[Ramona_A_Stone]

Originally posted by miss_silver
If a decent person were to fall on the PA, he'd run away like hell

lol

I consider myself a decent person, and you seem to be as well, and we don't run away. True, at times I do consider it more or less like a trip to a bargain basement 'natural dentistry' clinic which doubles as a kennel for emotionally challenged pit bulls, and I usually feel the graffiti I leave on these walls would proabably be just as well mailed to the North Pole with no return address, but I don't participate to try to persuade anyone of anything, even though the appearance of my participation may seem entirely contrary to that statement.

I just do it to clarify my own conscience.

Originally posted by Sinner
And it is Propaganda, face it....

Of course there may be some semantic blur here, but if an event truly occurs and is actually reported--and I don't think anyone here is going to submit that the digital evidence and reportage of the deaths of the four Americans in this story were faked--then there is no implication of dishonesty. Certainly actual events can become propaganda in their spin and amplification, in their usage. In fact singular real events can be used for the purposes of propagandizing multiple, even opposite agendas.

enantiodromia

The data exists, so in a sense every usage of it, right down to talking about it on the internet, can become a tool for propagating and distorting other ideas.

But we do all credit these 'terrorists' with creating these events to 'send a message.' They hung bits of these dudes from a bridge, which harkens back to the prechristian Roman practice of crucifixion--significant here because it was the equivalent of nailing up errant slaves to walls, trees or bridges or whatever was handy with a sign stating their crimes, using bodies as billboards for deterrence. Such bodies advertised facts, not spun hypotheticals. Four dead slaves caught stealing hung in the square meant that if you were a slave caught stealing, you was a dead motherfuckin slave. The tragic sign hung on these guys couldn't have been more aptly wrought than in the phrase "Fallujah is the graveyard of Americans." The message is don't come here.

This isn't propaganda, it's just plain old classic terrorism, doing what terrorism does best: scare people.

Fear focuses the mind on the options of fight or flight.

enantiodromia

Of course those who wanted to fight at the outset may want to fight all the more as a result of this and every spike of escalation, they may even feel this is all the more proof they were right to fight in the first place, and those who didn't want to fight may want to fight even less, but this does not mean that those who were opposed to it at the outset are somehow more susceptible to fear--advocating de-occupation is consistent with not advocating occupation in the first place.

Both had intrinsic arguable validity at the outset, however at this point it really does us no good to deny the validity of both approaches because A: we are there now and B: our ultimate "leaving" is now and always has been inclusive to our stated intent. All we have to argue about is the timing and indicators of our leaving.

For most, an election will not be an indicator. If this occurs at the projected date it will not be a magic talisman against Americans getting killed in Iraq, and let's not forget the guys in this story were contractors and the Japanese hostages are aid workers and a journalist, pointing up that the intended coalition presence extends beyond the military in both space and time, providing all too easy targets.

No one can say with any sense of certainty how long Americans in Iraq might be targets, but I'll be willing to bet it will be right up to the moment the last soldier comes home and beyond. (And anyone currently reading this is probably naive to think such a time will ever come in their lifetime.) And we can't forget that Iraqis are also targets for other Iraqis and we've taken on the responsibilities in these conflicts as well, ideological, tribal conflicts. We can only 'alienate' the Shiites by 'favoring' the Sunnis and vice versa at every given decision and with every condensed radical sect vying for voice and every such voice having resonance in a broader spectrum of social fabric, the potential for us to irritate and deepen divisions is as great if not greater than the chance of our bringing about unity.

How would you like to be an invading force occupying, say, America and have the job of trying to get the liberals and the conservatives to agree on anything? ...except perhaps that they were both equally pissed at you for occupying thier country and wanted you the hell out. It's incredibly ironic to label insurgents as "freedom hating" while we are occupying their country.

And if the invading force took out your local Baptist preacher and Catholic priest it wouldn't be just the churchgoing flocks who would react, you'd find "Catholic and Baptist sympathizers" coming out of the woodwork. Imagine America itself occupied by a force it even knew for a fact was hopelessly overwhelming and ask yourself how many rural and suburban American civilians would fight to their last breath anyway, most of them in whatever dirty little way they could devise.

But even this is a weak analogy compared the depth and profundity of Iraq's internal schisms, and the global ambiguity in its collective perception of us, and the Islamic celebration of the concept of martyrdom.

But, Jack, the important distinction between 'religious leaders' in the Christian and Islamic worlds is that the former rarely advocate ad hoc violence in dealing with 'infidels.' There are exceptions to every rule, and yes it is disturbing and unhelpful that Bush is a self-proclaimed 'religious leader,' but to view this conflict as truly originating from a clash of religious ideation is just to fuel the fires of Jihad.

Pray we never as a people earn or accept the use of that word, or even entertain the idea.

Certainly the clash is cultural and disparate religious approaches are inherent to our respective behaviours and psyches, but even the anointed Bush knows an agenda of purging Islamic sympathies root and branch could never sustain support and would be doomed from the outset. Does he regret this? lol, the fact that this question exists is scary enough.

