I won't shed a tear when some sociopath medievalists come demanding a payback and detonate a small nuclear explosive in a major US city. And why, because the world from a relative state of goodwill (in the 90s) has come to LOATHE or even HATE the US, all in the span of ten years.

This damage cant even be repaired in half a century. Your leader, the goddamn hyena son of a bitch bush, has wrecked more than you idiots can possibly understand. You are regarded as vermin now, as a plague.

OH yeah. OH baby. OH yeah.

Liberals hate America. Same old same old from the Unimaginative Right.

(And he forgot to say "Terrorist Sympathizers." Tsk, tsk.)

and secondly the desire to make ones views the only view

Oh? You mean, by demonizing the opposition, by calling into question their integrity and patriotism, and by characterizing them as authoritarian, dogmatic, and hypocritical? I mean, for example?

LOL!

Ride a painted pony...

Perhaps the author is implying that if people had applauded Mr. Alexie's comments the war would suddenly stop?

This is just more self-righteous backpatting by another aloof douchebag who likes to feel superior by telling everyone within earshot how they aren't doing anything while not doing anything himself.

The fact is THERE IS NOTHING TO DO. All is lost. It's too bad about the Iraqis but I can't say I'm too sorry about all the US soldiers. So we lost 4,000 idiots too stupid to realize they may die for nothing by joining the military?

I hope Darwin is laughing his ass off in hell.

"So excuse me as I won't shed a tear when some sociopath medievalists come demanding a payback and detonate a small nuclear explosive in a major US city."

Fuck you too.

Alex: Also, fuck you.

Did this post get linked to by douchebags.com or something?

Great post, PZ!

However, unlike others, who seem to think that once the Dems are in power things will improve again, I have serious doubts about that. Elections are only designed to placate the populace, the only choice is between an extreme right and a right of center party, a left in the European sense does not exist, the rule of law is laughable. I really wonder why I still pay taxes, when a high administration official gets convicted by a jury (!) of obstruction of justice (because the jury convinced itself that he lied during the investigation), and later he is just pardoned because 'his sentence was too harsh'. Just yesterday, I heard on NPR that the Bush administration is trying to prevent 2 American citizens held in Iraq to use habeas corpus to get their charges reviewed. Their argument? Iraq is a sovereign country and the US is just detaining these two guys as a courtesy to Iraq. The US has to honor the international law. Iraq a sovereign country?!? Without the US, Iraq would completely fall apart (of course, also thanks to the US!) Honor international law?! I am sure they are planning right now to extradite the CIA officials who are wanted in Italy because of the kidnapping of a radical Islamist (whom the Italian police was investigating already anyway) and his subsequent torture in Egypt or the many US soldiers who committed crimes (rape, hit-and-run driving,etc.) in Japan. Yeah, right!
This administration twists everything just to get what they want. Integrity and honesty are completely alien concepts to them. As is honoring the opinion of the people they are ruling over (Cheney: 'So?') They are no doubt afraid that other unpleasant details could come to light were these two US citizens allowed to question their detention (it might be that they committed a crime, but one can have doubts. In one case the Iraqi government says they cannot find the evidence anymore!) At least, they should have the right to get their cases reviewed, as do all the other prisoners!

The only way, the US could restore a little of its reputation is by finally holding several high officials accountable and reintroducing the draft. Only then, meaningful public discussions will be had before wars. But I don't believe for one second that something like this will ever happen here. Only little fish are slaughtered publicly (like some soldiers for Abu Ghraib, see current issue of Mother Jones). Over 100 prisoners died in US custody, have you ever heard anything about that? This system is thoroughly rotten. And the Dems neither have the will nor the power to change any of this.

John (#287):

Wow, you discovered a 'pattern'! How impressive! People want their opinions to be heard! That is 'liberals'. You, of course, just post your junk because you are bored. And, since you didn't notice it yet, wars are sometimes unavoidable but this one clearly does not belong into this class. It was a criminal act of aggression by the US, which invaded a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, nor was in possession of WMDs (you should order the Frontline DVD of yesterday's showing to get at least a little informed) and killed >200k people in the process, a substantial fraction of which were just ordinary people (women, children, etc)

The left comes up with a crazy idea that the general public rejects, and they try and force it down our necks.

