I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
vietnam was the same erroneous presuppositions proved bloodily wrong over and over and over again for a decade.
David Brooks lives in a fantasy world.
"The Iraqi people" is as simplistic a concept as "Iraqi elections," which are always gauzily described as if they are some kind of end game. In fact, they are just the beginning. But the beginning of what? The complications of how the elections will work, and the potential for even greater violence following them, is never discussed.
All the Bushies can do is throw up myths and hope they stick. Unfortunately our wonderful media complex is particularly sticky in this regard.
Man, I would PAY to watch Phillips & Friedman and Brooks in a war zone getting shot at.
Getting themselves killed would just be a bonus.
There is a simple principle: If they want freedom, they will do it themselves, thank you for asking.
The Bushies ignored this -- and their own ideology about nation-building.
Neurotics build castles in the air.
Psychotics live in them.
And David Brooks is their real estate agent.
"The Iraqi people" are "the terrorists", "insurgents" and "foreign fighters". In Bushland, though, the Iraqi people are a small clique of London millionaires who imagine they will rule Iraq in the last days of its oil wealth.
i don’t mind folks talking about the Iraqi people, I just wonder when they talk about the American people as in did we lose the american people, I mean which planet were they talking from, it was ludicrous, if ya hadda ask, ya did already.
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That is usually a good rule of thumb.
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I can't recall the precise quote, but Allan Sherman, in his essential book The Rape of the A*P*E, proposed a Perpetual War Zone. Basically, the idea was to rope off Greenland. Anybody -- countries, corporations, sports teams, neighbors -- who Had Had Enough and felt there was no other solution to a problem besides deadly violence could to the the PWZ and take out their frustrations on each other. Anything from switchblades to tactical nukes would be available for rental.
The kicker was that anyone who started hostilities anywhere else in the world would be parachuted naked into the middle of the PWZ.
So, Brookie... what's your chute size?
I think we forget the mayhem that follows a change of regimes, a la France in 1790's, Russia early last century etc...
Iraq may have a bright future yet. Five years from now we will know, for now, just hope.
Partition America!
The complications of how the elections will work, and the potential for even greater violence following them, is never discussed.
Agreed. And mythologizing the collective will of the "Iraqi people" is a pre-emptive strike to shift the blame if this administration happens to be in power when the Iraqi elections go south.
If Brooks were in Manhattan and the electricity had been off for months, there was no clean running water, sewage spewed in the streets, garbage and rats were everywhere, his wife and kids were sick and dying from contracting disease, armed insurgents roamed the streets easily recruiting people to join the cause since 50% of the people were unemployed and it would be taking your life into your hands to simply go out to buy a quart of milk, how big of a Bloomberg supporter do you think he'd be?
And if he wasn't willing to support Bloomberg in those conditions, according to his own reasoning, it would be acceptable to kill him.
Brooks is just one big sick joke.
I explained our goals to an Iraq-born cab driver in New York.
He told me the Iraqi people would be more inclined to believe we wanted Jeffersonian democracy for them if the neocons were not so reliant on Straussian philosophy.
Well, I was about to give props to myself for my first attempt at tags being successful, until I saw that I forgot to sign my comment. *sigh*
If you read deeply in the literature of the American Revolution you'll see a fascinating thing about war.
All the rhetoric of freedom, independence, and liberty mainly came from the ruling elite. The frequency with which the average or middling person questions the sincerity of men like Washington is a real eye-opener.
Your average person may have got up for such things from time to time, but by and large the primary motivation for most of the fighting was revenge, not patriotic enthusiasm, love of country, or some abstract longing for freedom and liberty.
A lot of people came down off the fence in the first few years of the fighting. Your average Whig or your average Tory was much more likely to be motivated by anger at the other side for destroying property (that beautiful city of Charleston! now gone), killing loved ones (my mother meant no harm to anybody!), or other war crimes, such as rape and theft and torture.
There's no way the US can hope to win the hearts and minds of people when they are destroying so much property and killing so many innocent bystanders. Anyone who doesn't understand why the US occupation is destined to fail should read more about the American revolution.
I'm not saying the insurgents are the equivalent of the American rebels, and our war was much more of a Civil War to be sure, but it's not possible for most Americans to imagine what it's like to be in a destructive war, day in and day out, without a lot of study. And this is a good book to study for that purpose:
http://tinyurl.com/6mclf
I don’t understand why CBS can’t air the report, that would be caving in to the RW hooeys, what is that all about.
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It’s like saying, oh I am not gonna brush my teeth any more because I had a weird experience a week ago.
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Oh yeah, so what, get back on it.
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Bringing out reports is what they do, they have a report they gotta bring it out.
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It’s just ludicrous to be sitting on stuff.
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Let them air it and folks will figure it out, if stuff hasta be changed, it’ll get changed, just keep moving it along.
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But we transferred soverignty two days ahead of schedule!
Stinky, the Manhattan you describe existed until Giuliani came along and did exactly what everybody said could not be done.
An appeal to "the people" is also a classic move populists make when they're trying to advocate populist influence without, at the same time, advocating democracy. I'm not certain, but that seems like what is going on here--it allows them to ascribe a motivation to an entire body of people, without having to admit the conflicts within that body.
I'm so glad you blew off my arms.
Now I won't be enticed by firearms.
That kite-flying shit
Was a bore, I'll admit,
And to eat with your feet has its charms.
Of course, this attitude is exactly complementary to the one that drives "privatization" in domestic policy. These people don't understand that legitimate governance is something people have to co-operately produce. They think they can dismantle the institutions of civic life at home, auction everything off for a quick buck to their cronies -- and they can scavange the earth for loot. Their "theorists" actually talk about society in terms of a "spontaneous order"! Ultimately they have nothing but racism to fall back on to explain why their free-market Iraqi utopia is failing: the brown skins can't make a go of it. Presumably, something like the same racism (or at least just some idiot tribal nationalism) fuels the typical Republican's sublimely stupid expectation that somehow you can drown government in the bathtub and still have a fully intact stable American society to spend your tax-cut in.
Diogenes: I didn't realize that France and Russia were invaded by other countries and had new regimes forced upon them.
But now that you've educated me, I've changed my mind about Iraq.
Future's so bright, gotta wear shades!
emptywheel, what conflicts? What populists? The people are united, against the foreign invaders and Baathists and Washington puppeteers! That's the "problem"!
What I am also wondering about is when exactly Louisiana is gonna catch the wave and grok that Kerry is The Man.
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I don’t worry about double digit differentials, they can be totally hokey and change in a matter of coupla days, but I am just wondering when they are gonna officially grok that Kerry is The Man and we have to be for Kerry, thank you.
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Future's so bright, gotta wear shades!
Lisa
No need to be snarky, lisa. Can you guarantee Iraq will fail as a democracy? I didn't think so. There is room for disagreement.
As a matter of fact France and Russia did have free-market corporate thugs smash their way into their countries and try to "liberate" them, within this century too, and the results were not so good for Bush's ancestors. With the examples Diogenes gave, though, you'd wonder what the hell a troll sees as so good about the Directory or SMERSH, both of which were very "stable" and extremely centralized, unlike our angry young men of today...
What baffles me is how the Mama Likudniks fall like lemmings for the latest shill puppet 
.
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I mean, these are the chicks who supposedly pride themselves how hard nosed and astute and wary they are and they go ga ga over the latest shill puppet, this has been the most hilarious part of the elucidation of how they react.
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Ha, ha, ha.
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Interesting isn't that, any Iraqi who is "not" for the US plan of Government in Iraq is labeled as a "terrorist".
