the forgotten american dead: rural america paying the ultimate price in iraq

I'm not a reporter. I'm in the Army.

 

I don't understand this. Are you saying that since "only" 3,000 US soldiers have died it's not a big deal and we shouldn't complain? Please explain.

 

Sirs, Madames,

I'm amazed that super-patriots like old tony and bostock aren't in the reserve and deployed over there. Their leadership would be handier there than here. And of course I can only presume that any of their children (where the case applies) would be signed up for their second or third tours.

YHS, etc

 

I've made that argument, especially with Old Tony, before. The response, quite often, is "so if I don't serve in uniform I can't have an opinion?" But it's still a legit question. If you're so sure we're doing the right thing, then why aren't you serving? And if you're too old (disabled, overweight, etc.) to join, then why aren't your kids joining?

Before taking a fight to anyone, our leaders should ask themselves a few questions:
* Is this worth the lives of an indeterminate number of American lives?
* Would I be willing to don a uniform and pick up a weapon to fight in this battle?
* Would I encourage my child to join and fight in the battle?

People take too much of an abstract view toward fighting, simply because it's easier to call for action by an Army when you don't personally know the names or see the faces of those who will do the fighting. When it becomes personal and real, that's when you have to ask those questions again and pray (to the deity of your choice) that you're making the right decisions.

 

In Hindsight, NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. DUH.
But we are there and we need to deal with Bush and Cheney's incredibly stupid, ignorant and treasonous fuckup.. What's the real significant story is not the increase of 20K soldiers, but why not an increase of 100K soldiers? Then a UN peace keeping and Nation building coalition of predominantly muslim countries, followed by
Proably a partition of Iraq into 3 respective soveriegn states, Kurd, Shiite and Sunni, with a oil production placed in an OPEC trusteeship, with the US.

It's incredible that everyone that NOW recognizes the sheer treachory that Cheney used to justify his war in Iraq, but the fact remains, we are there, and we destroyed whatever civil goverment there was, and now the round robin massacres between muslim and triblasects has replaced Saddam's massacres, no one wants to man up and say, we'll finish what we start and do it right, this time. Most of the blame belongs to Cheney and Bush, one's too evil to change and the other's too foolish

 

Is that possible, though? And what will it take to do it right? How many lives? Will it be worth it...etc.

I understand the desire to make things right, but the question is if that's possible, or, as I fear, are we past that point? I know it's unAmerican and I hate saying this, but we have to consider the possibility that we've already lost and there's nothing we can do about it.

And this whole "man up" thing is just silly and it's what got us in trouble in the first place. What's manly about sacrificing thousands more to a lost cause? We've got stop thinking with the wrong part of our body.

 

We fucked it up in the first place, so I think we have somewhat of a feduciary responsibility to fix it.

Edit: Or at least help fix it.

 

We should disband our military. We've become to naive to have one.

 

1) Because we don't HAVE 100,000 more soldiers to send, not with Afghanistan blowing up again.
2) Because nobody in the Arab world trusts us enough to be part of a multinational force with us.
3) The UN? This administration? Right.
4) OPEC trusteeship? With us as the trustee? Yeah, that'll work.
It's not that your ideas don't have merit -- and partition, while a terrible idea everywhere it's been tried, is probably inevitable -- the fact of the war has made them all non-starters.

 

Totally agree. But I guess the question -- that no one can answer -- is what exactly can we do at this point?

 

We can rebuild the cities, villages and small hamlets we destroyed, not-for-profit. That would be a nice start.

 

Had the "generals on the ground" been listened to, it would have been a simple invasion and democracy insertion.

Oh, it would have been more difficult than the rosy dream the shrub and co. presented to the American people, but it would have been much less cumbersome than what we've faced the last three years.

So, maybe a better statement would be: We should take control of our armed forces away from the president. He's too naive to have it.