Impressive thinking! You just pick one comment of somebody who is clearly confused and generalize his mistaken beliefs into what 'the left' wants the public to believe. If you could read you might discover that the spectrum of opinion is a little wider than that.

Sounds like America is lacking representation. Perhaps you should all be working towards reforming your electoral system. Get rid of the big money, corporate and fundamentalist religious interest groups.

I really would not like to be stuck with your lack of choice in political parties.

Thanks GunOfSod! Did you just think of that? Genius!

We'll get right on it!

NO PROBLEM!!!

Re #156 [drb] "Also, I wish to take issue with the phrase 'the disastrous conduct of the wasteful war in Iraq': this is exactly how the right-wing would like to portray this war, as merely 'disastrous', as 'wasteful'. But this war has been a criminal enterprise from the start. For Bush and his friends in the oil industry it has been anything but 'disastrous'. And since the conduct of this war has resulted in the massive transfer of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to corporations such as KBR, Halliburton, and Blackwater, the administration certainly doesn't see it as 'wasteful'. It has achieved all the desired ends."

I agree with your main point, but the war may still turn out disastrous even for Bush and his fellow-scumbags. The US (and UK) economies were already in trouble before 2001: decline in manufacturing, over-reliance on financial services, big trade deficits, declining domestic oil production, heavy public debt burden. Indeed, that's probably a big part of why they attacked first Afghanistan, then Iraq. (Note on Afghanistan: yes, 9/11 would have justified a limited attack to destroy Al Qaeda bases, but the planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline, and positioning to attack Iran, were probably the motives for full-scale occupation.) Permanent military bases in south-west Asia, and control of the region's oil supplies, would enable the US to set the oil price as they wished, threaten China with an embargo, and support Israeli expansion. If subduing Iraq had turned out to be as easy as the leading neocons said it would be, and had been followed by successful subordination of Iran, the USA's already very powerful position in the world following the collapse of the USSR would have approached the "full-spectrum dominance" desired. I think they made the mistake of believing their own propaganda, and the lies spun by some of the Iraqi exile groups. However, the war has turned out to be long, unpopular, and very, very expensive. How do you finance such a war and keep the public quiescent at the same time? Borrow (ironically, primarily from other south-west Asian oil producers and China); ensure lots of cheap imports; and above all, create an asset/credit bubble, so tax take can rise without raising tax rates, and people don't feel poor.

This may still work, if the "surge" and the current attack on the Sadrists allow full exploitation of Iraq, and create the conditions for overthrowing the Iranian mullocracy, but it's looking increasingly unlikely: instability in Iraq is rising again as the various resistance forces adapt to the surge (a classic pattern in an asymmetric war), and more important, the asset bubble has burst. The Federal Reserve has been desperately cutting rates and handing out funny money, but even if this works in the short term (avoiding a Democrat landslide in November - a narrow victory won't upset the permanent elite, or stop the war), its medium-term effects could be dire. I'm torn between schadenfreude and terror - we could be in for an economic crash on the scale of the 1930s, or worse, in a nuclear-armed world simultaneously facing extremely serious environmental problems. Where's a benevolent deity when you really need one?

Dianne (#133)
I appreciate your response. Those are interesting points. It seems PZ is ducking the question or he hasn't seen it and has already moved on, which I find dissatisfying.

It's so easy to say we must pull out (and we must, ASAP), but no one seems to have a practical plan for doing so (not even the Dems - at least not one that I've seen articulated.

It's not a matter of getting on a plane and coming home tomorrow. We have so many people, so much matériel there that with the best intentions and the most expeditious people in charge, it would take the bigger part of a year to properly pull out.

Bush has us so mired that unless the withdrawal is meticulously planned, Iraq is going to be worse off than it is even now and the world view of the USA will plummet even further, to say nothing of the unimaginable suffering that would ensue.

"Oh and by the way, every instruction on rules of engagement which I've received so far explicitly forbid shooting unarmed people in the back. It doesn't matter whether they are combatants who just dropped their weapon..."

"Is this the French military?"

I can't speak for the French but the Australian army operates in this way.

I assume that this response was the standard slur against the French as freedom-hating cowards - a slur usually voiced by people whose own experience of warfare only extends as far as Rambo movies.

