Wednesday, May 31, 2006
A jarhead from El Paso
Was killed in action that day in Haditha. The Marines shot back because “it was going to be them or” the insurgents, Martin said of what his son’s fellow Marines briefly described to him. Hasta la guerra...
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21 comments:
And, rather amazingly, an MSM reporter casts some doubts on a crucial tenet of Lefty dogma, which says, Marines are all crazed, mass-murdering, Genghis-Khanesque baby-killers (as memorably alleged by Jean Francois Kerry).
What does Terraza's family's impressions on the guilt of his fellow marines have to do with anything ?
A reporter has a doubt about their guilt ? You're going to have to do better than that...
The Iraq syndrome:
The missions in Iraq and Afghanistan grew from the moral outrage of September 11. U.S. troops, the best this country has yet produced, went overseas to defend us against repeating that day. Now it isn't just that the war on terror has proven hard; the men and women fighting for us, the magnificent 99%, are being soiled in a repetitive, public way that is unbearable.
The greatest danger at this moment is that the American public will decide it wants to pull back because it has concluded that when the U.S. goes in, it always gets hung out to dry.
But of course, that's precisely what the Left wants to do. They did it in Vietnam, they're doing it again now. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
the argument that the us is in iraq so that we don't have to fight terrorism here is ludicrous.
>>U.S. troops, the best this country has yet produced
how so ?
this is not right-left issue. this war is lost and it is time to pull out because the loss of life serves no purpose.
the argument that the us is in iraq so that we don't have to fight terrorism here is ludicrous.
Why? It makes a ton of sense to me.
this war is lost and it is time to pull out because the loss of life serves no purpose.
Said in the grand old defeatist tradition of the Left, who always roots for the defeat of the West, no matter what the conflict is, even (and I suspect, ever more so) when the conflict involves the very survival of the West (which I take as shorthand for the traditions of democracy and freedom I guess we all take for granted). Wishing to leave the troops to hang out to dry, denigrating their efforts, fervently wishing their sacrifice to be in vain, basically, undermining the war efoort in order to hand out victory to whoever the US is fighting, for whatever reason -- these are the established traditions of the Left (from Vietnam, and other conflicts), and they are proving once again to be the modus operandi in this conflict.
A counterpoint, from Luttwak. Advocates some kind of pull-back to let the civil war in Iraq run its course, yet does not wish to see the US defeated (sure sign he's not a lefty). Maybe there is something to be said about such an approach?
look - you're arguing principles of left/right ideology but i am talking about tangible outcome:
in 3 years and 10,000s of dead iraqis, the us has achieved virtually nothing in iraq: the constitution, as i argued rearlier ratifies a shiite theocracy, the new government is so divided it can't fill out key security positions. It did get saddam out of power but that is a really small ROI as we now know that saddam was little more than a paper tiger.
The troops have actually done a piss-poor job (with the help of an astonishingly incompetent admninistraiton i'll give you) but this is really no time for gloating about "the best troops this country has had". They have distinguished themselves more for their total lack of respect for human rights than by any significant action.
The fact that I think that this fiasco is a fortunate thing is irrelevant.
Well, one usually cannot escape ideology in these things -- since the basic assumptions one starts from color the way one looks at things. If one puts the origin at 9/11, and views that as a declaration of war on the US (much as Pearl Harbor), one looks at things one way. If one couldn't care less about that attack on the US, and views it as some minor problem best shoved under the rug, then one tends to perceive things differently.
...save for the fact that the link between the iraqi adventure and 9/11 is tenuous at best.
but what are those great accomplishments that you are thinking of when you refer to " U.S. troops, the best this country has yet produced" ?
9/11 isn't a small problem obviously. But on a scale of danger to western civ, i wouild argue it is closer to the threat of organized crime than that of say the former soviet union with enough nukes to blow up the planet many times over. zarky/obl are simply not playing in that league - not even close.
what are those great accomplishments that you are thinking of when you refer to " U.S. troops, the best this country has yet produced" ?
Those quotes are from the WSJ -- a bit of a hyperbole, perhaps, but yes, those troops are some of the best the US has produced, at least since WWII. They operate in an extremely tough environment (where their high-tech advantage is drastically minim ized), under very tough rules of engagement, and under the microscope of the media, ready to pounce at their slightest mistake, with no one to root for them except a few lonely souls. And what they accomplished is liberating two countries from the yoke of tyrrany -- no small feat in my book. Hats off to those troops, I say.