Also, note that when people argued that there were no terrorist links in Iraq before the war, the wonton acts of mayhem and violence by Iraqis now is being used by Bush to illustrate that Iraq was a haven for terrorists along.
Sad fact is that I'm in a spot where I "see" the coming and the going, and what I hear them say is that "they" are fighting terrorists in the streets there.
I guess if one goes back to the revolutionary days in America, the Brits would have said the same thing about the colonists too that were fighting against King and Crown.
regards
.
Can you guarantee Iraq will fail as a democracy?
I can't guarantee anything but, I would bet my house that there will be not be a democracy in Eye-Rack at any time in the next century.
New Newsweek Poll if you want vote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6092.../site/newsweek/
I'll start listening to anything anybody of the Brooks ilk has to say the day they stop using the terms Iraqis and tribes in the same sentence.
Every day of this horror - tribes.
Maybe Brooks could tell us -his- tribe so that I, an urban, educated technocrat can treat with his wisemen and smoke a peace pipe, give him a few trinkets and explain the virtues of clean water, all so as to help him on the road to democracy.
In all the shrovian rhetoric about Iraqis 'welcoming US troops with flowers' why was it that the companion meme became 'tribal' instead of Maquis? Why did the Perle analogy rely on the end of Vichy rather than the combat forces of Aguinaldo?
Can you guarantee Iraq will fail as a democracy?
Ummm, does it count as a "guarantee" to scream "what the fuck planet are you on that you have any reason whatsoever to imagine that in a hundred years Iraq will have any hope of any semblance to democracy?" Is it the deomcracy-spreading Shi'ites putting in a good word for democratic Iran? The democratic Sunnis who want to keep ther old privileges? The democratic Kurds who want to not only split but destabilize the entire region and start breaking up other countries too? The democratic Political Islamists who have established themselves as an authority? The democratic ex-Baathist murderers like Allawi who cannot control anything beyond their city block? Where the hell do you see democracy? In still-Taliban-and-warlord-dominated-Afghanistan? Where is there any room for "disagreement"? Is there room for disagreement over whether or not democracy could spontaneously happen on the moon or the floor of the ocean?
The question is not whether Iraq will ever become some sort of "free" democracy. The question American voters are asking is "There were no WMDs, thousands of US troops wounded, over 1000 killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis dead, US prestige in the World demeaned, Administration looks like pathetic cheerleaders for a failed cause- IT THIS WORTH IT? WHAT'S THE PLAN TO GET OUT? WHY DIDN'T THE ADMINISTRATION PLAN POST-INVASION BETTER? Who gives a crap whether Iraq becomes a democracy. If your logic is Democracy is better than BAD GUY SADAAM, then you had better institute THE DRAFT and start invading the dozens of other countries where they are not FREE...
Republicans == Monsters
Vague platitudes and sweeping generalizations offered up without any real understanding of the situation beyond the censored reports my advisors are feeding me. Plus a sense that the media and the liberals in Hollywood are somehow out to get me.
God, I'd like a drink. Or some blow.
I wonder what Dick's doing right now.
Ask Pedro what's for lunch.
What if, some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you . . ."
Man, I would PAY to watch Phillips & Friedman and Brooks in a war zone getting shot at.
Getting themselves killed would just be a bonus.
Felix Deutsch
Felix, you can be a rich man by going to that reality t.v. producer guru who created Survivor.
I think a reality t.v. show that follows out of touch media morons as they try to report on the inside story in Iraq would be great for ratings...
Survivor Al Anbar!
Brooks and his fellow war whores compete to score interviews with al Zaqarwi and al Sadr while also interviewing Iraqis dying from their wounds and asking them whether or not they understand that their deaths are for a great purpose...
Just imagine the intrigue as Phillips and Hannity form an alliance against Novack and Hume, and you will never believe what happens between Krauthamer and Judith Miller as they try to find a respite from the 120 degree heat!
But you ask, why would they ever agree to do this?
Well, all those who don't accomplish the tasks will never be allowed to print their dreck ever again, or get on the air. They shall be banished forever from public discourse. For most of these egomaniacs, that wpuld be a fate worse than death.
Can you guarantee Iraq will fail as a democracy?
Hell fucking yes I can guarantee Iraq will fail as a democracy. Any 18 year old freshman poli sci student can guarantee that.
penalcolony
You are funny
Is it time now to just come out and say that the people of Iraq were better off under Saddam than they are now, and for the forseeable future. Saying they are better off now because they are free is a load of simple minded crap.
Is it time to now say the only viable course of action is to just get out of Iraq ASAP, which means NOW. Just get out and take our dozen or so military bases with us.
Everytime a child is pulled from rubble caused by an American bomb, the U.S. loses the support of an entire Iraqi extended family (that is IF the family supported the U.S. in the first place). The bottom line is that the U.S., and ANY Iraqi seen as a supporter of the U.S., is totally screwed in Iraq - period. What a mess....
People who blindly support The Idiot don't ask themselves tough questions about this stupid invasion because deep-down they know the answer: The Idiot and his corporate sponsers LIED to US and have created a mini-Viet Nam. Republicans would rather reduce things to a bumper sticker for their cars or very simplistic Pavlovian response, preferably three words or less: Kerry likes Sadaam! How pathetic to call yourself a Republican, have no legitimate issues/solutions/strategy, only blind faith in an irresponsible, failed alcoholic who has never even held a real job and ignored a memo titled 'BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE THE U.S.' and then had the audacity to profit politically from the biggest tragedy in history - on his watch.
Juan Cole links to this informative (though badly translated) rundown of Iraqi resistance groups:
http://tinyurl.com/49ocr
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing
I just don't understand how Americans can not understand this. I hate Bush and don't believe he was legitimately elected. I think he's done our country serious harm and needlessly killed over a thousand Americans. Yet, if Iraq had decided to attack American in order to depose Bush, I'd be fighting the Iraquis. What's difficult to understand?
Ummm, does it count as a "guarantee" to scream "what the fuck planet are you on that you have any reason whatsoever to imagine that in a hundred years Iraq will have any hope of any semblance to democracy?"...Is there room for disagreement over whether or not democracy could spontaneously happen on the moon or the floor of the ocean?
k&y
It is difficult to argue with you. Then again, it is difficult to argue with anyone who so easily becomes hysterical. Look at Ireland. They said all the same things about them, can't govern themselves, tribal etc..., that you say about Iraqis. Look at the country now. Took them a long time to get where they are but they are here now. Iraq can do as good, that is all I am saying.
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
They said all the same things about them, can't govern themselves, tribal etc..., that you say about Iraqis. Look at the country now.
Um, Ireland wasn't sitting on billions of dollars worth of oil, wasn't invaded by the United States, isn't in the Middle East and wasn't crippled by a decade of U.N. sanctions that made its people among the poorest on Earth.
How many "smart" bombs blew Iraqi apartment complexes to smithereens in the past 100 years? How about blown roads, sewage pipes, water pipes and other infrastructure?