So, to head off equally ignorant bigoted slurs directed at the Australian military, I'll point out that in initial invasion of Iraq Australian forces undertook some of the most dangerous missions of the entire war and that Australian forces are currently fighting on the front line in souther Afghanistan against the Taliban with extraordinary effectiveness.

"Anonymous, you actually have to, you know, do something to be shot by the military. "

Yeah just look at Haditha. The Iraqis who were shot while still asleep in their beds were obviously sleeping in a threatening way.

"This is evolution - survival of the fittest. Get over it. We are random happenings. These things drive the change process. We are evolving into a higher state. Why are you amazed?"

Ddi yo uexpress that opinion to any Ameircans in the immediate aftermath of September 11 2001?

"This is evolution - survival of the fittest. Get over it. We are random happenings. These things drive the change process. We are evolving into a higher state. Why are you amazed?"

Did you express that opinion to any Americans in the immediate aftermath of September 11 2001?

Since this is a science blog, let's employ a little inductive reasoning in looking at the likely result of an immediate full-scale American withdrawal from Iraq.

The surge, over-hyped as it has been, has resulted at least temporarily in a major reduction in Iraqi deaths.

If more American troops mean fewer dead Iraqis, what id the likely result of fewer American troops?

Oh and before the abuse starts: I am not an American much less a Bush-loving Republican; I am not pro-war and I am not an Arab-hating racist.

The decision to invade Iraq was both criminal and stupid. However, that has no bearing on deciding which path going forward is likely to result in the least total deaths.

Of course ethics and morality are in practice of less concern than expediency in matters of war, so this is just my individual opinion:

Having started the war, America is morally obligated to see it through to the end, and pay whatever price is necessary to achieve the best possible outcome for the people of Iraq, regardless of cost, even it means the life of every single American soldier, and every last penny in the American treasury.

It does not matter if you say the government is republican and not representative of your views. In a democracy the people all share responsibility for the actions of their elected government, even if they did not individually vote for said government. And if they did not vote, then they are even more responsible.

It does not matter if you say the government came to power unfairly without majority support due to some loophole in the system. In a democracy the people are responsible for the system they use to select their leaders.

He who knocks humpty dumpty off the wall is duty bound to put humpty dumpty back together again.

You can say it cannot be done, or will cost too much, or sacrifice too many lives, and the best thing to do is to pull out, and that is a perfectly valid practical argument. But from a moral perspective, any pull out that does not leave Iraq stable, safe, and a better place to live in than it was before under Saddam, is an abrogation of responsibility and a moral failure. In short, having screwed up in starting the war, you can't just run away and leave your mess behind.

Not that I would force this viewpoint on anyone. It's just my opinion.

Futility said: "The only way, the US could restore a little of its reputation is by finally holding several high officials accountable and reintroducing the draft. Only then, meaningful public discussions will be had before wars."

We had a draft and it didn't keep us out of stupid wars. People will even send their kids off to stupid wars if they're told it's patriotic.

Draft their money: no deficit spending, pay for wars in real time. Then you'll see meaningful public discussion.

Re #306 [amphiox] "from a moral perspective, any pull out that does not leave Iraq stable, safe, and a better place to live in than it was before under Saddam, is an abrogation of responsibility and a moral failure. In short, having screwed up in starting the war, you can't just run away and leave your mess behind.

Not that I would force this viewpoint on anyone. It's just my opinion."

You have, of course, no problem whatever with forcing it on the Iraqis. Every poll of which I'm aware has shown a clear majority in favour of a time-limited and complete withdrawal by the invaders. In the parliamentary election of 2005, a majority voted for parties that had signed the "Pact of Honour" calling for a withdrawal timetable to be set: the now-ruling parties promptly reneged on this promise once the election was over.

You know, I'm sure the neocons factored your kind of stupid, arrogant response into their calculations: "Yeah, once we're in, a lot of the 'moderates' will say, well, we disagreed with the war, but now we're there, we owe it to the Iraqi people to stay." No. We don't. Having invaded their country, caused a million deaths and several million refugees, destroyed much of the infrastructure and priceless cultural relics, we first of all owe it to them to GET OUT. Then, if the attempt to fight this war without raising taxes hasn't led to global disaster, we can think about reparations.

