<p>For those of you who have concluded that I am a war supporter/mongerer, you could not be farther from the truth.</p>
<p>I despise an offensive war and think it is the ultimate failure of our collective intelligences – and the victory of our basest instincts, no matter how “just” the cause.</p>
<p>That is precisely why I started this thread – to illustrate how far reaching (long after the war is over) and devastating such actions are – not only to the innocent victims (of which there are many) but, in this case, to the participants. </p>
<p>No matter how you slice it there are no winners. We are damned if we do support the troops (and no, this not about yellow ribbons) and damned if we don’t.</p>
<p>That wasn’t a snappy retort. While the pro-war forces are propagating this unfair stereotype about liberals, the fact is, the “troops” are often liberals’ fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, mothers, neighbors, spouses, and friends. Some liberals are even the “troops” themselves. We hardly think of them as jack-booted fascists.</p>
<p>Too bad Karl Rove and the other folks making policy don’t have these same connections to the troops. Then they might be willing to deal in practical reality instead of chest-swelling propaganda that does nothing other than help the pro-war people feel good about themselves as they oppose practical support for the troops.</p>
<p>Aw, mini… I’m not commenting on the justification to be there, I agree with you. I am talking about in general terms if you’re going to commit our service men and women to anything, it should be done with overwhleming force. Rummy turned this campain into a game of “I can do it with less…” Having less has never helped a foot soldier. Before or after a conflict (body armour going in, a solid VA system coming out) </p>
<p>That’s what I disagree with on basic terms about use of the military. If you/we/me/us/them are not fully commited to a maximum effort, we should not be there. And there is anywhere “we” decide we need to be…</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone whitewashes Saddam. I do think people, including me, graywash him some. One of the central issues about the Iraq war is just how bad and how dangerous Saddam was, and I think it’s significant to say that he was bad and dangerous but maybe not so bad and so dangerous as to justify all of the costs we are suffering from our (effective) operation to remove him. One of the things I think we have learned, or should have learned, is how right George H.W. Bush and his advisors were when they made the hard-headed, pragmatic, morally questionable judgment not to go to Baghdad in Desert Storm.</p>
<p>As for the last paragraph of the essay Dorothy X posted, I’ll be a little provocative: With some decades of hindsight, Ho Chi Minh seems to have done a credible job of leading his people to (relative) freedom and prosperity, with more of both to come. (And that’s not to say that all Communist dictators are created equal – I would not make the same claim for Pol Pot, certainly. I would, however, say the same thing about Pinochet and Franco.) One of the lessons I take from Vietnam – and it gives me some reason for hope about Iraq, although the situations are different – is that things started improving for everyone pretty quickly – meaning, within a decade – after we left.</p>
<p>“I am talking about in general terms if you’re going to commit our service men and women to anything, it should be done with overwhleming force.”</p>
<p>I know what you said, and think I know what you meant, and I disagree with that as well. Send in overwhelming force when not needed, destroy everything in sight when not necessary, and you make enemies forever.</p>
<p>One of the issues in this ongoing, very nasty debate is that so many people are unaware of the differences between “patriotism” and “nationalism.” Patriotism simply means love of country. That love can be demonstrated in a number of ways, in the same way a parent’s love can manifest itself in a number of ways. Nationalism is embodied in the phrase, “My country, right or wrong,” a phrase that could give comfort if carved on the walls of the guard towers at Auschwitz.</p>
<p>A patriot can absolutely oppose the war while realizing that troops don’t choose their fights. They go where they’re told and fight where they’re told. A patriot can buy a soldier a drink in a bar, volunteer at the USO, offer free child care to the spouse left at home who must work, etc. But that doesn’t mean that the patriot, in order to be a patriot, must support the war. The idea that one must support any war in order to “support the troops” because the poor troops must be made to feel that their efforts were worthwhile is not patriotic. It’s nationalistic.</p>
<p>Had I been an ordinary German during WWII, I would hope that I would have opposed the war (and the regime), though I know I would have had to do so silently or risk imprisonment, torture, and death. I also hope I would have recognized the difference between the ordinary soldier called up in the Wehrmacht and the SS, and would have bought a Wehrmacht soldier home on leave a beer. It wasn’t his fault. He was just doing what soldiers are called upon to do.</p>
<p>Nationalists will support anything their country does regardless of its wisdom, morality, or any other factor that might suggest that any given war is unwise.</p>