Look at Ireland. They said all the same things about them, can't govern themselves, tribal etc..., that you say about Iraqis. -Diogenes
Diogenes: When you need an apple compared to a screwdriver.™
So, Diogenes, your point is that democracy in Iraq is a good thing. Nobody is arguing against that straw man. The greater question, aside from the Administrations known perpetuation of false intelligence and the fact that Iraq never posed a threat, never was significantly involved in organized terrorism, is WHY ARE WE SO CONCERNED ABOUT "DEMOCRACY" AND "FREEDOM" IN IRAQ if we are not going to invade every country with despotic government? There is no logic and the argument that "Iraq is better off now" is invalid unless you apply it world-wide. If you don't state clearly that the U.S. must invade every country to remove bad governments, then you have no basis for saying so regarding unless there is a differentiator (is that a word) such as Iraq is strategic because of oil and because we need new military bases before Saudi Arabia falls...whatever your argument, nobody cares to point out the obvious, which is if we bomb the crap out of Iraq and declare it a democracy you can call that "better", but at what value to the US? Every Bush supporter should be required to meet with families of fallen US troops or hostages and explain how much better Iraq is now, so thanks for your dead child.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing
Anonymous
Anonymous, I so much would have liked for that God damn Hitler to remain content as a failing artist and for that fuck-up W to have just sat on his ass and remain a spoiled, failed, but still rich bidness man.
Now that would have been the fucking honorable thing to do.
W's mamma should have slapped his face and said, "for the good of god and country, georgie, if you ever run for political office i am going to have to kick your ass, and you know i'll do it, too."
Diogenes, Bush's own intelligence reports say that Iraq is not going to become a democracy any time soon - sure as hell not by January.
What you'll see in the next few years, if you're lucky and civil war doesn't break out is a "benevolent" strong dictatorship like the ones found in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or the former Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito, or the current Russia under Putin. A strong central leader willing to rule with an iron hand, completely quash dissent and even torture or imprison political opponents while holding the occasional "election" and addressing a "parliament" for good measure is the most likely scenario.
And that's really an optimistic view.
Um, Ireland wasn't sitting on billions of dollars worth of oil, wasn't invaded by the United States, isn't in the Middle East and wasn't crippled by a decade of U.N. sanctions that made its people among the poorest on Earth.
How many "smart" bombs blew Iraqi apartment complexes to smithereens in the past 100 years? How about blown roads, sewage pipes, water pipes and other infrastructure?
Old Hat
Um, no, they were always among the poorest because their oppresor was right next door, taking their wealth. Dublin is closer to London than Belfast, yet the Irish managed what surely seemed the impossible at the time. And, no, they didn't have the advantage of great natural wealth that the Iraqis do, in the form of oil. Thanks for pointing that out.
Billy B, I think that is way too downie.
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I think there will be democracy not just in Eye rack but in many of the Central Asia and Mid East countries.
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However, it will take a vastly different approach from the Bushie lip service deal.
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Bushie deal is Lip Service for democracy and reality for shill puppets and docile dictators.
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Everyone knows that.
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What all of this proves, repeatedly, is that for all the talk of "liberation," Brooks and his ilk don't actually see Iraqis as people like us. They have a complete inability to empathize with ordinary Iraqis, or to grant them reasoning powers equal to our own, and they treat that incapacity as though it's an insight. The deficit in their OWN humanity, they project onto Iraqis. It's classic colonial thinking: "They don't feel it like we do" + "They don't understand where their best interest lie."
3,000 Americans dead (give or take)? That "changes everything." 25,000 Iraqis dead? "Well, we need to take the historical perspective here..."
And we also get the wonderful fiction that if we give the Iraqis electricity, or a race-track, they'll look at it from a cost/benefit standpoint. "Well, my son and mother were blown to pieces in front of me....but there IS that Olympic team. So I guess it all evens out in the end."
That's not how people think. We know it...a huge part of our popular culture revolves around revenge, and taking the law into one's own hands to exact retribution. But the Iraqis are treated as children who'll accept the loss of a parent, as long as they're given a lollipop and told that the parent's up in Heaven and doing just fine.
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing."
Anonymous
Geez -- now the trolls are getting their talking points from fortune cookies.
How many people have been killed and maimed because of Bush's life spent making mistakes?
Look at Ireland. They said all the same things about them, can't govern themselves, tribal etc..., that you say about Iraqis. -Diogenes
Diogenes: When you need an apple compared to a screwdriver.™
Old Hat
Ireland was also a screwed up mess occupied by British soldiers for what, 400 years?
Atrios, this is a very good post. It always bothered my subconsciousness to hear the term "Iraqi people", but I counted it on the general use of such terms to imply unanimity as the reason for my irritation. You showed why the term is so very obnoxious. There is no such thing as the "Iraqi people" in terms of public opinion; they cannot be polled.
Um, no, they were always among the poorest because their oppresor was right next door, taking their wealth.
Danny-Boy-the-pipes-are-calling.
Ireland is nothing like Iraq.
Give it a 100 years, and Iraq'll be socialist, same as everywhere else.
Yes, Iraq can do good.
k and y, I don’t get your point, just because Sunnis, Shias and Kurds have different needs and issues, is that supposed to be a reason to exclude democracy.
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that is the first time I heard of it.
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who said they hadda be monotonous and homogenous to have a democracy, who toldjer that. 
.
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George Bush promotes democracy and protects human rights.
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Diogenes -
Go look up Aguinaldo. What is going on in Iraq now is not Viet Nam. It is not Ireland. It is Rove's fascinating with William McKinley gone wild, played out in a country of current strategic value, in precisely the same way that the Philippines were to McKinley and the other imperialists. It will end exactly the same way, most likely - very, very badly, at huge cost, to no particular benefit. There is no argument - the Iraqis never posed a threat of any kind to the Unted States so there cannot be any argument. The only discussion that remains possible is how to remove the creators of the offense and how to patch things back together. But, as always, the first step is to admit failure.
Incidentally, I think I was following Tena as she came thru NM yesterday on the way down from Colorado. Who else would have been driving Texas license-plated truck with a Kerry yard sign taped to it? There were tho enough K/E bumper stickers in the state to not feel guilty when I nearly took one out in traffic - lots of replacements.
That's not how people think. We know it...a huge part of our popular culture revolves around revenge, and taking the law into one's own hands to exact retribution. But the Iraqis are treated as children who'll accept the loss of a parent, as long as they're given a lollipop and told that the parent's up in Heaven and doing just fine.
Philalethes
I'm not getting your point. It was a mistake to get involved in Iraq, on that we probably agree. Now that we have broken it we must help to fix it. Or do we just take every soldier home right now? What would result from that?
Ireland was also a screwed up mess occupied by British soldiers for what, 400 years?
Here, you're missing the point. Ireland wasn't governed by an n-house fascist started a war with his neighbor that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Ireland isn't surrounded by autocratic kingdoms and dictatorships. And most of all, it's transition to a stable, modern economy in the 1990s wasn't preceded by having the country invaded by the U.S. in the 1980s. Plus it's more or less always had democratic institutions.
I don't understand why you're trying to make this comparison.
Iraq will not be a democracy in at least the next 30 years.
Bush is out of his everlovin mind. Everybody knows those Arabs and Eyeraqis are to dumb to make a deemocracy. Hell, they are barely smart enough to run a convienence store, what with those funny rags they wear on their head and everything.
Has anyone read "The Folly of Empire" by John B. Judis ?
Puts Bush and Iraq into perspective as Teddy R and the Spanish-American war of 100 years ago.
Explains a lot.
regards
.
With twin smiles and a tough disposition
BushAllawi describe a transition:
Elections for freedom
But who's gonna lead 'em?
Who cares? (And Iran's our next mission)
Look at Ireland. They said all the same things about them, can't govern themselves, tribal etc..., that you say about Iraqis. -Diogenes
The argument is actually: 1) You can't establish democracy by force; 2) Bush is incompetent, and everything he does is a disaster; 3) If we were worried about the Iraqis groaning under the yoke of a brutal authoritarian, we shouldn't have propped up Saddam in the eighties, and we shouldn't foist a former terrorist / CIA stooge like Allawi off on them today.
