Mea Culpa

[Amaurote]

"I recall very clearly one night before the war began. I made myself write down the reasons for and against the war and realized that if there were question marks on both sides, the deciding factor for me in the end was that I could never be ashamed of removing someone as evil as Saddam from power. I became enamored of my own morality and this single moral act. And he was a monster, as we discovered. But what I failed to grasp is that war is also a monster, and that unless one weighs all the possibly evil consequences of an abstractly moral act, one hasn't really engaged in anything much but self-righteousness."

Five Years On (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/what-i-got-wron.html)


http://www.needlenose.com/i/swopa/BaghdadBodies9-16a.jpg

[JakeD]

An interesting bit from Sullivan, who I've always regarded as one of the saner voices amongst the pro-war mouthpieces. Granted, such praise is akin to being the most efficient jizzmopper at a porno club, but compared to the likes of Podhoretz, Kristol, Krauthammer, and even that pompous windbag Buckley, he's almost a bastion of sanity. I think most of my respect for him is due to his support of gay rights and his attacks on the usual conservative/neocon pundits. Thanks for this - I don't read him all that often, but this blogpost might change that.

[Amaurote]

I was really struck by this on the Beeb a moment ago, on the occasion of the 4000th US military death in Iraq:




Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defence policy at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said he doubted the 4,000 milestone would "have the impact that the 3,000 did" in December 2006.

"The conventional wisdom then was that things were going badly," he was quoted by Reuters as saying.

"Today, by contrast, the public's general perception of Iraq is less negative, and coverage for the last six months has tended to focus on the reduction in violence and US casualties.

"The war has also been much less visible."

US soldiers interviewed by AFP news agency in Iraq said they were saddened by the figure of 4,000 but argued the conflict was justified.

I had to resist the urge to laugh at that "much less visible" reference: I'll say - there was a wave of terror throughout Iraq the other day, but while I was mulling through Fox News for US election coverage I couldn't help noticing that there wasn't even a single reference to the event, let along the number of Iraqi lives lost (60, as it happened -meanwhile Cheney was twice mortared in the "most secure" place in Baghdad). Iraq is turning into Cambodia, and the media apparently has better things to do with its reporters than covering the boring, inconvenient detail of Iraqi bombing campaigns - like ambushing Arianna Huffington at a convention about some daft comment someone made on her blog, for example.

[JakeD]

Yeah, the concept of having 4000 people dead and nobody really giving a fuck is depressing and his comments do reflect a disgusting amount of naivete, but the guy's right in a completely roundabout sort of way that he probably never intended.

Right now I'm just trying to get a mental grasp of what a crowd of 4000 would look like - and then what the space occupying them would look like with 4000 people suddenly gone.

I know that all the handwringing over 4000 people is nothing compared to what the Iraqis have lost due to the occupation and the violence related to backlash to the occupation, but I'm still just infuriated by the concept that there are ass-kissing pro-war syncophant politicians out there who think that 4000 is a reasonable amount of lives to be used as political capital. It's the same assholes that are sitting in their ivory towers and making such statements that have absolutely no connection to the war - let's just keep sending the poor people to fight.

The mental disconnect required to make such statements is sort of poetic when you look at the Iraq occupation - we're so far divorced from reality with respect to Iraq that people feel safe brushing off the concept of 4000 dead soldiers. We hardly even have to face war footage on our televisions or news from abroad, the only time people get all worked up over it is when someone from their hometown dies and then a week later they're too busy with the happenings on Lost or American Idol to remember or to care. We send bombers to shoot the fuck out of villages filled with innocent people in order to wipe out a handful of insurgents, and it doesn't matter because we don't have to see it. Coffins filled with dead officers are shipped covertly in the bellies of passenger planes. Our politicians make excuses for torture while information about Abu Ghraib gets swept under the rug.

What a load of sanctimonious horseshit. We're a nation of deluded children, and I wonder how many more "milestones" we'll see before people wake the fuck up and realize that we're wasting lives, money, time, and accountability so that some wannabe-cowboy can blow up a nation of brown people over a grudge.

[James]

There's something even worse than the 4000 dead soldiers, the tens of thousands of injured soldiers who have brain damage, missing limbs, or who's lives are otherwise rendered "over" as far as they are concerned. The injured have so little support when they return that it's disgusting, the least they could get is decent medical attention, unlike the shit they were getting at Walter Reed.

[Amaurote]

Yeah, the concept of having 4000 people dead and nobody really giving a fuck is depressing and his comments do reflect a disgusting amount of naivete, but the guy's right in a completely roundabout sort of way that he probably never intended.


On the subject of politicians not giving a fuck, I strongly recommend watching The Fog of War (http://blogleak.blogspot.com/2008/01/fog-of-war.html) as an antidote if you have a spare hour and forty - it's a fantastic documentary, and well worth your time. McNamara's intellect and insight are quite inspiring - you feel that while the decisions were shitty at times, the people at the DoD did actually think about the moral repercussions of what they did (and in the case of McNamara, who seems like a great mind and a decent human being, I'd still like to know why he didn't speak out afterwards).

[Amaurote]

PS: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7312078.stm) - the Surge is definitely working.


Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the BBC: "Militias have taken over almost the city and law and order has collapsed, although it is not a hopeless case because the government is taking measures to reverse the situation."

"Not a hopeless case"...hahahahaha - I reckon John MacCain should put that in his next campaign ad.

[JakeD]

Today I read that the Mahdi Army is now cleared to fire on Americans. Surprise, surprise.

[James]

What the fuck are we even doing over there? Lets just find some new source of energy and let oil go. Seriously, take the oil away and there is no reason for us to give a fuck what happens there, no more terrorism, no more war until the water runs out, no more fucking tension between the religions by normal people. We have enough problems back here, and we always have.