"It's a number"

Re: "Its's a number"

SCed -

I promised myself I wasn't going to get sucked back into the political threads because they are for the most part divisive, useless and hurtful. So let this be my last post on the subject of our deadly and expensive presence in Iraq.

I say this with all due respect to you as a fellow citizen, and I say it at an age at which I feel I've earned the right to assess - if not judge - the conduct of our country.

Your assertions and arguments here are just as you described them - personal rationalizations. Having short-circuited the process by which, and for what purpose, our nation goes to war, this administration has left 300 million Americans with nothing more than that - our own rationalizations. Thus are we mired yet again in a war with no clear purpose, even to the people charged with conducting it.

And having endorsed that - in your head or in your heart, and by whatever strategy of personal rationalization or missionary zeal or realpolitik gymnastics you choose - know that there is going to come a moment in your life when you look back, with the help of distance and history, and feel duped, and deeply ashamed, for ever having done so.

In that moment, you will understand why so many of us - those millions who never lost a son or a friend or a father overseas - weep when we see our own reflections in the polished black granite of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

Very well said. And I understand not wanting to get sucked back into political threads, but I think the last few pages have been more a discussion than the usual SportsJournalists.com idea of a discussion on politics. I certainly hope I haven't offended anybody with my opinion, and nobody here has offended me. In this country, we're allowed to freely express our opinions. In other countries, they can't.

I hope I don't feel that way. I hope, when I'm older, I can tell my kids one day about a country in the Middle East that had a terrible leader, a man who killed hundred of thousands of people not for being wrong, but for disagreeing with one man's opinion. And I hope I can tell my kids about this country and how it's free now. How the kids don't have to be scared walking to school. How the parents can go to work without fearing retribution if they make a mistake. I hope I can say that one day.

But at least I won't have to tell her about that country Iraq, led by the son of Saddam Hussein, that continues to torture its people.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

I hope you can say that, too. And frankly, I hope I can say that, as well. But we seem to be directing too many of our vast resources outside the country ... and it doesn't seem to be making the inside of this country any better. I certainly don't feel any safer than I did after 9/11 -- I don't think we're in any less or more danger than we were *before* 9/11 (only we didn't think it could happen, not to us, before 9/11). I don't feel any safer walking to work, or walking to school -- and that has nothing to do with terrorism. That has to do with domestic, internal issues that we've neglected for too long. People, our people, who we've neglected for too long.

Personally, I think we're *more* at-risk because of what this administration has done than we were before Bush came into office. ... I don't think we're any better now, as a nation, than we were three years ago, or four years ago, or five years ago, or 10 years ago. I may be better off, personally, but only because I'm older now, hopefully wiser, and more experienced. Not because of the actions of a government that I don't believe in. I think we can do better than this.

But I don't think I'll ever be able to rationalize any of it to the man I work for, the man whose son was my age, the man whose son who isn't here anymore. Because of ... this war. This unecessary war.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

SC -- You're a good man and your heart's in a better place than the people who started and are running this war. That's not condescension. That's fact. Most of the people in this administration don't care a damn for human rights, here or anywhere else. They consider devotion to them to be a sign of a great nation's unmanliness.
But history has to count for something. Iran and Iraq slaughtered each other quite equally, and we supplied arms and wherewithal to both sides to keep either one from assuming the dominant position in the region. We sold the Kurds out twice so as to keep Saddam as one of our best customers. By the time that the current administration took over, Saddam controlled a portion of his country the size of Rhode Island and he'd been completely disarmed. He was no threat to anyone, not even most of his own people. Now, 2500 Americans and god knows how much money later, Iraq is a failed state in the middle of a civil war, and the government in place is concocted among representatives of various militia groups, many of which have thoroughly infiltrated the police and the military. And, no, that part of the world is not safer for our having gone to war, either. But that wasn't the point, either.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

Well, that election they recently had in Palestine sure worked out well. Of course, Condi comes back with the usual "We couldn't have known that Hamas would win . . . "

And they also had an election in Iran not too long ago. The winner of that election would like to see Israel blown off the map.

And now Iraq has elections, too!