"Liberals hate America. Same old same old from the Unimaginative Right."

Liberals rightly hate warmongering Republicans - of which there are many.

Liberals thing that knee-jerk patriotism - going off to slaughter people or supporting such slaughter from the safety of one's keyboard or byline or pulpit or podium, all because a certifiable moron stands on a pile of rubble and vows vengeance - is about the dumbest way imaginable to be an American.

I've sat here and read this article and all subsequent responses in a state of growing anger for the last hour or so. It's all well and right that we voice our opinions regardless of what we stand for. But I consider the vast majority of Americans inaction just as heinous as the numerous atrocities carried out under the ideal of the war on terror. I'm not saying that I've been out and about doing all I can to "stick it to the man" but I honestly believe that nothing will be resolved until the American people come together to tear down the tyranny we so complacently are a part of.

#307:

Yes, I agree. Letting the public feel the consequences would definitely help in having real discussions about if one should go to war or not. That's exactly why this administration tried everything to hide the true costs and increased the debts so that the ductile populace doesn't get upset. That is one of the reasons that one doesn't see more opposition (the other appears to be that people are simply saturated with bad news and forgot how to care anymore). The war is far away and most people don't think they are directly affected. Not yet, but this might change now, since the true burdens become more apparent. On top of other burdens created by a lack of oversight and regulations (financial market,...).

This presidency will be remembered as the start of the (possibly) long decline of the American empire.

Cheney and his bitch Bush are a couple of the worst kind of people. I won't call them men because they have no courage, honor or integrity. This country is in real trouble. Our countrymen have their heads stuck up their you know what. A Nation of fat stupid jerks with no accomplishments and feeling entitled. Now I see McCain on the horizion and I want to puke. He is the only son of a bitch that could be dumber than Bush. He's dumber than Gore for christ's sake and probably blackmailed by the NVA for the apartment and the women they gave him while he was there. Uncle Sam want's you to WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!

What a pant load!!!

The powers that be know that they can't let the average American (whoever that is) feel the consequences of the wars in the middle east. If they did, it would be over. If there was a draft, comfortable middle class mums and dads WOULD be in the streets. Their kids would be in the streets and so would the grandparents (warning to McCain once he wins the election).
But the fact is "they" really do not care, just watch Cheney spew out his vile "So" several times. If that isn't a F$%& Y#& to all Americans, I don't know what is.
I remind every single friend of their vote for these cretins whenever they bitch about the economy, war, gas prices, and college tuition. I let them know first off that if they voted for them either time, they should just shut up and take the medicine they voted for.

4,000 dead is not good. Certainly, all would agree. However, there is a critical point here off topic. These 800 annual deaths (4,000 in 5 years) of volunteer military personnel to defend our nation's interests absolutely pales in comparison to the over 1,000,000 annual abortions of babies which didn't volunteer to die for nothing. Where's the outrage? Get some perspective folks!

Steve, read all the comments. BTW, nobody aborts babies, they abort fetuses. And your god is murdering millions of fertilized human eggs every year. What a dickhead.

Why, thank you steverino, we will give that all the thought that deserves. Done.

Oh, here is a question? Do you think that the use of contraceptives are wrong? Well, enough of being off topic.

Why is it so difficult to get people to look at real fundamental concepts about culture and life? We get close when we say it was a war for oil, but not all the way. The bottom line is that it is a war of Consumption, and while we want to ban smoking or guns because they are bad for us, nobody talks about banning advertising. Every function that government (whether corrupt or not) takes on is based on protecting someone's purchases. In the South, they started a war for the right to buy people. In WWII, it was the right of the Japanese to buy scrap metal.(a distant thread to make you think, not a historical paradigm changing proof)
We are coming up on a war with Iran over China's right to buy their oil without using our financial 'instrument' (face it, a dollar is not value). Where do we act to end it?
Every purchase should have a feedback mechanism to show people all of the externalized costs of their purchases. Freedom to purchase and freedom to coerce is simply wage slavery that leads to misguided Empires.
It's all in the Marketing/Religion, and Evil lies in actions taken based upon Blind Faith, whether that faith is in God, Guns, Gurus, or Government.
The rulers of this country are the pickle vendors and artificial persons. Why do they want to ban population control measures all the time? Because you can't have cheap slaves if you don't have overpopulated slaves.
You can brainwash yourself all day long, but in the end, Life has only one right: The Right to Try and Live. All the rest of our 'humane' rights are statutory and those statutes are written by Business. Buy low, sell high--which means pay too little and charge too much. When you apply it to people, you start to see the problem with 'free' market Systems of systems that value only money instead of where value comes from: usefulness and real need to try and live.
go to http://www.storyofstuff.com

Shorter auntiegray: Commerce (all of it) is the root of all evil.