No one here has ever said that the Iraqis can't govern themselves. And hell, Bush is the one who's occupying the country after turning over "sovereignty" to them.
You guys have got nothing to say about any of this. You've been wrong about everything since before the war started, and yet you expect your ahistorical, Pollyanna burblings to be taken seriously now. You pat yourselves on the back for months over your superior grasp of realpolitik, and then retreat into airy Tinkerbelle daydreams about the prosperity and freedom that's just around the corner in Iraq. You fucked everything up, and left a huge mess for the adults to clean up, and you're still getting underfoot. Some goddamn nerve, is all I'll say.
FU anonymouse
NYC is still a pig sty - you can dress a pig but it's still a pig
and those of you philosophising about our founding fathers - bah - dont bother - they lived in a different time - that is why we need a new constitution...
we are running man - life has become one hollywood sci fi thriller a la clockwork orange...
The Brooksian pundits imagine that collectively the people of Iraq could sit down with Kyra Phillips and Tom Friedman and have the purpose of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" explained to them, and everything would be okay (and then Brooks could kill anyone who didn't get on board). But, it doesn't really work that way.
On the contrary, the Iraqi people understood it very well and they were very OK with it in the beginning.
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All the reports show that they were completely unconcerned about the shock and awe and all the rest of it.
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Our side had put out the message that we were for the Iraqi people and against only Saddam and his cronies.
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they believed it and they were going about their own bidness.
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The big mistake came after the topple.
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Everybody knows that, because then Friedman and Brooksey and their little buddy Bungling Bremer decided it was not OK to simply turn the country back to the Iraqi people, no, we hadda stay there and make a bog down and sucking sound for the rest of the decade.
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that was the big mistake and they promoted that we should have our troops all over the country busting into homes and disrupting elections and disrupting communities and the catastrophic spiral occured right after that.
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Do they understand why they were invaded? Do they talk about Operation Iraqi Freedom? My god, these people still don't get it...
April 19, 2003: "Joan Walsh, news editor of the online magazine Salon, was more concerned about the behaviour of her colleagues who, after weeks of ignoring the civilian cost of the war, were now circling the wounded like vultures. "CNN hit rock bottom on Wednesday morning, when anchor Kyra Phillips interviewed Ali's doctor in Kuwait," said Walsh. "Dr Imad al- Najada explained that, although Ali told reporters he was grateful for his treatment, he also hopes no other 'children in the war will suffer like what he suffered'. Phillips seemed shocked by Ali's apparent inability to understand we were only trying to help him. 'Doctor, does he understand why this war took place? Has he talked about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the meaning. Does he understand it?'"
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
I would rather be angry than ignorant in todays world.Are you suggesting we should let go of our anger and just "get along"?
The problem,today in America,is the fact that too many of us let go of our anger.None like to get burned on you metaphorical hot coal,hence we have a divided electorate that is blinded by the media and the king himself.
I do not advocate letting go of our anger at this moment.
I even advocate it for the right,only they should twice as angry at the media.For they are the ones who have been misled more than those of us here on the left.
Oo bad the right harbors its anger on the wrong target.One that will never be swung in the right direction untill we get a more even approach to news.
FOr what its worth.Ireland spent hundreds if not thousands of years trying to become self governing.
Brash, you write:
"The Idiot and his corporate sponsers LIED to US and have created a mini-Viet Nam."
while I agree with your post, you are one glaring mistake!: the idiots have created a major Viet Nam. (while the death toll may not reach as high, the long-term negatives that this war has sown will most likely prove to be greater than that of Viet Nam.)
Diogenes:
can you prove to us that democracy will take root in the next few years as a result of our invasion and occupation?
the liklihood is that at best all that can be hoped for is some kind of stability where security is maintained and there is some semblance of individual freedom.
as i posted elsewhere, Juan Cole commented that the poll W pointed to among Iraqis that said that 51% thought that the country was on the right track also indicated that 80% of Iraqis some form of Islamic or Sharia law to form the basis of their government.
This is also what Sistani expects, so don't be expecting women to be dancing in the streets of Fallujah or Baghdad any time soon.
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For me, the key to the spread of democracy and freedom throughout the Islamic world lies in Iran.
If the Iranians themselves - not through Western invasion - can free themselves of their Khomenist chains and replace fundamentalist rule with something better, that will be a true day of liberty and inspiration.
I wonder what would happen if 'the Iraqi people' conducted a UN/Carter Center monitored election in which the Question was "Resolved: The U.S./'Coalition' military forces currently in Iraq should leave Iraq - and not be replaced - no later than 30 days from the certification of this election" and the vote was clearly 'Yes, they should leave'... It would be interesting to see Bush attempt to explain why the will of 'the Iraqi people' should be ignored...
The bog down and sucking sound and spreading 160K troops all over the country being Mary Poppins and Joe Friday was the biggest catastrophic blunder the Bushies and their buddies made.
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Everyone knows that, the whole place went thuddy thud thud right after that series of blunders.
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And it didn’t stop there, it was simply laughable the way they dweebed and carried on over the catastrophic bungler Bremer, the most incompetent and useless dweeb on the planet and they put him there and not just that, they dweebed and carried on and said the most ludicrous things while our troops were being placed in harm’s way and Bremer was dweebing right along.
.......
Bush/Cheney/PNAC went in there to set up the capitalist state of their dreams. Best to do this when a country has vast oil reserves. Iraqis are totally pissed at us for many reasons which have been mentioned above. But just imagine the total hubris of saying you are liberating people when you are so obviously setting up to systematically control them and steal from them more or less permanently. The invasion had nothing to do with our security and nothing to do with their liberation. (Of course it has everything to do with our security now--and not in a good way.)
Does Kerry know that we MUST give up control of the Iraqi economy (to whom we would give up control to is another issue; Allawi is a puppet and a thug as far as I can tell)? He may know it, but will he be able to do it? Corporate friends of Bush/Cheney have been promised a free-for-all in Iraq. He will probably pay heavily if he tries to change the arrangements too much.
The idiots that run our government have ZERO understanding of human nature (probably because they are not human themselves).
"Now that we have broken it we must help to fix it."
And how do "we" do that? By bombing the hell out of towns and cities, pissing off the residents to the point they want revenge? There is no way for the U.S. to "fix" this mess - Iraq is lost....
I'm not getting your point. It was a mistake to get involved in Iraq, on that we probably agree. Now that we have broken it we must help to fix it. Or do we just take every soldier home right now? What would result from that?
Diogenes
OK, so the Mafia comes to your house and breaks your legs, and then sends its own doctor around to put 'em in a cast, and charges you 500 times the going rate, and expects to be lauded for its compassion on top of it.
It's not "You break it, you own it." It's "You break it, you own AND you get paid to fix it at whatever hourly rate you choose." Who made a bundle rebuilding Iraq after Gulf War I? Dick Cheney, among others.
We have no credibility, and we can't fix anything. We need to have Iraqis fix the infrastructure, and we need to foot the bill. Iraqi is full of engineers and scientists, and the can do a better job than Halliburton and Bechtel at a fraction of the price. We pay them to rebuild, they hire Iraqis do do the work. That's a start.
left a huge mess for the adults to clean up
Well, no one seems to have viable, make that any, suggestions concerning what we might actually do now that Bush has mucked it all up. Philalethes seems to think the adults will take care of it. Just who they are and what they might do is left unsaid, of course. Righteous anger is good, but how about some suggestions? Pull out all troops now? What?
