Iraq? I Wreck? I Run?

You make a number of very observations about Iraq. The war was poorly planned, born from fear, perhaps even promoted out of self interest from some sectors. If it were a personal matter, instead of a global one, we would undoubtedly be asking ourselves “What the %*&#@ was I thinking?” Like many of the difficulties that we find ourselves in however, the mistake was made and now needs to be dealt with. I can certainly understand why many people want out now. In light of the effect our actions have had on the people that live there however, I am not sure that is realistic when we consider our responsibility to the lives of Iraqis that we have effected. I do think we need to rethink the way we handle that crisis however. It appears to me that the Iraqis are becoming dependent on us in many aspects of their lives, and we are creating a welfare state. We are putting our troops at unneccesary risk by using them inappropriately, for missions they were not trained to execute, and put them in moraly challanging situations that we quickly punish them for at the slightest hint of embarasement. I believe the best fix is a compromise to the two extremes (run vs stay) that are usually suggested. We should pull our troops back to safe positions in encampments outside of the cities. The Iraqi’s will be given the responsibility for day to day operations in those cities. Should they become engaged in a combat action which threatens to overwhelm them we should respond from the encampment in mass the way our soldiers were trained to do. Lets also get the Iraqis trained to do the jobs we are currently using foreign contractors to complete. These people need to feel like they have a real stake in their own future, and they need to feel responsible for it. Our troops would be a little safer, we would fulfill our responsibility to the people, and we would empower them to rebuild their own future. The gap between the Shiites and the Sunis also needs to be addressed, but I must confess that I am not certain about how to do this and would love to hear some ideas. On a side note why do people disagree as though all things came down to one side vs the other? The problems we face in life and government are complex and have many aspects. When we treat differences of opinion as two basis from which to find common ground and workable solutions, we frequently find that we produce something better than either side could have produced on it’s own, and we truly begin to focus on solutions and not problems.

I find it very interesting that these ADP blogs clearly present a problem, as defined by the writers’ personal biases, yet do not suggest a solution. It is easy to whine about “the state of things,” but difficult to create action plans to help out. My introduction to ADP was stirring and seemed to be meaningful, but the emails I get now appear to be rehashes of emotionally charged issues designed to generate website hits…

Numb and Number ? Jacques Nichols August ‘05 When the toll reached over 700, I thought that was a lot. Now I read that it’ll soon exceed 1,900 men and women. Dead. Multiply that number by 10 for those who died in their sorrow, And that is just from their immediate families. The brass says: “We’re going to be there for four more years.” So we can multiply 1,900 by 10 and by 4 times more. What you get is about 76,000. Maybe add a fudge factor, if we are still not getting the real numbers. Now is that large enough to get us to stop raising the count? The president won’t admit his math mistakes. Do we need to lose another 76,000? The Spirit of 1776? I don’t think so. These numbers may look like penny ante when compared To the big wars, the ones we are so proud of. Like WW I and WW II. Don’t bring up the Civil War; that was only about killing our brothers. Oh, and find a number for those now try to live without limbs. They can’t even count to ten on their fingers and toes. Let alone know how they are going to make it all add up. America needs to do the math. Who counts the lives lost by Iraqi and Afghanistan civilians? If this were a pledge drive, the red line would already be at the top. Tell me again, how many WMD’s were found? Oil, can be found in foil, which is what we’ve become. Democracy is priceless, but at what cost? What purpose do these numbers serve? The president says the dead soldiers served their country. Many of their families may have a different opinion on this matter. “Served Up” may be their unfortunate choice of words. Won’t we ever learn that every lost life counts? Here are some ages: 27, 34, 27, 19, 24, 22, 22 and 38. A grand total of 213 years. The line forms to the right. These ages were from this week’s reported casualties. They belonged to the 69th, 278th, 7th, 2nd and 463rd. The A P count has seven more then the Defense Dept.’s tally. Odd that the numbers don’t match up, but nothing else does. I’ve read and re-read those numbers from today’s Oregonian. What do I do about my numbness with these endless numbers? I can’t skip to the sports pages to find numbers that matter. Ken Griffey, Jr. said it well: “I don’t matter, those in uniform do.” Maybe like Private Ryan, some day there’ll be a movie about this war. A possible title: Numb and Number. But, Jim Carey wouldn’t touch that script because it isn’t funny! Actually what is funny any more? We are losing our dear bones.

It was a BAD idea from the start. I had no idea of whether they had WMD or not, but even if they did as was being stated, I still did not want this war. I am convinced that we have created more hatred of the U.S. in the muslim world and there are more terrorists that seek to do us harm than there were before. I do not see a good conclusion, but we need to exit somehow as soon as possible without totally devasting the Iraquis left behind. I wish I was smart enough to find the answer. I just know what we have done and are doing is not the answer.

Dear Will, I’m a retired Marine who now oversees the training these young men and women receive prior to going back over to Iraq. I think you are misinformed on why we are there. We have not gone at this whole heartedly because congress and others in the political arena are using it to improve their position. This “war” needed to be done. Saddam has been killing people for years, he needed to go, to make the world a better place. Although the media only reports on the tragedies, the benefits to Iraq from not just us, but the world has improved a great many of their lives. My solution to this problem is very simple. Put up or shut up. Grab a gun and help the cause or sit down and shut up until the work is over. War isn’t pretty and good Americans die, but they are all volunteers who believe in something. They believe in the American dream and they are willing to protect it with their lives. What are you willing to do?