Fine. Please tell us where we can find, Within Your Forest Of Capital Letters, the secret to living without commerce.

Take your time; I'll wait.

Steve | March 27, 2008 8:33 AM

What babies? oh, TEH BAYBEEEEEEEZ!!!

I keep forgetting. Fetuses are all that really matter. Once they're out, neither they nor their mothers are worth anything anymore.

Ummm... Subsistence-level farming?

:-)

Excuse the off-topic remark--this is merely a short snippet, and after it's said, please do not let this interrupt the commentary on this travesty of a war.

William Wallace--quite frankly, in terms of "applied Darwinism" I would assume you mean evolution. Thankfully, women around the world, due to their applied Darwinism, now have the right to use some form of contraception (not even abortion--imagine that), and apply said Darwinism to limiting your spread of "spunk" through the gene-pool.

War crimes, crimes against humanity, casualties of war--whether military or civilian--are not equivalent issues with abortion; although, I will grant they all hold to some common value of human rights and civil liberties. Pro-choice, just to clarify, means a woman has BOTH A RIGHT TO DECIDE FOR HERSELF TO CARRY A PREGNANCY THROUGH TO TERM or TO HAVE AN ABORTION. The only place the state has in this is to defend her right in whatever choice she decides (this is in an ideal world of course), and to provide her with resources that are safe and confidential however she so decides. The mentality of "pro-life" disregards all value of a woman's own individual liberty regarding her body, her freedom of choice to be a conduit of reproduction (or not), and most of all, turns the state of her pregnancy into a forfeit of her own autonomy. If you need a reference in how this is done, watch the movie "Children of Men", or read Margret Atwood's, "The Handmaid's Tale"; speculative fiction, I realize, but disturbingly true to the tone we preach when utilizing "the millions of babies aborted" argument to show how truly brutal and sinful American society has become. Ironies of ironies is that I have yet to ever hear one "pro-lifer" lament the millions of children already born, residing in the "richest country in the world" (with its failing economy), who have no access to regular basic medical care, safe neighborhoods, loving families, regular meals, stable educations, and the basic rights EVERY HUMAN is entitled to, or should be, if our American society were truly as progressive and compassionate as we like to delude ourselves into believing. One need only read the callous comments regarding the deaths of Iraqi civilians, or how we rationalize away the violence committed in times of war, to see beyond the thin veil "compassion" and realize the true hypocrisy of such sentiments.

Thus, I might conclude that until such a day as you spout a womb, become pregnant, and are forced into having a child for which there is NO LEGAL TEMPLATE BINDING THE FATHER, either by the state or religion, to stay around and support the mother and child, you have every right to an opinion in our fragmented democracy, but absolutely NO RIGHT to dictate mine, or any other woman's reproductive rights, including whether or not to have an abortion.

And should such a day ever come wherein there is no longer freedom of choice, then there had better some legal consequence for the man who fathered said baby, to support and raise that child through the entirety of that child's, and mother's, lives.

Herein, soap-box is concluded.
Cheers,
Doxie-gal

There's a visualization of the 4000 dead American soldiers on Iraqi soil at cannablog.

There's a visualization of the 4000 dead American soldiers on Iraqi soil at cannablog.

#322:

Well put! I couldn't agree more!