Ya shoulda just seen the likes of Henry Kissinger cooing like a little dove over the Bungler, ya shoulda seen the little Mama Likudniks going all dewy and mushy the ones who usually glower and scare us silly, cooing and carrying on over the bungling Bremer.
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The Bungler wears a tie they said, oh yeah, so what, who the hooey cares, sheesh, what a bunch of colossal morons and dweeb heads, ya simply couldn’t believe it.
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I always had visions of him jogging around the Green Zone perimeter dressed in Speedos, a tie and those ludicrous boots of his.
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that was always the figure he made for me, he was catastrophically bungling and incompetent, not no garden variety nincompoop, no, who they picked and cooed over was the world class pick of bunglers and duffers, no wonder it all went thuddy thud thud and downhill all the way.
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Lyme Rickey rules! His latest goes below my composite of little Ali in his hospital bed with that heartbreaking look on his face and the Chimperor in his flight suit accomplishing his mission.
"Well, no one seems to have viable, make that any, suggestions concerning what we might actually do now that Bush has mucked it all up."
Fire the guy that mucked it up, to start with....
We pay them to rebuild, they hire Iraqis do do the work. That's a start.
That sounds like a good proposition. What to do about security? Also, who do we work with if elections are not held in January? Without a legitimate government there we have a big problem.
Well, no one seems to have viable, make that any, suggestions concerning what we might actually do now that Bush has mucked it all up. Philalethes seems to think the adults will take care of it. Just who they are and what they might do is left unsaid, of course. Righteous anger is good, but how about some suggestions? Pull out all troops now? What?
Diogenes
I'll say it again: You hire Iraqi engineering firms to rebuild, and they hire Iraqis. That gives Iraqis less unemployment, and more autonomy, plus the work gets done right and on time. And it'll be WAY cheaper than allowing war profiteers to attach their own personal spigot to the US treasury.
As for security, you get an international peacekeeping force, with the USA footing the bill. They do what the situation dictates, instead of attacking / not attacking based on where Bush stands in the polls. It won't be easy, or solve every problem, but it beats what we've got now. As Kerry said, just because BushCo can't do something, that doesn't mean it can't be done. Besides, when you've got a serious problem, you don't rely on dishonest incompetents to solve it...especially not when they're the SAME dishonest incompetents who caused the problem in the first place!
And yes, we need to pull all our troops out of there. But if we don't do that, then we need to supply and feed them adequately, and we need someone sane in charge of them in place of Donald Rumsfeld, who's as stupid and crazy a man as I've ever seen in public office. Regime change in the USA is essential to fixing Iraq; without that, nothing else will work.
Fire the guy that mucked it up, to start with....
wolf-man | Email | Homepage | 09.25.04 - 2:10 pm | #
Excellent place to start and then keep the thugniks away from the Oval Office for the next 4 terms.
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Laugh hilariously every time Friedman and Brooksey open their silly mouths with more silly suggestions, ignore the moronic hand wringings of the Tokyo Rosebuds like Kenny Boy Pollack and others.
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there’s plenny more and we’ll be coming up with them all through the process.
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"Ireland was also a screwed up mess occupied by British soldiers for what, 400 years?"
You're thinking of either Ireland or India.
Iraq was never occupied by anybody except, surprise! The United States. As a tri-part entity it was ruled by the Ottoman Empire until the end of the Great War, 1919. At that time, Mesopotamia, was briefly under British mandate and then as the result of a national election, became a monarchy under Faisal, the son of Abdullah of Mecca, and remained a monarchy from 1921-1958. The primary military action involved the British air war against Turkey's post-war attempts on Iraq (5 September, 1922 - going as far as massing troops on the Turkish-Iraqi border and infiltrating irregular forces into Iraq.... 1 October
The Royal Air Force (RAF) assumes military control of Iraq and throughout the winter of 1922-23, irregular posts are located and attacked from the air.)
There is as always, more to it than this, but other than the mandatory, from 1921-1958 Iraq was in the development/post-colonial cycle of much of the Middle East, under a monarchy. After the Revolution of 1958, which was based on Iraqi independence from foreign oil control as much as abolition of the monarchy, the Ba'ath Socialist party, a purely secular and politically progressive entity governed Iraq. The British, subsequent to Suez, lost whatever political and military control they had in the region.
Gee. Not a whole lot of tribal chaos post 1919 is there? Pretty damn close to being a damn paradigm of post-colonial development within an oil economy incredibly screwed up by the assault of a bunch of half-baked, ignorant neo-imperialists who hadn't read a book of history on the area but -did- see Lawrence of Arabia several times.
Diogenes, good try, but the discussion is not gonna go there till Bushie gets his sorry tuchas bounced, the discussion is gonna stay on how and how much they catastrophically bungled and even after that, it is gonna stay on Bushies bungles for a long time.
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There are many good reasons for it.
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First, it is to keep the bungles front and center so people grok them well and know who is responsible, second, so they never try to pull their hokey revisionist jive and pull the same blow hard bamboozle on us again and again and the Third good reason, is it keeps it in front of us, so we stay motivated all the way upto November 2, to bounce the Bushies sorry butt all the way back to Maine.
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But remembering and reciting the reasons for the Bush Bungles is a very important way of ensuring we remember who made the mess and we don’t fall for the same jive over and over again.
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How much do we really know of what is going on there? Is there a possibility that a genuine set of "reasonable" leaders [i.e., as reasonable as we could hope for given the circumstances] would/could emerge if the Bush administration weren't pushing it's version of the way it wants things to go? If Kerry is elected, when he assumes office in January he has to evaluate immediately whether Iraqi elections can actually happen. He has to set up the summit with world leaders to plan for the transition of Iraq to self-government. Bush COULD DO THIS HIMSELF BUT HE WON'T BECAUSE THEY DON'T WANT TO GIVE UP CONTROL. And even if Bush tried to, he wouldn't get any cooperation because the world largely hates him.
If I were Kerry, I would set up this summit but I would also immediately call together anyone who is in Iraq who can tell me what is really going on there; is there an emerging, non-terrorist leadership of any kind? How unstable is it? Do we have any group who would ally themselves with us if only we stopped acting like such idiots? I would make overtures behind the scenes to any groups or individuals who are identified as emerging or potential leaders. I would tell them we want to find the right way to hand over control to them (and I would really mean it). Once a leadership structure is identified or elected, I would ask leaders to set up regular meetings of people in neighborhoods and have them list and prioritize their problems. I would also ask them to suggest solutions that would put them to work. I would dismiss foreign contractors from jobs that can be done by Iraqis and hire them immediately. I would use Halliburton to clean up the sewage problem. I would make sure that Iraqis got all the equipment they needed to fix their electrical grid, hospitals, etc. I know that the troops have been doing \this work but I have read that they have been hampered by lack of equipment and so forth. I would definitely free up the Iraq reconstruction money that hasn't been spent in an appropriate manner. If I were Kerry, I would go over there and talk to them directly. Obviously, something like this has to be meticulously planned. Some good will would have to built first. It would be a huge gesture of good will to tell them directly that the government of the U.S. has changed, that the new government is actively committed to REALLY giving them their country back but feels that we cannot leave them in a shambles. He should elicit CONSENT from them to plan the U.S. exit strategy. It would go a long way if he would apologize to them for the mess we have made, but that will never happen--Republicans would have him shot. It would take a lot of skill to do this successfully. Then we would really have to follow through. Okay, so I am naive and idealistic. If none of this kind of approach would work, I would then get the hell out.
