Saturday, May 26, 2007

Bye Bye Iraq

Ok, I didn’t wanna get into this. Really, I was trying to avoid this subject on my blog for the last, like, four years. However, with the inevitable folding of the democrats and the mountain of money they have begrudgingly handed over to our president, I feel I have to vent. Yeah I must once again shout into the wind only to have my voice met with a few sardonic replies and then be cast into the vacuous nothing that is the blog-asphere.

Well here it is anyway; the war in Iraq is stupid. It’s dumb on so many different levels that I will surely miss some points, but I will strive to hit the big ones. Also, realize that any argument you may hear on FOX NEWS (the leader in US propaganda) about why we need to be there is based on Rupert Murdock’s perverted sense of blood lust.

9/11 was one of the worst days in American history. Many people died in a horrible attack which was carried out with guerilla style tactics that we were, honestly, just not prepared for. I don’t even blame Bush for sitting in that classroom and continuing to read to those children. None of us would have wanted to be that man, at that time, on that day. But action had to be taken, and the American people wanted retribution. The president had to do something. Unfortunately, for most of the rest of the world and especially for us, he chose to rally the troops and run strait at Iraq in a huge hurry.

Here’s where it gets weird. He had video tapped confessions (hell, boasts) from this asshole named Osama bin laden who was implicated by the previous administration and who had been in the terrorist game for a while. Yet, the president had to carefully construct evidence in the form of yellow cake, WMD’s, aluminum tubes, and an asshole dictator to coerce a war on a country that either was only loosely involved or not involved at all with the whole thing. Why? I don’t speak for everybody, and I wouldn’t presume to, but I think most everyone would have been happy to go after Osama bin laden rather than topple Iraq. Frankly, I was a bit confused when the president said we were going to war in Iraq. Didn’t we just get hit with airplanes flown by terrorists? We didn’t get shot at with WMD’s. So, after all the other trumped up crap gets defunked what was the reason for going into Iraq?

Iraq harbors and promotes terrorists.” Well what country doesn’t? Ireland has the I.R.A., Sri Lanka has the Tamil Tigers, Libya has Muammar Qadaffi, and the list goes on. Now, before you start thinking that we are any better realize that America has been using the Special Forces to train foreign nationals to use guerrilla warfare for years. We have been the most active nation in the world for aiding and sponsoring global terrorism and we have been doing it long before Al Qaeda. “Oh, but we do it for the good of blah, blah, blah…” yeah, let Sheppard Smith read you another bedtime story. What this boils down to is that we are trying to pull the strings of other governments and in the process we are killing innocent people. It doesn’t make it any less our responsibility just because someone else is pulling the trigger. I won’t even get into the whole thing with Posada. Yes America, you are as guilty if not guiltier as Iraq was supposed to be.

“Well, Leaving Sadam in charge of Iraq? That would have been a better option?” (Sigh) Ok, Sadam was a fucker, but there are a lot of fuckers out there. Have we invaded North Korea, Sudan, or any other country that has some fucker dictator? No! We made Iraq that lucky country. Now, I think we may have lost sight here. Sadam killed a lot of people and he needed to come to some sort of justice. However, now there are daily bombings in the streets. Militias are running the cities with their own brand of thug-law and death squads roam around unchecked torturing and murdering hundreds. Then there are all the atrocities our poor soldiers have committed. I’m not saying they’re all bad, but I am saying that given a crazy lawless situation where there is no infrastructure to administer any reciprocity and some bad apples are going to do some bad things. In the process they are going to make us look bad. Bam! You have just lost the high ground America. I won’t go into the humanitarian abuses at the prisons.

“Well what should we do? Stop fighting over there so they can attack us back here in The States?” I love this argument. The complete lack of logic with a sweet luster of irrationality and followed with just a hint of denial…ahhhh, like fine wine. What the hell idiot? Let me make an analogy for you. You love your back porch. It is a comfortable, pleasant place to be. Then one day you get bitten by a mosquito and it welts up and itches. Now, what would most people do? Would they buy a citronella candle or maybe put up some screens to lessen the likelihood of getting bitten again? Well no, apparently they hire some high school kids from down the street to stand around in the backyard swatting at the little bastards day and night. Oh, and best of all, you get the local retard to manage the whole operation from beside you on the porch. Never mind it is costing a freakin’ fortune and all the kids are managing to do is get tired, sweaty, homesick and lose blood. You should defiantly just keep doing it. I mean, it should work…some day…right?

