Monday, May 05, 2008

How to Stay in Iraq for 10,000 Years

Hertzberg on McCain via Huffington:

"McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal -- that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay."

So that's how he gets to 10,000 years in Iraq...

4 comments:

Robert Sievers said...

Dan, you are beginning to convince me that perhaps American lives are indeed worth more than Muslim lives. Perhaps we should get out and let them all kill each other. There would be less terrorists for us to deal with that way too.

PGregory Springer said...

People used to say that about blacks in the ghetto, too. Just let them kill each other off.

It's a bad strategy and, of course, racist. Any strategy that calls for killing is going to be counterproductive in the long run.

Nonviolence is the only long-term effective strategy, although it is counterintuitive and requires real courage. Humans apparently have a very difficult time recognizing that both sides of every battling equation think they are the ones "making things right."

Robert Sievers said...

pq,

Nonviolnece is clearly the preferable strategy. It is the role we are taking in Lebanon right now, as we watch sunnis and shi'ites wipe each other out.

How we do justify allowing the same to happen in Iraq should we pull out before creating infrastructure while at the same time rationalizing the deaths away as American compassion?

PGregory Springer said...

I know. It's a mess. We should have thought of it before we went in the first place. I seem to recall MILLIONS of people marching worldwide to protest the thought of our invasion of Iraq. It seems entirely disingenuous to talk about our rationale now, at this point. If a nonviolent approach to peacemaking and involvement in Iraq had been taken before ousting Saddam, spending billions upon billions and being willing to sacrifice in the process (which have been the cost of the war anyway), there would be no need to rebuild an infrastructure, hearts and minds would have been won, and... well, you get the picture. But governments are not run that way, especially capitalist system governments. We think about money first. So, in answer to your question, who knows? Probably the first thing absolutely necessary is to apologize and ask for forgiveness. Do it now and not wait for fifty years from now, when survivors will be demanding reparations.