| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq-Jordan |
| A War Without Reason (claims Bob Herbert) |
| 2004-10-18 |
| NYT, via Spiegel.de There should no longer be any doubt that the war in Iraq is an exercise in lunacy. It was launched with a spurious rationale, the weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be a fantasy relentlessly stoked by obsessively hawkish middle-aged men who ran and hid when they were of fighting age and the nation was at war. Well, the nation is at war now, and they're certainly not hiding are they? Now we find that we can't win this war we started. Soldiers and civilians alike are trapped in the proverbial briar patch, unable to move around safely in a country that the warmongers thought would be easy to conquer and then rebuild. So...your point is what exactly? That war is an unpredictable event? There is no way to overstate how profoundly wrong they were. On some counts. On others they were dead-on, 100% correct. Our troops continue to die but we can't even identify the enemy, which is why so many innocent Iraqi civilians - including women and children - are being blown away. Correction, YOU can't identify the enemy. The civilians are being killed by the thousands, even as the dreaded Saddam Hussein is receiving first-class health care (most recently a successful hernia operation) from his captors. Killed by the thousands? Really?? There seems to be a unit of measurement missing there somewhere...do you mean per day, on a weekly basis, per year, per bomb drop??? Which is it? Last week, in a story that read like a chapter from an antiwar novel, we learned that members of an Army Reserve platoon were taken into custody and held for two days after they refused to deliver a shipment of fuel to Taji, a town 15 miles north of Baghdad. They complained that the trip was too dangerous to make without an escort of armored vehicles. Several of the reservists described the trip as a "suicide mission." The military said that was an isolated incident, but there is evidence of growing dissatisfaction among the troops, many of whom feel they are targets surrounded by hostile Iraqis -insurgents and ordinary civilians alike - in a war that lacks a clearly defined mission. The mission is clearly defined. Again, it is you who can't wrap your mind around it. Even the heavily fortified Green Zone, which contains the U.S. embassy and the headquarters of the interim Iraqi government, was penetrated by suicide bombers last Thursday. At least five people, including three Americans who had been providing security for diplomats, were killed in the attack. As the pointlessness of this war grows ever clearer, He means, he still doesn't understand. But it's not for a lack of trying. the president's grand alliance, like some of the soldiers on the ground, is losing its resolve. When John Kerry, in the first presidential debate, mentioned only Britain and Australia as he mocked Mr. Bush's "coalition" in Iraq, the president famously replied, "You forgot Poland." Poland has 2,400 troops in Iraq. But on Friday the prime minister, Marek Belka, announced that he will cut that number early next year, and then "will engage in talks on a further reduction." That was always Poland's position. Nothing new. Mr. Belka has a political problem. He can't explain the war to his constituents. And that's because there is no rational explanation. This issue is far more complicated than your "no rational explanation" argument (which you are desperately trying to tie in with every assertion in this piece) As for the rebuilding of Iraq, forget about it. Hundreds of schools were damaged by U.S. bombing and thousands were looted by Iraqis. It's hard to believe that an administration that won't rebuild schools here in America will really go to bat for schoolkids in Iraq. I would argue that this is more the responsibility of the Iraqi government, whether interim or not. But continue, please... Millions of Iraqi kids now attend schools that are decrepit and, in many cases, all but falling down-lacking such essentials as desks, chairs and even toilets, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. Military commanders are warning that delays in the overall reconstruction are increasing the danger for American troops. A senior American military officer told The Times, "We can either put Iraqis back to work, or we can have them shoot [rocket-propelled grenades] at us." The president and his apologists never understood what they were getting into in Iraq. And you did? What is unmistakable now is that Americans will never be willing to commit the overwhelming numbers of troops and spend the hundreds of billions of additional dollars necessary to have even a hope of bringing long-term stability to Iraq. Shouldn't you have waited until after November 2nd before claiming this as fact? This is a war that never made sense and now we are seeing - from the troops on the ground, from our allies overseas and increasingly from the population here at home - the inevitable reluctance to forge ahead with the madness. The president likes to say he made exactly the right decision on Iraq. Each new death of a soldier or a civilian, each child who loses a parent to the carnage, each healthy body that is broken or burned in this war that didn't have to happen, is a reminder of how horribly wrong he was. Yeah yeah yeah. Death, carnage and misery. Welcome to the planet Earth Mr. Herbert. You forgot to mention Sudan. Or the whole of Africa for that matter. Or about 90% of the world. You don't get out much often do you, Mr. Herbert? I liked this little bit as well: Cooperative agreement between SPIEGEL ONLINE and the "New York Times" SPIEGEL ONLINE and the online version of the "New York Times" offer their readers a special service. Yeah I bet they do. Approximately twice a week, you can read selected analyses and commentary from the "New York Times" on SPIEGEL ONLINE. In return, our colleagues in New York will publish selected and translated articles from DER SPIEGEL on their website each week. Oh great. A moonbat exchange program. Is the Guardian in on this as well? |
| Posted by:Rafael |
| #5 Dave D. I could believe that but I think he really needs to get hit with a clue bat too. Seeing where the opinion peice runs it's just so much anti american self loathing. Maybe I can get some fellow sock puppets to get a clue bat after him? |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-10-19 2:09:04 AM |
| #4 Nah. He's verbally too adroit to literally be a "moron". Could just be a lying bastard, though... |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-10-18 10:38:36 PM |
| #3 Dave D, cuz he's a moron? |
| Posted by: Conanista 2004-10-18 9:49:47 PM |
| #2 It's amazing how clueless someone can be when they simply don't want to understand the obvious. If I, an ordinary citizen, have no trouble figuring out a whole bunch of reasons why we needed to invade Iraq, why else would Bob Herbert have so much trouble? |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-10-18 9:09:53 PM |
| #1 This is just another in a long series of articles by Bob Herbert expressing concern for the welfare of our troops. Oh no, wait, Bob Herbert to my knowledge never gave a rat's butt about the welfare of our troops until it became an issue he could use against Bush. |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-10-18 8:35:57 PM |