It reminds me of when Brokaw made his incomparable buffoon faux pas. He completely misread the mood out here and dweebiely suggested we should all become devoted little followers and busy ourselves planting devoted little victory gardens for dear leader. Not one word about how dear leader was bungling on a massively catastrophic scale and when the hooey was it gonna stop, not one word for all the massive bungling and misconception that had gone into creating the catastrophic downturns, not one word for how much dear leader had looted from social security and when the hooey was it gonna get put back, just a dweebiely doting suggestion on how us folks can make ourselves docilely devoted to dear leader’s huffing bungles further down the road.
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Ha, ha, ha, that was the clue that dude was totally Lacking Clue.
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Not the only one before or since, I am shore, but that was the one main hallmark episode for me.
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Well, well, well.
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You hire Iraqi engineering firms to rebuild
Darn Haloscan collapsed. How long will it take these firms to do the work? How many of them are there? Were there any non state-owned engineering enterprises there before Bush invaded? If they are inadequate to rebuild Iraq in a timely fashion perhaps Iraqis might prefer foreign companies help to do it more quickly? Who do we ask?
As for security, you get an international peacekeeping force
No one wants to do this. The UN got bombed and left Iraq. What if Kerry can't convince an international force?
Regime change in the USA is essential to fixing Iraq; without that, nothing else will work.
I like the sound of it but has Kerry said anything about Iraq that inspires confidence? As best I can tell, his longest held opinions seem to mirror Bush's.
And what if elections are not held in January? Who does Kerry deal with then?
Bush just looks and sound less and less credible when he lies about how wonderful everything is in Iraq. Has anyone else noticed that when he's telling a real whopper he does thing thing of kind of pointing to himself with both hand? You know, he kind of puts both of his hands on his chest and says, "I know it's hard work brining freedome to a country, but I'm a resoulte leader." His voice goes up a couple of notches likes a scared kid and he holds both hands just a fraction of an inch away from his chest with the fingers curled in at the ends. I'd say it's a tell, but a more accurate tell is when he opens his mouth.
Leslie, it is not either or, it is gonna be both.
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Diogenes,
First, you answer those questions assuming Bush remains in power.
Then, go read Kerry's two speeches this week.
My favorite 'winger rationale for the war was that the Iraqi People aksed us to invade. As if Chalabi and his playmates in the INC had anything to do with Iraq.
What I love about Diogenes--apart from his self-identification with a philosophical school so totally antithetical to what he says in his posts--is that the very fact that he can ask the questions he does, confirms that BushCo has bungled this war.
And this being the case, he sits down in a mood of high seriousness in order to consider the question of how the Iraq problem should be solved, and by whom. And the conclusion, as far as I can tell, is that we should forget everything we know about politics, history, commonsense, and human nature, in order to give the Bush Doctrine a little elbow-room.
Stand and tremble, thou heathens, before the clear-eyed, hard-headed realism of the Right!
Pure comedy, if people weren't being killed and maimed.
Pretty damn close to being a damn paradigm of post-colonial development within an oil economy incredibly screwed up by the assault of a bunch of half-baked, ignorant neo-imperialists who hadn't read a book of history on the area but -did- see Lawrence of Arabia several times.
Yeah, except for that pesky dictator and genocide perpetrator. Pretty damn close, indeed!
diogenes,
you are looking for a magic bullet, and there is no such thing... lots more people are going to die for the foreseeable future, but if we don't vote that asshole out of office come Nov. 2, there are going to be a shitload more.
kerry is going to make it more likely that a working relationship is formed that increases the liklihood that Iraqis get quicker training, more international aid, and more iraqi people working.
plus, there will be a much greater liklihood that the US, working with the UN and other democracies, will be able to wage a more effective war on poverty, disease, political instability throughout the world as well as advance human rights.
get out of the way, bush, you are a roadblock to world peace.
What I love about Diogenes--apart from his self-identification with a philosophical school so totally antithetical to what he says in his posts--is that the very fact that he can ask the questions he does, confirms that BushCo has bungled this war.
And this being the case, he sits down in a mood of high seriousness in order to consider the question of how the Iraq problem should be solved, and by whom. And the conclusion, as far as I can tell, is that we should forget everything we know about politics, history, commonsense, and human nature, in order to give the Bush Doctrine a little elbow-room.
Stand and tremble, thou heathens, before the clear-eyed, hard-headed realism of the Right!
Pure comedy, if people weren't being killed and maimed.
Philalethes
And all Philalethes does is mock people and feign indignation. The point to be made is you folks want no solutions. You are so dominated by your hatreds and prejudices that progress of any type is abhorrent. You will hate this country even after Kerry is elected. People of your sort have never, and will never, achieve anything. Probably a bunch of lonely copy editors. And I still have the lantern Philalethes, will have it forever if I do not leave this place. I pity you all, wretched human beings. Let me wash now.
I like the sound of it but has Kerry said anything about Iraq that inspires confidence? As best I can tell, his longest held opinions seem to mirror Bush's.
And what if elections are not held in January? Who does Kerry deal with then?
Diogenes
this post of yours was just silly. At first I thought you might be sincere, but I see that you are just playing around and no longer worth reading.
Kerry has already made it pretty clear that there should be no elections until all can vote.
Ciao.
What I love about Philalethes is his name. Only a dandified twit would cop such moniker. Seeker of truth! If only. And he does it all with a straight face.
Incidentally, I'd like to lay odds on 'Diogenes', 'Chimpy2' and my personal favorite, Mr. Ring-knocker himself, 'DC' are all the same. It's that oh so soothing voice of reason, chiding and filled with such sadness at this board's inability to understand the truth....
Ciao.
smarty jones
Sorry, smarty. Was being serious but let Phils get better of me. Been working hard to shift to Kerry and am almost there. Sick to death of Bush. My apologies.
"Only a dandified twit would cop such moniker."
Hey, Phila, you're wearing your monocle, jodhpurs, and ascot I hope! 
.
How long will it take these firms to do the work?
How long will it take Halliburton? Personally, I trust Iraqi firms to do a better and faster job.
How many of them are there?
Iraq has a highly educated population, and formerly had lots of universities, and lots of degrees particularly engineers and architects. I love how we're so terrified of their nuclear scientists and chemists and microbiologists...but the idea that they'd know how to build a water-filtration system strains our credulity.
Were there any non state-owned engineering enterprises there before Bush invaded?
Yes, there were. And what would it matter if they'd ALL been state-owned, anyway? How would being "state-owned" under Saddam affect their ability to design buildings?
If they are inadequate to rebuild Iraq in a timely fashion perhaps Iraqis might prefer foreign companies help to do it more quickly?
More quickly? MORE QUICKLY?! They don't have electricty or running water or sewage treatment in most of the country, over a year after we bombed their infrastructure to smithereens! Iraqi engineers have to LIVE in their cities, along with their families and friends; they're not lolling around in well-appointed, privately powered maximum-security chambers in Saddam's former compound in the Green Zone.
It's an astonishing line of argument. The situation Bush caused is so bad and so intractable, that we can't trust anybody but Bush to deal with it.
Look, Diogenes, all Kerry has to do is be OPEN TO REALITY, and he'll be halfway to solving the problems while Bush still has his head in the sand. It doesn't take genius to solve these problems; it takes open eyes and an open mind. You can't solve problems by pretending they don't exist.
Ha! Diogenes got spanked and now posts an attack on Philalethes as "anonymous"!
the extent to which the right goes to try to distract themselves from the fact that they support a chimp-in-cheif is downright sad, but all too predictable!
GWPDA nails it again. Wow, I don't think the original Diogenes was nearly so hate-filled.