I'm not one of those people who doesn't think about the people in Iraq who have suffered. I hope you don' think that a majority of people feel like that. I spent an evening arguing with a friend that over 100,000 were dead Iraqi citizens, that 1.2 million refugees were in Syria and wrote this:

http://www.nospintalk.com/content/view/39/1/

about the prostitution problem there with Iraqis as young as 13. By the end of the argument I realized that all of my company (8 or 9 people on poker night) knew except this one guy, who only focused on the American troops. We all knew it, but the one thing you're write about, is no matter how many ACLU petitions I sign against the president, no matter how many letters I send to congress or how many articles I write, the government seems to be disinterested in the thoughts of the people. Much like Cheney saying "So?" when told of the disapproval ratings of the war. His point in that conversation actually made sense, but it just shows where their heads are and makes us feel helpless and hopeless often.

Nick Gotts:
As I'm not American and can't vote for or against them, I doubt your neocons care one whit what I think.

My point is simply this: America started this war under false pretenses. America is responsible for repairing the damage it has caused, one way or another. If the best way to do that is to leave and pay reparations, then that is what should be done. But if the best way to do that is to stay for another 100 years, then that is what must be done. Though I certainly hope it won't have to come to that.

I'm sure the Iraqi people want the occupiers to leave as soon as possible, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they'd prefer it to be done in an orderly fashion, without leaving behind total chaos or a civil war.

Perhaps to illustrate to Americans directly how they OUGHT to feel each time a human life is lost, we ought to discover the one thing they hold most dear, mulitply exemplars of it to four thousand and then burn them to ashes right before their eyes. Suggestions might be four thousand american flags, four thousand lifesize statues of the virgin Mary or of Jesus Christ, perhaps four thousand deluxe editions of the christian Holy Bible, maybe four thousand hand-calligraphied copies of the Declaration of Independence or Constitution, maybe four thousand scale models of the Statue of Liberty, etc. The list could go on but, I trust you get the point. Every human life - every form of life for that matter - is a priceless one of kind occurrence, never before see in our universe, never to be seen again - ever. How does one represent that unquantifiable value for even ONE individual? How does one represent that same value times four thousand? How does one get across to every shrugging american what has been burned to ash in their name?

Re #327 [amphiox]. I'm not American either, but Ukanian (British in common parlance) - that's why I used "we". We don't have to just guess about Iraqis want, the results of polls are sufficiently consistent. Exactly what answers you get depends on what options you offer, but in EVERY POLL, clear majorities want the invaders out within, at most, a year or two. This is also what they voted for in the 2005 elections. I'm suggesting we actually pay some attention to what Iraqis say they want.

There is in any case absolutely no possibility the invader governments will stay from altruistic motives; if they stay it will because they think the gains - permanent military bases, a puppet government, and control over the economy - exceed the costs. There are two types of cost the invader governments will consider: economic and political. Anyone who, for whatever reason, suggests it might be acceptable to stay for 100 years will tend to reduce the political costs of doing so.

Ukanian (British in common parlance)

Glad you added the parenthesis; at first I thought you'd just missed an "r."

Bill:

Glad you added the parenthesis; at first I thought you'd just missed an "r."

Да - Я тожа! :-D

Nick:

in EVERY POLL, clear majorities want the invaders out within, at most, a year or two. This is also what they voted for in the 2005 elections. I'm suggesting we actually pay some attention to what Iraqis say they want.

Yes, though the average Iraq probably isn't any wiser, better-informed, or far-sighted than the average American with regard to what will transpire when U.S. troops are gone. The whole situation is weighted down with crushing irony: We liberated them without invitation (no, there was no website to pre-register for invasion) and have occupied their country against their apparent wishes for half a decade; we've ostensibly given them freedom and the gift of democracy by initiating a destabilizing war on their homeland - a war executed in our own poorly-justified national self-interest - without once asking their opinion, let alone their permission.

Another tidbit I loved was the Bush administration promoting Socialism in Iraq by stating, "The oil of the Iraqi people belongs to the Iraqi people; it is their wealth, it will be used for their benefit." (Colin Powell, July 2003.)

Sure, sure - and the primary "benefit" would be to pay to reconstruct what was destroyed by our deconstruction and the sectarian violence that inevitably followed. However, the chaos engendered by this destabilization seems to have driven much of Iraq's expertise in science, engineering and administration out of the country altogether. Iraqi oil-industry infrastructures, both physical and intellectual, are a mess, and production is way down.

And we all know that "the Iraqi people," in the long run, won't see much of that oil money. It will go into the pockets of the entities that control the means of production and distribution. Well, that's capitalism. I'm sure some of that money will "trickle down."