But, 25,000 separate denominations of Christianity do peacefully coexist in our nation while as few as two or three subtle denominations of Islam existing in the same place are historically deadly more often than chance would dictate. Another fine moral line, but a line nonetheless.

I actually find a sense of patriotism by clinging to the idea that this is not a religious war from my country's point of view, a sense that can still pertain even if the war is about oil or even pure ignorance. I'll take empire building or a fight against elusive ghosts of human evil being fought in the wrong place before a war over whose imaginary deity has bigger balls.

We'd lose that one.

originally posted by mdneer
Had I known that we would engage half-heartedly in a war where we allowed our forces to become sitting ducks for the enemy, I would have been against going in, too. It's time to get down to business over there and quit pussyfooting around with the Iraqis. Change is going to happen there, whether they fucking like it or not. I can only hope our military coordinators take off the pink panties.

With all due respect that's a surprisingly irrational statement, exactly the kind of sentiment that anti-American Iraqis hope to engender, and belies that you're laboring under the unrealistic visage of "victory" so dishonestly crafted for this affair.

I guess it's because Americans are taught a version of history with themselves always at the center as the heroic protagonist, how we regale ourselves with oral traditions of repeatedly and neatly and almost single-handedly saving the world from Idols of Menace which predisposes us to think of war, when we're not in one, in the abstract as a sort of irrefutable panacea. If you look honestly at the broader history of war, it's a far filthier and more futile feeling it ultimately creates in all parties than the cut-and-dry adrenalized save-the-world propostion which usually motivates the well-intentioned advocate, and generations seem to need to learn this over and over again.

This idea of "victory" is going to remain very problematic for Americans until we affirm beyond all doubt that it will not be up to us to define or claim this moment. If there is to be a victory in Iraq, it will not be a victory for America but for Iraq. This is inclusive in our mission statement.

It's behooved Mr. Bush politically to appeal to our primal nationalistic instincts, to constantly mix the dual concepts of America's 'victory in the war on terror' with our heroism in the freeing of an alien people. But the unfortunate result is that even while the subsequent increased safety of Americans remains arguable at best, the logistics and the very definition of the freedom of this alien people seems even more unpredictable, even less definable and even, sometimes, less important.

originally posted by mdneer
Change is going to happen there, whether they fucking like it or not.

In what version of experience does such a philosphy apply? It's certainly not a principle that has much bearing on Human experience as far as I can tell. Try applying it to your spouse, your kid, your parent, a friend, your boss or an angry mob. Hell, it barely even pertains to physical reality. Tell it to the wind.

It seems to me that it would be truer to say that if there is change in Iraq it will be because they fucking like it regardless of what we do or do not do--and most probably at this point in spite of it.

I also can't believe you are citing the 'pussification' of the American military in the situation with 135,000 troops deployed, which even Rumsfeld himself has called "an unusually high level," and is far more than was expected or projected to be required to contain the situation. What, if anything, this could say other than that we committed the classic and dire mistake of underestimating the enemy, I can't imagine. I also can't imagine what color of ultramasculine tactical undergarments you would have us wear that would make less of our boys die or win more 'hearts and minds' of Iraqis. I'm not sure how much more butch you can get than tanks full of Marines. Perhaps we should just cut our losses and revert to the old classic "NUKE IRAQ" strategy?

Your comment is antithetical to the essential core process of "supporting the troops" and disrespectful to the 'military coordinators' as well, because we are putting American lives into an unbelievably complex situation where they not only barely know who the enemy is, but the perception of it can change at any place at any moment. I'd repeat from my earlier post the comment by Dr. Ragan, "you can't just suddenly turn around and mow down a whole bunch of people because someone's lobbed a homemade explosive at you and then fade it off into the marketplace." We are confronting a living mesh of interconnected human reactions we can scarcely grasp, and it has drawn us fully into its own territory.

I'd like to point out that if you don't think they're doing their jobs with enough gusto, they'd probably be more than happy to get you enlisted and on the front lines yourself.



I had Fox News on in the background the other morning (for the strange comic relief factor) and I heard an interesting comment by a retired general whose name I didn't catch. He was talking about the video of the bloody Marines climbing out of the tank which they were looping endlessly, and he was saying, basically, "oh yeah this always happens when you get a group of new young Marines coming into the field, they always get in there headlong and get a bloody nose but things calm down."

The grim subtext of this is that the boys we pour into the front lines barely know why they are there. We may know on principle and have a headful of tactical hypotheticals, but we do not know who we are fighting or what door they will be behind.

Stay tuned for endless hostage situations, car bombs and insurgency flare-ups. Stay tuned for a continuous body count that will make the staunchest advocate vomit. It's been that way there for over two-thousand years and I doubt our presence there will significantly change it any time soon.



And hello albed, I got all nostalgic seeing you here. You might be happy to know you are the author of a comment that had a profound effect on me, something I still think of from time to time and may never forget.

I'll guess 15 days and about 50 allied fatalities before its over.