Diogenes:
1. Toss out BushCo
2. Withdraw troops
3. Offer overly generous reparations
4. Hope another "strongman" emerges to restore stability.
That's about the best that can be done now. Clear enough a solution for you?
.
What I love about Philalethes is his name. Only a dandified twit would cop such moniker. Seeker of truth! If only. And he does it all with a straight face.
Anonymous
Pardon me, mater, I'm off to play the grand piano!
It's not "seeker," by the way; it's "lover." And if "dandified twit" is the worst thing you can call me, you don't know me very well!
Thanks for helping me to remember those dear dead days in fourth grade, though.
1. Toss out BushCo
2. Withdraw troops
3. Offer overly generous reparations
4. Hope another "strongman" emerges to restore stability.
That's about the best that can be done now. Clear enough a solution for you?
Clear and succint. Best I have heard yet.
"pesky dictator and genocide perpetrator" - Shrub? Noriega? Putin? Aguinaldo? Villa? What country are you discussing? South Africa? Sudan? Rhodesia? Saudi?
The mid-century habit of the United States of simply declaring any locale which contained significant strategic interests to be run by a dictator and thus fair game for invasion/coercion/ or co-optation is really a little old fashion, don't you think? Granted the modification of the charge of genocide makes a nice updating, but that's not terribly different from the classic propaganda elements used to acquire dominance throughout South and Middle America and other key areas.
But look away! Surely there's a scandal about someone being naked, somewhere!
Hey, Phila, you're wearing your monocle, jodhpurs, and ascot I hope!
spork_incident
Well, I took the monocle out so that I could eat my cucumber sandwiches. But other than that, you're spot on, my dear chap.
I say, though, this Diogenes fellow...doesn't quite play the game, eh? Not quite cricket. Terrible the way these blighters get above themselves nowadays. Whole country's going to the demnition bow-wows.
I pity you all, wretched human beings.
Cool...I broke its brain!
mmmmmmm.... cucumber sandwiches....
Sorry, smarty. Was being serious but let Phils get better of me. Been working hard to shift to Kerry and am almost there. Sick to death of Bush. My apologies.
Diogenes
I don't believe you for a second; however, if you are truly giving Kerry a good look, why the hell are you here when, as hecate says, you could take the time to read his own words?
its like those Nader trolls... "I'm crying because I have not been treated nicely by you people. I was open to voting for kerry but now i see how you people really are! boo! hoo!" sad fuckers!
by the way, diogenes,
take this test:
An administration official gets intelligence that al qaeda is planning spectacular attacks, possibly within the United States itself. This administration official twice insists that this intelligence is not real; rather al qaeda is just testing our defenses. Within months, three thousand die on September 11, 2001.
The administration official is:
A. Fired
B. Resigns
C. Is Paul Wolfowitz, who remains in office and later becomes responsible for post-war reconstruction of Iraq. In testimony before Congress, he not only woefully understates the number of soldiers killed in the war, but also states that it would be inconceivable to believe that it would require more troops to keep the peace than to overthrow Saddam's paper tiger army.
The will of the "Iraqi people" is a meaningless construct in the context of an incipient civil war.
And it's just as ridiculous as saying al Qaeda wants somebody to win the election, as if al Qaeda were a single rational person instead of what it is, namely a bunch of loosely connected crazies with a thousand different religious obsessions.
its like those Nader trolls... "I'm crying because I have not been treated nicely by you people. I was open to voting for kerry but now i see how you people really are! boo! hoo!"
Yeah. "Never mind the issues...I'm voting the straight spite ticket! Sure, I hate Bush...but it's much more important to piss off those Eschaton creeps!"
"I'll show those Eschaton bullies! My vote is for incompetence and disgrace!"
its like those Nader trolls... "I'm crying because I have not been treated nicely by you people. I was open to voting for kerry but now i see how you people really are! boo! hoo!"
Yeah. "Never mind the issues...I'm voting the straight spite ticket! Sure, I hate Bush...but it's much more important to piss off those Eschaton creeps!"
Philalethes
I am serious guys. I am trying to go Kerry. Voted Bush last time and Iraq aside would not do it again. I have been having a bitch of a time trying to warm to Kerry. I will not vote third party either, total cop-out.
I am serious guys. I am trying to go Kerry. Voted Bush last time and Iraq aside would not do it again. I have been having a bitch of a time trying to warm to Kerry. I will not vote third party either, total cop-out.
Well, I'd love to help you with your fascinating moral dilemma, Diogenes...but I can't because all I do is mock people and feign indignation.
As for the rest of us folks, we want no solutions. We're so dominated by hatreds and prejudices that progress of any type is abhorrent to us.
That being the case, you might try looking elsewhere. The wretched human beings here deserve your pity, not your respect.
oh i get it now...
1) Invade
2) ??????
3) Ireland!!!
count me in
Re: Iraqi People
Imagine for moment a situation in which the US is invaded by another country (maybe the invaders believe that Bush is an evil person). Imagine how we would feel, especially if innocent people were killed. Then it is not too difficult to imagine that invasion causing two distinct political groups of people here, one cooperating with the invaders - and another political group fighting the invaders.
In other words, if your reverse the situation, the two responses of Iraqis is entirely understandable.
Diogenes - if that is indeed your self-representation - what on earth is your problem? Vote for Kerry or don't, you have more than enough information and more than enough chances to assimilate that information. Are you trying to get someone to hold your hand at the moment itself? This is both tiresome and absurd - 'warm to Kerry'? This is the political survival of the nation, not determining whether you look best in clove pink or sky blue. Bizarre.
I am serious guys. I am trying to go Kerry. Voted Bush last time and Iraq aside would not do it again. I have been having a bitch of a time trying to warm to Kerry. I will not vote third party either, total cop-out.
Actually, I will help you. Assuming you're voting, let B be "Bush," T be "Third Party," and K be "Kerry," Thus:
If not B or T, then K.
Not B or T.
Therefore, K.
QED.
Seems like it doesn't much matter whether you "warm up" to Kerry or not.
Well, I'd love to help you with your fascinating moral dilemma, Diogenes...but I can't because all I do is mock people and feign indignation.
As for the rest of us folks, we want no solutions. We're so dominated by hatreds and prejudices that progress of any type is abhorrent to us.
That being the case, you might try looking elsewhere. The wretched human beings here deserve your pity, not your respect.
Philalethes
Ok, point well taken. But imagine yourself trying to convert parties. Some of the old stuff is hard to shed. When I hear some of the usual rhetoric I get a little annoyed. I come here to see what the hell the hardcore Kerry supporters think.
Fuck Bush baby! Kerry is my man!
The dillema is over!
I have officially "warmed."
Bush is a lying sack of shit. Kerry had better win this thing or I will be pissed.
It is an axiom in political science that unless a people are educated and enlightened it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty or the capacity for self-government
All Diogenes needs to do is go to johnkerry.com, click on the link that says Winning the Peace in Iraq, and Kerry's positions on what to do are carefully spelled out.
If he needs a comparison to what Bush has in mind for the future of Iraq, all he needs to do is go to georgebush.com and.....Well, I'm sure there's a plan somewhere.....Oops!
If the Iraqi People(tm) were at all interested in their collective best interest, why was Saddam Hussein in power for 30 years?
The "Russian People" finally got sick and tired of their situation and fixed it, as did the Germans (east), Albanians, Czechs, ...
At this point seems all they can agree on is to get us out!
c.
Late to the thread. Was it Thom Hartman last week at commondreams.org who wrote an article about Iraq...What if that happened here?
Example: The Boston to Philly corridor would be mined and RPG'd 24/7.
