Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I'm not particularly depressed by the ongoing squabble about whether what is going on in Iraq is a "civil war" because it seems to have more to do with defining that term in a way that minimizes what is actually happening there and emphasizes that you don't have two sides dressed in blue and grey.
But it is depressing that you and others have convinced yourself that many Americans would prefer, for partisan reasons, that we lose the war, and that you deploy that idea to close your eyes to the fact that we are losing the war because Bush and Rumsfeld and those waging it cannot figure out how to win it.
The President, the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense have gotten everything they've asked for to fight this war. They are losing it. They can't blame anyone else for that.
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I think a lot of the conflict is psychological. In any war, perception is really important. So is morale. As that article pointed out, things in Iraq are really not that bad. I saw on MSNBC last night that the death toll of American soldiers has not reached 3,000 and they said 54,000 Iraqis had died. They also said that number might be inflated. If that number is correct that is 1/5 of one percent of the population. From a historical perspective, for a country to suffer an invasion, and experienced an insurgency for three years that number is a miracle. (two million Vietnames died in the Vietnam war, Maybe three million Koreans in the Korean War. In addition, the deaths are mainly concentrated in three provinces.
But since the day the invasion started there has been a constant press barage of how we are screwing up. Once no WMDs were found the gloves were off. The press just went nuts on how screwed up this war was. The Democrats just piled on also.
War is risky and war is unpredictable. We can't know if more troops would have helped the situation or aggravated it. The point is, the cause was just and we have a chance to establish a democracy in Iraq. Putting democracy right in the middle of the middle east would be a huge coup and would put huge pressure on the countries surrounding it to go Democratic.
It would be a pricelss accomplishment. But since day one of the invasion there has been a strong propaganda machine through out the world undermining the war effort and our own media and the opposition in this country has helped fuel that propaganda machine.
It would be different if 90 percent of the people complaining about the problems in Iraq werent the exact same people complaining about Iraq right when we went in or the same people who were complaining six months after we went in.
This war was a risk, but it was a good calculated risk. And it deserved and still deserves the best chance we can give it. From day one there has been a concentrated effort to make the war look bad for partisan purposes and this effort has helped undermine a noble and prudent cause.
