Poisoned Keyboard

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Can't they please just come home?

I was all set to fill this space with a "freedom isn't free" piece about how many of the Current Administration's planners and executers of the war in Iraq either never served in the military, or served as little as humanly possible due to friends in high places. Then I was going to launch into a tirade on how many of the most vocal war supporters in this country are certainly of age to serve right now, and with the various military branches falling woefully short of recruiting goals month after month then it might be time to for them to put their money where their collective mouths are. In fact there is a brilliant effort underway right now by patriotboy called Operation Yellow Elephant which is attempting to convince members of the College Republicans to do their duty and sign up. As you would expect their success rate is: nil.

Anyway, that is what I was going to write about. Then I came across this picture taken in Iraq on June 11, 2005:





Goddammit.


That pretty much sums it up right there. One more father/son/husband won't be coming back, but the hits just keep on coming!

Can someone smarter than me please tell me why all these people (Iraqi, American, British, Human) are being shredded? Why are all the people who love them's lives being irrevocably altered? I know it used to be because Saddam helped al-Qaeda pull off 9/11. Then it was because Saddam had all these terrible weapons and could launch them at us in under 45 minutes and would do it at the drop a hat if he felt like it. Then it was because he had ignored UN resolution 1441 and wouldn't let inspectors look in the fridge of one of his palaces. Then it was to spread the light of democracy to the downtrodden Iraqi people. Well what is it this week? If the reasoning can shift around so much, doesn't that sort of indicate that there was another reason other than the ones we've been given all along? One that we never would have gone for, so they have to just keep throwing obfuscations at us, a new one as each previous one gets batted down?

Last week our Vice President said quite plainly in an interview that the insurgency is in its "last throes" and that this would all be over soon. Then we have Condi telling us this week that they've been saying "all along" that the war in an Iraq was a "generational commitment". Today we have Rumsfeld telling Congress that any sort of talk of a plan for withdrawal is a "serious mistake" that would be a "lifeline to the terrorists", and then right behind him was the testimony of General John Abizaid, the top commander in Iraq, telling us that the insurgency is a strong now as it was 6 months ago. Then, the icing on the cake is the leaked classified CIA report that states Iraq has become a far better urban training ground for those who wish to do us and others harm all over the world than Afgahnistan ever was. Despite this leaked report being splayed all over the papers, when pressed on it by Wolf Blitzer in an interview today, Dick Cheney responded "That report is classified. I don't discuss classified documents."

Who is in charge? Who is telling us the truth? Who has a plan? Why are we where we are now? Why did we go in the first place, and why can't they all just please come home?

The type of warfare that is being fought over there now is of the very lowest tech. Car bombs and people with explosives tied to their waist just waiting for the right moment to push the button do not need to be countered by stealth bombers and cruise missles. We are being outclassed by a type of warfare for which we are utterly unprepared, and our army is utterly unsuited. I see no reason why we cannot begin a strategic withdrawal by replacing equal numbers of our troops with Iraqi troops as they emerge from all this training we are supposedly giving them. Yes we screwed up, yes we made a mess of things, yes it would have been better to just blow up Saddam's limo with a Predator drone if it was so important to get him gone, but I think the time has come to face the fact that our presence is no longer part of the solution, but part of the problem.

3 Comments:

  • Hey bud... ummm well it is a long reason that you are asking for... short and sweet, if hard to understand.

    being the united states comes with a lot of responsability. making sure that tons of people are not killed without reason is one. (Sadam was directly/indirectly responsable for the deaths of a lot of people)

    so we ga and take him out, and we are still there? yeah. unfortunatly there are people that see this power vacume and think that their ability to kill and maim and strike fear in others gives them right to power. So.. we have to try and not let other people take over... so thats why. i will try and set up a blog for MY pics from the front line, if you wnat to see some moving photos, will put them there, with (hopefully) links to their photos.blogger site so you can link to or download them. ok i am out.

    --Jeremiah

    By Blogger The HEAD, at 6:44 PM  

  • Jeremiah, Given the far worse humanitarian crises in other parts of the world, your rationale fails. But I guess since the Sudan isn't sitting on a sea of oil, it's not the responsibility of the United States to stop the tons of people from being killed over there. And if it was such a humanitarian mission to go over to Iraq, why did the Bush administration need to flat out lie to us about WMDs? I sincerely hope you get out of there alive, but please don't insult our intelligence with this sort of rationalization.

    By Blogger Jason, at 7:03 PM  

  • Jeremiah,

    With all due respect to you personally and your current service to our country, I must disagree with your reasoning.

    Even if we assume that our military went to Iraq to get rid of a bad guy directly/indirectly responsible for the deaths of alot of people, and to make sure that tons more people are not killed... not only is that the 4th reason we have been given for the invasion and current occupation, it is most certainly NOT what our military is for. As I understand it, our armed forces are charged with defense of America and our Allies both home and abroad. That is it. Not making sure tons of people don't get killed, as that mission would surely have us flung all over the globe in hundreds of conflicts at any one time. I would argue that UN peacekeepers are more correctly given that task.

    The argument that Iraq posed such a threat to us or our allies that it required the entire might of the US military was awfully thin, and was subsequentially obliterated by the discovery that Saddam barely had 2 sticks to rub together.

    I guess my real problem is that Colin Powell warned the administration that "You break it, you buy it." They went ahead and broke it anyway, but now they are buying it with the currency of American soldiers lives. A tragic and pointless waste in my opinion.

    By Blogger Catastrophic, at 7:44 AM  

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