YAIWR (yet another anti-war rant)
Mar. 23rd, 2003 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garoteThe Colorado Channel 9 news is calling their coverage of the 'war' with Iraq "Operation Iraqi Freedom". They even put a special banner for it on their website. Some young graphic artist got paid ten bucks an hour to make that banner. What was he/she thinking at the time, I wonder?
There are young boys and girls who grew up in Colorado, who joined the military and are now camped out in the desert blasting people apart. I wonder what they think of it all?
No, seriously, I'd really like to know, down on the personal level, what these kids think of it. What it means to them, as a job, as a task they do. Do they think of their parents, back home? When they look through the scope of their rifle at the manic face of some desert rat, do they say, "This one's for you, Mom?" just when they squeeze out the round?
If they're going to do that, if they're going to put themselves in immediate danger, they deserve to do it for a real reason. Not for this. Not for a handful of blurry COMSATs, some jingoism, and the pompous despot of a shattered desert country. If they're going to come home with any chance of feeling good about themselves, they need real reasons to go.
The massive economic machine of the military is clamoring for a reason to exist. They can't catch terrorists with their big, clumsy, obsolete hands so they're finding other ways to justify themselves.
Pardon my language, but this just does not make any fucking sense. No more than the invasion, and subsequent abandonment, of Afghanistan did. If we spent one hundredth of the money we spent heaving bombs into rocky hillsides, on rebuilding New York, we'd have our twin towers back right now.
I'm ashamed that my federal tax dollars are paying for this. I'm paying for this. Hell, if I didn't pay for this, I'd be jailed for tax evasion. I feel like there is blood on my hands.
You can't trade dead people for live ones. I want all my brothers-in-law back home and safe.
There are young boys and girls who grew up in Colorado, who joined the military and are now camped out in the desert blasting people apart. I wonder what they think of it all?
No, seriously, I'd really like to know, down on the personal level, what these kids think of it. What it means to them, as a job, as a task they do. Do they think of their parents, back home? When they look through the scope of their rifle at the manic face of some desert rat, do they say, "This one's for you, Mom?" just when they squeeze out the round?
If they're going to do that, if they're going to put themselves in immediate danger, they deserve to do it for a real reason. Not for this. Not for a handful of blurry COMSATs, some jingoism, and the pompous despot of a shattered desert country. If they're going to come home with any chance of feeling good about themselves, they need real reasons to go.
The massive economic machine of the military is clamoring for a reason to exist. They can't catch terrorists with their big, clumsy, obsolete hands so they're finding other ways to justify themselves.
Pardon my language, but this just does not make any fucking sense. No more than the invasion, and subsequent abandonment, of Afghanistan did. If we spent one hundredth of the money we spent heaving bombs into rocky hillsides, on rebuilding New York, we'd have our twin towers back right now.
I'm ashamed that my federal tax dollars are paying for this. I'm paying for this. Hell, if I didn't pay for this, I'd be jailed for tax evasion. I feel like there is blood on my hands.
You can't trade dead people for live ones. I want all my brothers-in-law back home and safe.
Re: I'm no soldier, but
Date: 2003-03-24 04:14 pm (UTC)Phiilipnes, Panama, Grenada, Nicarauga:
Okay, ya got me here: I concede Nicaragua. Good point there, but it strikes me that the U.S. invested a lot of time in making sure that the region remained stable, long enough for a new government to really take hold. (Incidentally, want to buy a house in Granada?)
I don't see this Bush-led U.S. government as having the patience to occupy Iraq for years at a time, turning it's troops into policemen, waiting through a campaign and an election. You need infrastructure to do that, and ... the U.S. has so far been blowing that infrastructure up.
Panama: I can't say. The U.S. established a presence there mostly for strategic military purposes, and it seems to me that they don't really care who is in command, as long as they get preferential use of the canal. I don't know how much of the income from managing that canal, if any, actually filters down to the common man, even as government aid and programs.
It still seems pretty clear to me that invasion, bombing, and murder are not the most efficient encouragement for democracy.
Re: I'm no soldier, but
Date: 2003-03-24 05:32 pm (UTC)Afghanistan is moving forward. You don't go from anarchy to democracy overnight. Give them a few years and the time to learn from the mistakes they will inevitably make along the way, just as all the great deomocracies in the world have had to learn from their own.
Iraq, I feel will turn around much quicker than many expect. They are an educated people, and rather cosmopolitan for that part of the world. I have faith in their ability to learn from the mistake of autocratic fascist rule, just as Japan and Germany did. We might have to stay a while, it happens. I feel that time invested in Iraq is time well spent. Their 7000 year history is one of change and overcoming all sorts of troubles and setbacks. Look for them to join the Community of Civilized nations much sooner than we think possible.
I regret it came to this with Iraq, but in a sense it is not even with Iraq itself. it is with one man and his arsenal that he has turned on 3 other sovereign nations that border him in the space of 10 years. A man armed with tons of deadly and ghastly poisons. A man with the motive, the means and the willingness to give them to others to strike at us and anyone else he perceives as an interference in his Anschluss-fest he has had going on since 1980. Sometimes, NOT acting is worse than taking action, even if it turns out you were not entirely right. In this day and age of WMD, it is insanity to place ourselves at the mercy of whichever comic-opera dictator is the LEAST stable.
There be my two cents on it all. Many thanks to
Re: I'm no soldier, but
Re: Afghanistan. A quote : " Much of the country remains under the sway of warlords and is split by ethnic differences that have fuelled fights for decades and raised doubts about the viability of a national army in a country where tribal loyalty far outweighs loyalty to the state. "
That about sums it up. How is the U.S. going to enforce 'democracy' in such a diverse place? Kill all the warlords? And their sons? Re-educate an entire generation, against the ideas of their ancestors, by establishing Don't Serve A Warlord University?
What's the upper limit, of citizens killed, before the U.S. is no longer freeing a people -- but is just freeing land? From the people who used to live on it?
As for the ousting of "a man" in Iraq, how can such a simplistic approach render any real results? Kill the dictator, and all you've made is a dictator-shaped hole. If you have to march your ass over a hundred miles to get there, taking prisoners along the way, have you really done a net positive for the image of your nation, in the eyes of revenge-minded terrorists?
Osama Bin Laden financed his favorite anti-American organisation with his Saudi parents' money. Even with this being the case, I'm glad Bush didn't decide to topple the Royal House of Saud, and bring "democracy" to their country too.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-20 08:00 am (UTC)