Nonetheless, I do hope that Bush gets his good outcome in the long run. It's not that I want to let the neocons off the hook, or for them to be proven "right" - I don't believe the ends justify the means, and we never should have invaded in the first place - it's that the alternatives are too frightening to prefer.

"the average Iraq probably isn't any wiser, better-informed, or far-sighted than the average American with regard to what will transpire when U.S. troops are gone." - Kseniya

Well, they might just know their own country a bit better than people from another continent. Other consistent poll findings are that large majorities (on the order of 70-80%) consider the occupation to be a primary cause of the violence, and that significant minorities (on the order of 30-45%) consider attacks on the occupiers to be justified. Which suggests that Bush's "good outcome" (by which I take it you mean the end of violence with the occupiers still in effective control of the country, since this is undoubtedly what Bush wants) is unlikely to happen unless and until the entire population is terrorised into submission. At which point (if not sooner), the invasion of Iran would be launched. You say:
"I don't believe the ends justify the means, and we never should have invaded in the first place".
That suggests you think the ends were good. The ends were permanent US military bases, effective US control of the economy, especially the oil industry, and large profits for various US corporations. Getting rid of Saddam, establishing democracy, removing WMDs, were simply excuses.

Of course I don't think that the end of occupation would mean immediate peace and stability. But what are these "alternatives that are too frightening to prefer"? I suspect that what they come down to, for those "liberal" Usanians (in common parlance, Americans) who take the "Now we're here, we have a responsibility to stay until peace and stability are achieved" line, is that the power and influence of the USA would be considerably reduced and in particular, the USA would no longer have a veto on the kind of peace and stability that might be achieved.

Note on idiosyncratic terminology:
I started using "Usanian" for "American" (a) because it's more accurate - are not Mexicans, Canadians, Brazilians etc. also Americans? and (b) to tease Usanian nationalists (common parlance: American patriots) on the BBC "Have Your Say" site. At the same time, I started using "Ukanian" for "British" (a) because it's more accurate, at least if we're talking political rather than physical geography, (b) no one says or is likely to say "I'm proud to be Ukanian" and (c) it seemed only fair.

Good points, Nick - serves me right for trying to write something more complicated than "Duh!" before my eyes were fully open. :-)

Well, they might just know their own country a bit better than people from another continent.

Yes, of course, and I assumed that was a given. I'm really arguing human nature:

Person A: "Let's put and end to this intolerable situation!"

Person B: "Yes! Woo-hoo! Ok. What next?"

Person A: "Uh... darn. Didn't think of THAT."

Regarding outcomes, ends and means, I meant the stated (and, politics and lies aside, probably hopelessly idealistic) outcome rather than the likely outcome you've described: A nontotalitarian/democratic Iraq that inspires a movement in the region away from radical and/or medieval Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. Yeah, it looks kinda silly written out like that, but that IS the best possible outcome from where things stand today - no? The "frightening outcomes" involve Iraq falling into the hands of intransigent religious fundamentalists (like Bush, LOL) and/or terror-supporting political radicals.

I have no illusions, however, and you're pretty much right on the money. I've been eyeing the PNAC and the NeoCon agenda for years. Their version of "American interests abroad" with regard to Iraq certainly includes, as one of the "good outcomes," exactly the scenario you've written above.

"A nontotalitarian/democratic Iraq that inspires a movement in the region away from radical and/or medieval Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism." Kseniya

Well, I'm in favour of democracy and against Islamic fundamentalism (more generally, against religion!), terrorism and the Neocons, so basically we're in agreement. Ironically, as I expect you're aware, Iraq was one of the most secular states in the region under Saddam Hussein, and if you kept strictly out of politics and were not a Kurd or Marsh Arab, one of the best places to be a woman. It was also a place where Sunni/Shia intermarriage was common, at least in the cities, other religions and even atheism were tolerated, and as your post implies, there was a comparatively large educated stratum. My hope, and I admit it can't be more than that, is that if the occupiers leave, these features will reassert themselves, hopefully without another Saddam. At the least, I don't think either a Taliban-style state, or Iranian domination, is likely. On another point, I disagree with your description of Islamic fundamentalism as "medieval". I'm no expert on Islamic history, but at least until the Mongol invasions of the 13th century C.E., there was a great deal of intellectual freedom and techno-scientific advance in Islamic states: the contrast with most of contemporary Christendom is striking.