Here’s the thing. England was fighting with us and they got bombed by extremists. Spain was bombed too, and I guarantee to you right here and now that some day we will be bombed again. So, there is no way that by fighting a war somewhere else, the people you are fighting against will be less pissed at you. Try and understand that when people get pissed, they are more likely to bomb you.

So, now that we are there and haven’t found WMD’s and toppled a government, are we safe? Fuck no; Bin laden is still out there Al Qaeda is still operating (stronger than ever I might add) and most of the Middle East is emboldened to fight against the western occupiers. All we have achieved is to make ourselves look dumb and arrogant to the rest of the world. Oh, and we know, for sure, that Iran and North Korea are making nuclear weapons. So, are we going to run after them now? Most of our supporters are gone and we as Americans have the “Patriot Act” to show for it. Yippy! So, in the effort to protect ourselves from some obscure group of terrorists we have metaphorically shot our selves in the foot. Now we can enjoy even less freedoms than we had before.

If you haven’t guessed it already, I support a troop withdrawal. We have to face the facts that there is already a civil war going on over there and we caused it. All that is going to happen now is that our presence is going to ensure that the war drags on and that Americans will get killed. It’s as much a meat grinder as Vietnam was. Yup, we lost. But don’t beat yourselves up about it too much. The war was lost the second our president declared it on an ideal (terrorism), especially an ideal that gets stronger with the more martyrs you create. Here’s a tip for the future. You wanna win a war, then set reachable goals. Not some nebulous idea that frankly will require you killing non-combatants and maintaining a force in a foreign nation forever. I just want to hear one reason as to why we should stay. Still, there will be fifty more reasons to leave.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, where to begin..... I think that, like some other Americans, I have some conflicting emotions. I absolutely agree with you that it was a mistake to go into Iraq and topple the government, no matter how bad Saddam was. It was a bad precedent to set and pissed off many Middle Eastern countries that might have been more amenable to helping us find Bin Laden had we focused our efforts on finding terrorists. I think the parallels to the Viet Nam conflict are too clear to ignore. We cannot "win" in a civil war that we are standing in the middle of. We completely, as usual, misunderstood the whole Middle Eastern perception. We always have. We evaluate things on the American culture and values and have no understanding of Islamic values and culture. They do NOT want a democracy and can't see why we value it so highly as the expense of religion which they value more. They want a theocracy and are more than willing to die for it. It is honorable to die for religion there. We have lost that particular value and can't identify with it. I can't see the point of sending more Americans to the meat grinder along with an absolutely unreal amount of money.
On the other hand, if you read some of the letters home written by soldiers in Iraq many feel that their mission has brought hope and a better life to Iraqui citizens with schools being rebuilt and infrastructure being installed. They see the faces of the Iraquis and feel a responsibility to do what they can do to help. If we could continue the humanitarian and rebuilding efforts and turn over the policing to the Iraqui military and police it might be worth staying the course.
I hope that Bush knows something we don't that is convincing him to stick doggedly to this course of action, because righ now, it looks as though he's being bull headed to prove a point....and he's paying for it in young American lives. Democrats HAD to vote to give him the money or face the parents of those soldiers whose boys are at risk. They have rightly laid the responsibility for the risk at Bush's door. It's going to be a hell of a legacy, one way or another.

Anonymous said...

I'll be brief. I believe that we should not have gone into Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan or any other country where we were not asked to help. America has enough problems here that we don't need to run off and play daddy to the rest of the world every time it pricks it's finger. Don't get me wrong as I know that you have all heard this same story before but it is just the one that I agree with the most. Fix the problems here: education, homelessness, violent crime, etc... My point is that the world is all grown up now. We don't have to give them the keys every time they ask to borrow the car.

Courtney said...

You screwed up your argument here a little. We did go after Bin Laden. We invaded Afghanistan. Then we invaded Iraq. Just a minor tidbit

Courtney said...

Unfortunately, I get caught up in the strategic/tactical issue rather than the political issue. Its terrible to think about the fact that our nation's military is 50 years behind in its strategic philosophy. We are gearing up for a war which was never fought; one where we line up our tanks and they line up theirs and we SMASH EM TOGETHER! real hard. And then we see who is the winner. See, thats fun. We can build bigger, better weapons with awesome destructive powers and high survivability. But what we don't realize is, there is no USSR anymore. There hasn't been for nearly two decades, yet we haven't changed our strategy. Happened in Vietnam and we didn't learn anything. Its a circulating problem characterized by molding and mechanical thinking on the parts of our general officers. And no, I didn't dream this up. I'll cite my reference: http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/05/2635198