| Mark In Irvine writes: | Monday, September, 10, 2007 8:49 PM |
| General Petraeus | |
| The military and the White House "cooked the books" during the Vietnam war, to make it appear that the war was going better than it actually was, to give the impression that "we could win". It is not unreasonable to wonder whether the same thing is going on now, when the circumstances in Iraq are not altogether dissimilar: the US entered into both wars on false pretenses (this is an overly simplistic view that I respond to below), and the situations on the ground in both places had/have cultural and social dynamics that do not lend themselves to military "solutions", and which were ignored by the war's planners, who were more concerned about ideology than accurate assessment of the situation. | |
Re Mark in Irvine
Mark said we went into Iraq under "false pretenses". This is a slogan that we hear from the other side. What exactly were these "false pretenses"? This is not a question you are supposed to ask. We aren't having a real debate; we are just throwing dirt at each other. We are not searching for truth, but projecting arrogance and contempt at each other, like apes staring each other down over a conflict.
Mark. Listen very closely, and see if you can engage in an intellectual thought experiment. We call it an analogy. When you wake up in the morning and go to work, do you only go for one reason? Do you want the money for only one reason? Your house is probably the most important reason you want money, but do you also want money for your car, clothes and food? If you have more than one reason to go to work, do you think the Defense department, and executive branch had more than one reason to go to Iraq? Do you think Hillary Clinton gave Bush the authority to go to Iraq for more than one reason?
You show that you should not have graduated from 3rd grade when you say that we went to under false pretenses. I can only assume you are referring to the lack of WMDs in Iraq. You are worse than stupid, you are deliberately ignorant. A 3 rd grader can remember the hour long states of the union where Bush, and later where Colin Powel laid out their justifications. Only an agenda driven hack like yourself will only remember the one reason that didn't turn out to be justified, and ignore the other reasons we went to Iraq.
We went to Iraq partly because the world thought that Iraq had a WMD program, just like you go to work partly to buy pie for your pie hole. But we also went into Iraq because they invaded Iran, invaded Kuwait, they were shooting at our planes, the dictator's kids (who were going to inherit the country) had rape rooms, he gassed the Kurds, because he killed the Swamp Arabs, for strategic priorities that the embargo was no longer working, because they he was sending money to families of suicide bombers, because we knew that he hated America, because we tried killing him, because we should have taken him out the first time we went in, because we felt bad for abandoning those who tried to overturn the leadership in Iraq, because September 11th taught us that this world has a Muslim problem, and here was this country with all of these problems, and we thought we could fix it.
The only one of these reasons that according to you, turned out not to be true was the WMD. Everything else was true. But you are so blinded by hate that you have the mental ability of a 3rd grader, and you pretend that we make decisions only on the one reason that has been discredited, because lucky for you, it helps your political agenda.
This is why we hate you, Democrats.
Why don't you ever mention the other reasons that Bush said we were going into Iraq? Why do you think it is a tragedy that Iraqis are dying for our freedom, but you celebrate those who died for our freedom from the Civil War, Revolutionary War, and World Wars? This doesn't make sense to 3 rd graders. Freedom to die like men, is better than living like dogs for us, but it would have somehow been better for the Iraqis and their children, and their children's children to have gone living under a dictator? A 3 rd grader can see that it was good for our forefathers to die for our freedom. A 3rd grader wills not morn the lives of the Iraqis who die for their freedom. A 3rd grader can see that only your hatred of Bush could make you glorify the sacrifices of our forefathers, and spit on the sacrifices of the people in Iraq who are fighting for freedom from a dictator.
Why do you pick and choose which reasons we went into Iraq? Why do you ignore the other reasons we went to Iraq? How can you live with yourself when you political agenda require you to ignore large parts of what happened? How can you believe a political philosophy that a 3rd grader can disprove? A third grader is smart enough to know that there are a lot of things that were wrong in Iraq. A 3rd grader knows when every little town has a statue of a guy, and his kids have rape rooms, and people who talk against him are all killed that there are problems in a country. A 3rd grader knows what is right and wrong. But you pretend that we only went to Iraq because of one reason. History will make you look very bad.
Think of the civil war. Things that are clear to us now with time were not clear then. How do you find clarity? Don't believe things that are not true. It is not true that we went to Iraq for one reason. Do not believe that we went to Iraq for one reason. Life is not that simple. Do not say that we went to Iraq under a false pretense. If you want to be accurate, if you want to be one the right side of history, at least say specifically what that false pretense was. At least have the intellectual fortitude of saying that we went to Iraq for false pretense s because no one does anything for one reason. Be clear. Don't be vague. If you are going to be on the right side of history, you have to follow procedures that would tend to promote truth.
You say, "and the situations on the ground in both places had/have cultural and social dynamics that do not lend themselves to military "solutions", and which were ignored by the war's planners, who were more concerned about ideology than accurate assessment of the situation."
Is this true? What was different between WWII and this war? Did WWII also have "cultural and social dynamics that do not lend themselves to military solution"? If you are going to say some stupid thing like that give us some reasons that you think there is no military solution. Don't just say stuff. Explain why. WHY do you think there is no military solution, Mark in Irvine? Did you go to West Point? Have you ever been a general? Do you think you are saying something that the 4 star general didn't freaking think of? How arrogant can you be Mark? You IDIOT.
Petraeus was the General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College - class of 1983. He subsequently earned a Master of Public Administration (1985) and a Ph.D. (1987) in International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University . He later served as Assistant Professor of International Relations at the U.S. Military Academy, and also completed a fellowship at Georgetown University. He has a BS from the U.S. Military Academy - class of 1974.
Mark, YOU IDIOT, do you really think you are saying something that has not been discussed in the pentagon? You accused the General who is risking his life to protect us of "being more concerned about ideology than accurate assessment of the situation". Back it up you IDIOT. What makes you think this? WHY?
If we are going to make it through this century we are going to have to start thinking before we speak. We are going to have to get past the bumper sticker mentality. We are going to have to stop saying stuff that is demonstrably untrue. We are going to have to start thinking things only if there are valid reasons to believe them. There is no valid reason to say that we went to Iraq because of a false pretense. We went into Iraq because of many things. To say that the general is more concerned about "ideology than accurate assessment of the situation" without giving any evidence to show that he is more concerned about ideology, shows your lack of respect for an accurate assessment of the situation. To say this with while the general sat there for hours with actual facts, and you bring nothing to the table except your ideology, and you have the arrogance of accusing him of the only thing you have left... an agenda, when he brought actual facts to the discussion, and his risking his life to save yours.
Enough is enough. We need to stop having respect for people like Mark. If anyone knows Mark In Irvine please spit on him. He deserves no respect. In the olden days there were lines people would not cross. This has gone on too long. There was something to be a man. You know all that stuff about honor, and a man's word. And you getting punched for saying really stupid stuff. With the internet, any idiot can say anything they want without any fear of pissing off a relative of someone in the army. There is no shame in our society anymore, because everything is anonymous. You don't have see people in your neighborhood that here the stupid things you say. There is no give and take. Mark writes his piece, and I write my piece, and nothing is solved. I want so badly to have a system like the one described in David's Sling, where people are able to submit reasons to agree and disagree, and the best reasons survive and go to the top, and we get past all this stupid, stupid, back and forth…
…but there is too much stupidity. Too much people saying the same old stuff over and over again. Every day there are millions of new blogs all saying the same stuff, and no way of promoting truth… no forum to organize all the reasons, no one place for all the best thinking to be organized in a logical way…
It doesn't have to be like this. Problems can be fixed.
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