We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are
You know how in Peanuts Lucy would always tell Charley Brown that this time she wouldn't yank the football away at the last minute? Somehow, that's what these trolls remind me of, insisting that if we'd just be nicer to them, they'd vote for Kerry. No, really! They really really would! They mean it this time! They do! Honest! For real!
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Not holding on to anger is like putting the coal in your pocket and going about your business. Sooner or later that burning smell stops being your tousers and starts being your ass.
That's when you wish you'd thrown the coal at the people who did what made you angry in the first place.
According to Bush, things are going great in Iraq. And guess what...they are! Iraqi oil resources firmly in control of US corporations, 14 quasi-permanent military installations nearly completed, Iraqi exile Allawi set to win partial election...mission accomplished.
From Down Below:
"Hey, if we give Allawi Kuwait, too, he can have everything Saddam wanted in 1990!--cmdicely"
Actually, the US has told Kuwait that it will have to give up the formerly disputed oil fields that Hussein invaded in 91.
Once they slaughter the folks in Hallabja, I mean Falluja right after the election, it will be JUST like the good old times.
--
A BLOG FROM IRAQ ON BUSH AND ALLAWI:
http://
riverbendblog.blogspot.co...602421527384036
Diogenes = shithead
Nothing more to see here. Move along.
What in god's name does America have to offer Iraq? Guns, violence, the highest divorce rate in the world? Why would the people of Islam ever decide to pack away their religion, their truth, and suddenly have a desire to start taking life lessons from Christians and Jews? This will never happen. This is why this American attack on and occupation of Iraq was always a non-starter. The right-wingers knew this - they just didn't give a fuck: killing Arabs, ha, ha, ha. The lumpen middle of America who supported this travesty just believe America always does good: what do you say to people who hold such obviously unsupportable views? America does what the folks in power tell Americans to do. The Bush folks got their attack on Iraq. Now all Americans are up to their eyeballs in blood, guilt, and culpability over this disaster. Kill them as we may, Islam will never - I mean never - submit to the moral monster America which, like Israel, thinks it is humane to fire "precision" missiles into crowds of women and children. CIA man Allawi not withstanding, the resistance will grow and grow. Eventually, but sadly after too many have died, the Americans will pull out. Americans are NOT really believers, and they would rather return to television, wal-mart and mcdonalds, than continue to sacrifice their loved ones for a doomed, and indefensible mission.
You know what I say? Drive those damned Brooksians to the ghetto and dump their asses. That would fix em, lol. Yeah, dump in the south Bronx, or somewhere in LA, or S.E. D.C. OHMYGOD! Especially that damned clown faced Kyra. Would somebody please be her friend and tell her that lip liner never was a good piece of makeup practice, just something to get your money. It just makes her look more like a clown. Bozetta. All she needs is a red nose. So, now here's some of my names for some of these hatchette faced peeps.
Candy Crawley is Cow
Judy Woodruff is Chicken - on a death watch
Aaron Brown Boringdown
Chris Mathews known world wide as Tweety, a name which I did not create but love, dumb ass yellow birdhead
Lou Dobbs Clown Prince it took him almost two years to make my list, but he finally made it with two faced ass. He who ran swift boat liars ad nausium, and when he wasn't there he had the Scarecrow, Kitty Pilgrim doing it for him; the kicker came when the Clown Prince ran a piece on his best bud, the chimp's tang record, then announced that he would never again run news from thirty years before. Sonofabitch. Sorry. My Frenchwoman is showing.
Donald Rumsfeld Ginn Rummy
L. Paul Bremmer Scuttlecrab now, did you ever, in your entire life, see a damn ass man flee a country so fast? One minute that joke was handing out historical (or is that hysterical) documents, the next, his ass was landing back in this damned country, kissing the ground! I blinked and it was all over.
Condaleeza Rice Aunt Jemima slut; yep, that's what most black folks call that fool. She wears her head rag for drawers, turns the chimp on
Colin Powell Cotton Head some of the most wasted talent on earth; does he feel like a fool or what? His motto is STOMP ME, WHIP ME, MAKE ME FEEL CHEAP! and they did too.
Add your own
Peace
Jazzy
That Ayad Allawi is the definition of a dead man walking. I think his lies about the situation will be real popular in Baghdad. These expat parties in Iraq have no constituency and all the party leaders will be swinging from lamposts.
How can anybody, that can read or even watch TV, believe what Bush andAllawi said.
Why They Hate Us, Volume #8985634709854:
Most deaths linked to coalition
U.S. forces, police killing twice as many Iraqis as rebels are, ministry finds
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis — most of them civilians — as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.
( BY NANCY A. YOUSSEF, Knight Ridder Foreign Service, 09/25/2004 03:01 AM CDT)
Just exactly who are the Iraqi people? I'm not being facetious here. Iraq was a creation of the British empire. On the ground, we have arabs, turks, kurds, abyssinans armenians and too many other groups to mention. Unlike a "melting pot" like the US or Canada, where the various groups share to some extent language, culture and a sense of national identity, the population of Iraq has been held together for the last few generations only by way of a horrific level of violence. You can hear this in the news dispatches if you listen: they talk of "kurdish" or "turkoman" or "arab" towns. The physical, social and economic segregation is nearly absolute. No wonder all the professional analysts are warning that civil war is a much more likely short term outcome than representative democracy. When I hear people talking about "the Iraqi people" I know right away that they're uniformed about facts on the ground and the real nature of Iraqi "society."
raised eyebrow-->abyssinans
um, assyrians, maybe?
I haven't decided which is worse: the ignorant boobs who buy into this bullshit or the people who knowingly push it at the public.
Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, Mark Twain...where are you now, when we need you the most?
The battle cry of the terrorists in Iraq.
"SHOCK AND AWE!!!!"
"When I hear people talking about "the Iraqi people" I know right away that they're uniformed about facts on the ground and the real nature of Iraqi "society."
GenusMarmota"
And your shit smells no better.
Iraq is sovereign. That doesn't take a thousand years, but in fact Iraq has been sovereign for a LOT longer than that.
As for the diversity of that society, yeah, it's a mix. There are several countries with such strong disparities, but group disparities are nothing new in Iraq. The Arab world is generally 'tribal' in its social divisions, with a lot of clans and, as is common throughout Asia and Asia minor, groups formed around mosques or temples.
So WHAT! They have a right to their sovereignty, and your troll bullshit doesn't take that away. Bush is carrying out genocide, and part of that genocide is the destruction of Iraqi sovereignty. We can count you among the racists who support through their haughty pseudo-informed opining. Killing the innocent and destroying their culture-- nothing new. And never again.
--
Perhaps the Iraqi people are fighting against Allawi and his allies (the Bushistas, and their unfortunate pawns in the US military) because they don't like Allawi.
Allawi's basically Saddam in a different suit. A murderous Republican stooge. And he wasn't even elected. Maybe the Iraqi people would prefer not to have a Saddam clone imposed on them again.
I'm afraid it will take independent or loosely federated Iraqi states to put down the rebellion. When a mixed Sunni, Shia, and American army kills a Sunni radical, Sunnis feel like a Sunni has died. When a Sunni death squad kills a Sunni radical, Sunnis feel like a radical has died. When innocent civilians die in the process, a much bigger pass is also given for the same-group killers.
This is nothing special about Sunnis, it seems to be a human universal...I wish we weren't like this, but that's irrelevant to whether we are or not to the extent that we can't breed or educate this out of us.
holy crap this thread is long. don't know for sure if anyone posted this link, but its a great thesis on what the real problem in the reconstruction of iraq is.
http://harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html
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