Oh, you two go together like peanut butter and jelly.
I'm not after pisser in order to get under his skin. He has demonstrated a little free thinking lately, not much, but enough to engage me. I don't expect him to respond to my constructionist method any better than you have, albed, but if the worst name he calls me is 'stooge' then I must be doing something right. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted because now that Ramona has stooped to posting here I've lost interest in pisser.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone
At least we are aware of this toll and the implications, while apparently some of you are able to dismiss this toll utterly as merely a 'meaningless politically-loaded statistic,' and pretend that comparing it to bigger numbers and greater sacrifices renders it virtually insignificant.
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You've either misread me or you're just being obtuse, for it is the media that have reduced our soldiers' sacrifice down to a mere statistic, not me. And I've pointed it out not to diminish the loss of life but to indict those who wave these statistics in the air like a banner. If you'll notice, I wasn't just comparing body counts but also time frames. The significance of those figures is subjective, but after four long years of war and occupation even I am surprised that so few have died, and glad too. You're too quick to accuse me of dismissing the numbers; I'm only callous compared to those like pisser who are blowing things way out of proportion, themselves guilty of dismissing historical statistics. The current death toll is only meaningless when it's quoted without context, and that's what I'm trying to establish. We've fought in far deadlier wars than this one and come out on top, so it's certainly possible to overcome the toll we've already incurred.
Though pisser's questions about what we've accomplished are valid, the lack of reporting by the media makes it impossible to answer those questions adequately. When they report all of the costs and none of the benefits it simply becomes impossible to perform a proper cost/benefit analysis. I like Sinner's list of questions better; they're more pertinent to our situation and, unlike pisser's questions, each has a verifiable answer. Those answers are necessary to establish context, too. Without knowing what we've gained it is simply impossible to judge the value of what we've lost. I'll tell you right now, I myself am not cognizant of the
specific benefits of our war in Iraq, but there are people in this world, most of them journalists, who do know what's going on. I can only speculate as to why their knowledge has not been shared with the rest of us. I do know, however, that a dictator has been stripped of his power, his former subjects are now voting citizens, a constitution has been established in a once despotic nation, a parliament has taken power, and the free people of Iraq are now making the security of their country their responsibility, reliving us of that burden in the process. If that's not progress then I don't know what is.