As for the Long War being a piece of cake when compared to the Cold War -- not clear at all. Capabilities are not only measured in number of nukes, or number of divisions, pace Uncle Joe ("The Pope? How many divisions does he have?") This war is extremely tough, and unpredictable. I would not minimize the danger it poses to the US and Western Civ. By the way, how many Americans were killed on US soil from 1945 to 1990 due to the Cold War, compared to that single September mornining? Just think for a second about it...
the conditions under which the troops are fighting has no bearing on the quality of the troops themselves! As far as overtopping a vastly inferior army, there is not much to brag about there (unless you want to cheer for m-16s overpowering camels). Again, what outstanding accomplishments have they produced ?
I guess one could take your argument one step further and ask if you limit the spatio-temporal range, you could ask hom many people were killed in NY and in a couple of hours during WWII and you would find perhaps that, by that metric, 9/11 is comparable to cambodia in the 70s. Hence OBL=pol-pot/hitler, whatever. But that is a sophism. The reality is that 9/11 is probably close to the best that al qaeda could achieve. You could invoke dirty bombs, germ warfare, etc... but these threats are not "averees" (dunno the english term for it). On the other hand, the reality of nukes in the USSR was undisputable and the threat very real.
To say that the us is overreacting to what is, like it or not, a very small threat is an understatemment in my view. We oughta be far more concerned about aids, roadsise accidents, poverty, increasing inavailability of health care, and whether my toenail fungus is going to overtake my entire foot and crawl up my leg than by al qaeda.
Just to clarify a point: I fully agree that the nuke threat from the USSR was absolutely real, and terrifying. Maybe present threats get maginified when compared to past threats, yet somehow, there was some kind of comfort in thinking that, despite everything, the Soviets were rational, not a bunch of suicidal maniacs. Though, the Doomsday Machine was rather spooky....
i hear ya. and i think that's why it would be healthy to hear the obl rationale rather than the statements we've been bombarded with like "they hate our freedom" and the like. britain got rid of its terror problem by engaging the irish in dialog.
"Britain got rid of its terror problem"?? Whoa, that's quite a statement. How about the London attacks on the tube and bus last year? Yet another minor thing to brush aside? As a more recent example, what about this charming chemical suicide vest? The Irish terrorist threat may be gone, but that was something localized and containable (much as the Basque terrorist threat in Spain, or Corsican separatist threat in France). What we're talking about here in this Long War is a global threat, of an altogether different order of magnitude. Let's try and keep things in perspective...
Well, obviously, that comparison does not cut the mustard, as I hope my explanations made clear. Look, there is such thing as a well-argued, well-explained position. Trying to minimize the present threat of wordwide terrorism by comparing it with some kind of pesky separatist movement, or with something only necessitating police response is the kind of sofistry that Jean Francois Kerry tried to sell in his campaign, only to fail miserably. And, this is not because American people are stoopid yahoos (as the Alan Alda types are always assuming, in their conceit), precisely to the contrary.
the scale of the problem is besides the point - understanding your ennemy's motivation is in my view the best way to defeat them. but if you're content with the idiotic (non-)explanations for aq's actions the administration has fed us so far, there is really not much more to discuss on this topic...
these people are sacrificing their lives 1000s of miles away from home just because they hate all the wonderful things america stands for.
I think the present administration is the one guilty of taking you guys for stoopid yahoos.
This explanation shows a remarkable lack of understanding of the motivation of the enemy we are up against. And again, part of the fallacy is in the "americano-centric" view of things: albeit with an animus against things american, it has some parallels with the rah-rah, yahoo way to look at things. Namely, it ascribes all motivating forces as a reaction to America, and what it stands for. This is patently absurd -- these guys put boms all the way from Bali to Marakkesh, from London to Madrid, from Egypt to Paris for reasons mostly having to do with their own ideology. Again, wtf is to discuss here? How do you conduct a "dialog" under such conditions, and what do you talk about? The finer points of head-hacking?
>>This explanation shows a remarkable lack of understanding of the motivation of the enemy we are up against
I'll confess to that - but since you obviously understand them, please do the berkeley thing and share.
>>Namely, it ascribes all motivating forces as a reaction to America, and what it stands for. This is patently absurd -- these guys put boms all the way from Bali to Marakkesh, from London to Madrid, from Egypt to Paris for reasons mostly having to do with their own ideology
Bali, London & Madrid are all motivated by the american occupation (Bali if I recall was targetting Aussies). AQ in paris ? I missed that one or are you putting it in the same bag with the FIS ?
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