<p>Actually a fair number of those in Vietnam who rejected communism are living in the United States today, and doing pretty well. I am privileged to know many of them, and went to school alongside their kids.</p>
<p>I think part of the reason that some of the pro-war folks are so determined to keep fighting in Iraq–even if it means damaging our own economy and national security–is that they want to make sure that the Iraqis stay in Iraq. As long as they can keep claiming that stability is only 20,000 troops away, they have the perfect excuse for turning away refugees.</p>
<p>“Send in overwhelming force when not needed, destroy everything in sight when not necessary, and you make enemies forever.”</p>
<p>If they are our friends…why would we be there? (in general terms)</p>
<p>My point is if we resort to war, it must be swift, quick and overwhelming…IF we have to resort to war. </p>
<p>As far as making ememies forever, I think once you kill somebody’s kid, whether it’s one soldier doing it or 1,000, you’ve pretty much made an ememy for life, no?</p>
<p>I think many people don’t understand the modern US military or the history of warfare. Traditionally (simplified), there are, basically, two ways to win a war, but both involve destroying the enemy’s ability to resist. One way is to destroy the opposing army. That was the British strategy in the American Revolution, and Washington’s fabian counter-strategy recognized that the issue was not to let that happen. The other way is to take so much territory and/or destroy so much infrastructure that the enemy’s operational/strategic/logistical/political ability and WILL to resist is destroyed.</p>
<p>The modern US armed forces are built to very quickly and very efficiently destroy an oppposing army, thereby killing it’s ability to resist. But it is not large enough to be a very effective occupation army, and swift victories over armed forces do little to destroy the will to resist.</p>
<p>Rumsfeld and others made the mistake of thinking that the US forces would be welcomed with open arms after they destroyed the Iraqi army’s ability to resist.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if that was a response to me or not. I would say it goes deeper than that. When the Jamestown colony was sent to the New World in 1607, there was a sense that the settlers would be welcomed by the indigenous people with open arms. After all, the reasoning went, the Bretons had benefited from the coming of Rome, so why wouldn’t the Amerinds see that having the English land on their shores was a good thing?</p>
<p>What the company forgot is that the Bretons resisted the Romans tooth and nail and, sure enough, when the first English set foot on shore in Virginia, the first thing that happened was that some of them were wounded by arrows.</p>
<p>Human beings tend not to like others determining things for them. For some reason, they like to do it themselves.</p>
<p>“That wasn’t a snappy retort. While the pro-war forces are propagating this unfair stereotype about liberals, the fact is, the “troops” are often liberals’ fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, mothers, neighbors, spouses, and friends. Some liberals are even the “troops” themselves. We hardly think of them as jack-booted fascists.”</p>
<p>I completely understand and respect that you don’t hold that position, but I live in New York and many of the folks here have never met a member of the military and they DO hold this point of view. THey call members of the military things like “illiterate,” “dangerous,” “pathetic” and, yes “fascist.” It happens here ALL the time. I’m suspecting, based on the location listed for you, that we may simply have geographic/cultural differences from each other.</p>
<p>What are you doing, tangibly, to support the troops? (It isn’t a rhetorical question, and I would like to see individuals and families in need getting greater support regardless of political differences.)</p>
<p>It’s quite true that Louisiana is doing more than it’s fair share in Iraq. </p>
<p>We’re 11th in the nation in per capita mobilizations of National Guard and Reserve units. As you would expect, we’re 9th in the number of per capita troop deaths. (One explanation for the 11th/9th descrepancy is that our units tend to draw slightly more hazardous duty than the average). </p>
<p>By comparison, Arizona, where John McCain hails from, is 49th or so. Only Florida, governed by a member of the Bush family, is lower. It’s mobilization rate, the lowest in the nation, is about 1/10th of Louisiana’s I think. In general, rural areas and areas with below average income are experiencing the most per capita deaths in Iraq. </p>
<p>However, I am not basing my experience soley as a person from the South whose community has borne more of this load than perhaps it should have had to. I read extensively, things written by people all over this country, in articles, editorials, blog posts, message board forums, and oddly enough, with one exception (a teenager), I never hear liberals themselves say the kind of things that the pro-war folks attribute to them. It’s always some other guy saying a liberal said it.</p>
<p>FWIW, though, I’ve heard plenty of pro-war folks saying that they voted for people who voted against equipment, training, and health care for our troops and against rehabilitative services for injured soldiers. I’ve even heard pro-war defending the neglect and deplorable conditions in Walter Reed’s building 18.</p>