Violence breeds violence. When you react to violence with violence you get more of the same. What would have happened if we had simply said after 9/11/01 that we forgive those who took the lives of our people? By not doing so, we simply played right into their hand. The Bush administration used this for their own neocon agenda that they had been brewing since the Gulf War. We feel deeply into Al Quaeda’s trap and are engulfed in a quagmire we will not get out of for at least 20 years. Combat Al Quaeda by showing others that we are interested in empowering people without having to do so in the quasi-name of democracy. How about acting in the name of empowering people by facilitating an entrepreneurial spirit?

I couldn’t agree more with your thoughts on the situation in Iraq. The tragedy of 9/11 provided our country with an historic opportunity to take the moral high ground and channel the global outpouring of sympathy to effectively address some of the underlying causes of global terrorism. However, the shockingly incompetent conduct of the current US administration through naive and myopic foreign policy decisions has further fanned the flames of hateful ideologies worldwide and made our planet far more unstable and unsafe for all of us. The day the US invaded Iraq, I was sitting down in my living room with my spouse. As we were watching the invasion unfold on CNN, I told her that this action would go down in our nation’s history as our single greatest foreign policy disaster, and that we and our descendants would pay a heavy price for the stupidity of this decision for decades to come. I honestly hoped that I was wrong in my assessment, but the growing chaos in Iraq and threats of a regional war years after the US “liberation” suggest otherwise. Nonetheless, it is very important not to place most of the blame on “Washington” for the numerous foreign and domestic policy disasters of this administration. We, the people, are mostly to blame, and we must take responsibility for the state of our nation and our world. The world we experience is a result of our choices, our values, our perceptions and our actions. After all, we, the people, elected George W. Bush president not once but twice, correct? As our world becomes more complex and interdependent, it is incumbent upon all of us to be better informed and wiser global citizens. And this cannot happen without an internal spiritual transformation which leads us to examine our values, beliefs and actions on a daily basis, compelling us to always be the best that we can truly be in all areas of our lives.

I only have one “what if” and it will serve as well for the future as for revisiting the past. What if Americans saw themselves as members of the human community, that vast ocean of flawed yet wondrous persons. What if we were not in the habit of tagging other humans with euphemisms that rob them of their connection to us; words like gooks, spicks, n******, them, Charlies, rag-heads, fanatics, terrorists, radicals, ad nauseum? It is very difficult to set out to kill a real person, just as it is difficult to ignore the plight of a starving child in Sudan whose face is given a front page forum in Time or Newsweek. So, our culture, along, it must be said, with many other cultures around the world, dehumanizes and demonizes those we do not understand or agree with. One Machiavellian truism holds that if you can separate one group from another, if you can isolate them by ascribing negative characteristics and motives to them, you can then call upon the loyalty of a second group in defending against the devilish horde. We have seen this throughout history. Our government, for good or ill, promoted the strategy in the 50s and 60s with regard to Russia. In the sixties, the government pointed at an entity variously called “outside agitators”, “communist sympathizers” and the generic “ne’er do wells” in its attempts to quell the growing peace movement. More recently, we have witnessed the same pattern at work and many of us followed pantingly in the wake of a political/media illusion in the case of Iraq. Those names like “weapons of mass destruction”, “axis of evil” and Al Qaeda, more rife with malice than actual meaning, once flung, stick and soon become the means to a movement. Such machinations, when we join the club or do not take a stand against it, rob us of our ability to spot true danger, to mitigate the encroachment of those with dangerous intent. When the danger code at the airport is always orange, how will we know when it is truly orange? We are numbed to those few with serious and deadly design by our focus on the mass of innocent ‘others’. Likewise we are blind to the millions who hold nothing but charity and a desire for community in their hearts. How will our psychic antenna know when to twitch if everyone with the name Abdul or Said is suspect? The result is Iraq with no way out and no one sure who can build Iraq’s future and who will destroy it. Like a vile Bobbsey twin, we also have Afghanistan, where creeping tyranny has taken root again, like water hyacinth in a neglected waterway. The reality is that without wisdom and real leadership, we are a nation who reacts in waves and sees not that there are always waves. Some will say, “Well, we can’t be too careful.” I think we can be too careful, and I call on any parent of a rebellious teen to remember that the more constraints applied to his or her behavior, the more vociferous and canny were the methods used to avoid detection and restraint. Our weakness is not our borders. Our weakness is how we react to threat, perceived threat, and our own sense of political expedience. Vietnam, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Colombia, drugs, illegal immigrants, Afghanistan, Iraq. Where has the much-touted American might been an unqualified success? One respondent called for answers. The answer is voting in better leadership, the responsibilities of global citizenship and a willingness to sacrifice for our nation and the world. And FYI, anyone who had lived in the Middle East or North Africa knew precisely what would happen when we invaded Iraq. A strong leader, however despotic, of a paternalistic/tribal society is able to hold opposition factions in line. Remove him without due regard to the existing chemistry and a solid plan, and voila, Iraq today. Machiavelli knew that, too. Unfortunately, Washington D.C. didn’t.