Any way you slice it, Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead is a great comic book.

Iraq may have been the wrong battleground at the wrong time, but this conflict between the Islamic world and the Western world was inevitable. Nothing short of a paranoid isolationism could have prevented it and that ship sailed long ago. Any state that A) can't keep their nutty fundies somewhat in check or is actually RUN by the nutty fundies and B) suppresses individual liberties to the extreme will become destructive to itself and those it interacts with.

What an incredible moron.

Dude, you are talking about Saudi Arabia, not about Iraq. Saddam suppressed all opposition, including the religious opposition, and bin Laden called Saddam an "apostate and communist" -- that's a death sentence.

Are you really too fucking stupid to understand that evil can fight against evil without the fabric of spacetime ripping apart in the process? Saddam was evil, and bin Laden is evil, but they still aren't the same thing.

and I can't bring myself to care all that much whether such people live or die.

You are saying there are people we should not regard as people. You are saying there are people we should have no compassion at all with. What is more, you are saying that whole religious communities, not even "just" nations, should be punished collectively. That way lies National Socialism. Or Stalinism -- you choose.

Not to mention other forms of madness. By your logic, the whole area from Morocco to Indonesia should be nuked till it glows in the dark, right? Then what is that tiny conventional war in Iraq good for? By your own "logic" of a dangerous madman, you are defending the wrong war here.

At what point is a willingness to meddle in someone elses affairs justifiable? We were attacked by terrorists. I think that justified some level of response. How do you determine how much response is proper?

How often does it need to be explained to you that neither bin Laden nor any of the 9/11 hijackers came from Iraq or had any friendly ties with it? Haven't you even read comment number 9?

Our response destroyed a government because it was felt that that government was directly supporting terror in such a way that it had to go away.

No, ignoramus. Your government illegally started a war because it said it felt the victim was supporting terror, which was already known to be a lie. (Does "yellowcake" ring a bell?)

So by dismantling their government, we were committing ourselves to longterm intervention

Get out, get the UN in instead, and pay for that. The UN at least knows how to deal with this kind of situation.

yes along with one Tony Blair (at the very least).

Aznar, Berluscolini.

Not sure that this would work and it'd be expensive

I can't possibly imagine it would cost 2, let alone 3, trillion dollars. Even if it doesn't work directly as a financial investment like the Marshall Plan did, that is.

Cheney and his bitch Bush are a couple of the worst kind of people. I won't call them men because they have no courage, honor or integrity. This country is in real trouble. Our countrymen have their heads stuck up their you know what. A Nation of fat stupid jerks with no accomplishments and feeling entitled. Now I see McCain on the horizion and I want to puke. He is the only son of a bitch that could be dumber than Bush. He's dumber than Gore for christ's sake and probably blackmailed by the NVA for the apartment and the women they gave him while he was there. Uncle Sam want's you to WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!

You are retarded. Liberals get rousing applause for meaningless statements while conservatives get reviled for speaking the truth.

Liberals get rousing applause for meaningless statements while conservatives get reviled for speaking the truth.

sez the man wearing the tinfoil hat.

uh huh.

so much "truth" comes from the mouths of Limbaugh, and Robertson, and Falwell...

who's the one that's retarded again?

surely it's truth that the 9/11 was caused by liberals tolerating homosexuality in the US, right?

Phht. Conservative pundits are reviled, properly, for swiftboating the truth.

you are dismissed.

Oh, but TinFoilHat has a point - and surely the fact that liberals have been totally running the country for the past seven years proves it beyond the shadow of a doubt!

(Do these trogs ever stop to think, even for a moment, before they speak?)

(Do these trogs ever stop to think, even for a moment, before they speak?)

if they did, you would never know, right?

there wouldn't be a post.

seriously, I've often wondered if I have an observer bias, because people who think tend not to say stupid shit to begin with, so I might be grossly overestimating the number of stupid people simply because they are louder and not shy about being stupid.

Then I recall that W was elected... and reelected.

and i become sure there really ARE that many idiots out there.