I think I'll hold off turning any cartwheels for awhile.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

I do think we are safer than we were before, at least from terrorism. That's why there hasn't been a major attack on our soil since 9/11. If I was carrying the GOP bag around, I could easily talk about Clinton's failure to stop bin Laden when he was a credible threat. But he didn't. Nor did Bush.

Maybe, just maybe, in Bush's mind he's being proactive. Maybe Iraq could have been a problem for us in the future. We'll never know. But we took care of the guy who, in my opinion, is the greatest violator of human rights. 300,000. I don't think it was an unnecessary war. I really don't. I don't think it's been handled well, I don't think the approach  was good, and I don't think we offered up the necessary resources to win this war.

But I do think it was necessary. Because that line we talked about, I'm pretty sure 300,000 is on the other side of it. How far over the other side, I don't know. But when 300,000 people die, I think somebody has to do something to stop it from being another 300,000.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

I get tired of the argument that Bush is a good Christian, just doing the best he can.
I'm not going to judge another man's faith from a distance, but it seems that Bush is cut from the same cloth of the Christians of the middle ages who heard the voice of God and launched crusades to the Holy Land.
And certainly no good Christian mocks a man for being blind. At least he had the good grace to apologize.
It also seems that he is doing the best he can for the wealthy, while poor people drowned in the streets of New Orleans.
History will not be kind to Bush and it makes me wonder how people will explain the reign of George II the Terrible to their kids and grandkids?

 

Re: "Its's a number"

Have you personally spoken to everybody in the administration about their view of the human right's violations? Have you looked into their "heart of hearts." I haven't, so I wouldn't presume to speak for them. A lot of people have died in Iraq since we went over there. Some were good, some were bad. But the citizens, the people who live their everyday lives in Iraq, want freedom. And we're a country, more than probably any other country, who should defend freedom. Because a long time ago, we fought for freedom. We wanted religious freedom. We didn't want a dictatorship, a leader who chose to do as we will. We wanted a democracy. We wanted to go to whatever church we wanted to go to. We wanted to have a say in what happened in our very own country.

Why can't the people in Iraq have the same?

 

Re: "Its's a number"

See, this is what I hate. I'm going to point out one thing in your statement that is obsurd. While I've made it clear I'm in favor of this war, and I'll admit I cast my vote for Bush twice, this is ridiculous. Did he know the guy was blind? No. He wouldn't have taken a cheap shot at him if he knew he was blind. He apologized as soon as he found out why he was wearing sunglasses. But you're willing to take an honest mistake -- who here hasn't stuck their foot in their mouth -- and make it sound like he's not a good Christian.

That's why these threads get hijacked into neverending bickering and name-calling. It's crap like that.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

That's your opinion, and I disagree. I think they were a threat. If you don't think Saddam could have risen back up and become a pain in everybody's ass, I disagree. He had already killed 300,000. What was stopping him from five years from now, rising up and trying to invade Kuwait again? To say he was rendered impotent in his own country might be a little out there. Maybe he was like a submarine in hostile water ... he just went quiet.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

They can. And they can strike for it themselves, but they're more interested these days in striking out at what they perceive to be an occupying power. Namely, us.
As to this adminisration and its devotion to human rights, you have to be kidding. It has embraced; torture, both by our own forces and by outsourcing it to Uzbekistan; it embraces imprisonment without trial, and an extra-constitutional theory of the Executive that creates a soveriegn; it has contempt for the structure of government under the Constitution matched only by its contempt for the international human-rights community and the UN; it has hired John Bolton for the UN, and John Negroponte for NSA, and it has claimed the power and the right to ignore legitimate law on a whim.

I feel very safe in saying that nobody in this administration gives a damn about human rights.

Oh, and Bush has taken fratboy cheap shots at a number of people, starting with his "mistake" in re: Adam Clymer, and going through his petulant reaction when David Gregory asked a question of Chirac in French. This is nothing new.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

Sanctions.

Weapons inspectors.

The humbling history of two hopelessly failed wars in his rearview mirror.

And if, after all that, he did "rise up" and invade Kuwait . . .

. . . he would be defeated and turned back in about two weeks.

Just like the first time.