January 11, 2003
WHY NOT?:
Happy Imbeciles At War: Massive U.S. military buildup, billions of dollars, a useless enemy, and no one seems to know why (Mark Morford, January 10, 2003, SF Gate)This is not a war. Iraq will not be a war. Do we understand this? We do not seem to understand this. This is heavily corporatized power brokers killing each other for oil and capital. Oh yes it is.Let's be perfectly clear. You cannot have a war when the so-called enemy has done nothing to provoke you and is absolutely no threat to your national safety and has no significant military force and has negligible chance of even setting off a firecracker near your own overwhelming death machines, and whose only weapons of minimal destruction are the rusty short-range warheads and biochemical agents we sold him 20 years ago, and kept selling to him, even after we knew he was gassing his own people.
You cannot have a war when there is nothing to fight against, when it's essentially going to be a huge U.S. military stomping/bombing exercise, when, just like Afghanistan, we stand to suffer zero U.S. casualties (except for those we seem to kill ourselves), and we just bomb and bomb and kill and kill and shrug. [?]
This is a Mack truck versus a Pinto. This is an F-16 versus a paper airplane, a Tomahawk missile versus a spit wad. There is no contest. "War" is exactly the wrong term. The U.S. attack on Iraq will be, of course, a massacre. Go team.
Now let's say you sense this all to be true. Let's say you have a queasy feeling deep in your gut as you realize no one is talking about exactly why we need to launch a second simultaneous war to go along with the unwinnable assault we're still running in Afghanistan.
Remember Afghanistan?
Suppose we do sense every word of this to be true: is not Afghanistan a better place today because the Taliban is gone (or mostly gone)? Will not Iraq be a better place when Saddam and the Baathists are gone? If it will be this easy, which one suspects it will, and it will achieve such good, why would someone who seems to care about the Iraqi people oppose it? Posted by Orrin Judd at January 11, 2003 9:18 AM
And why -- assuming that our politicians are not gibbering madmen -- would they spend billions of dollars on "a(sic) huge U.S. military stomping/bombing exercise" for what amounts to at most a billion dollars in extra oil or whatever revenue?
Posted by: Christopher Badeaux at January 11, 2003 10:00 AMWe should send Mr. Morford to Kuwait to explain how there wasn't an invasion in 1991 because "you cannot have a war when the so-called enemy has done nothing to provoke you".
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at January 11, 2003 10:35 AMYou beat me to the punch, AOG.
Posted by: Harry at January 11, 2003 2:48 PMAOG: nice touch. That comment should have wider circulation.
Along the same lines, Mr. Morford is so internally contradictory that it wouldn't even be a Fisking to Fisk him. But I can have just one swing with the ClueBat, I'd ask him to explain why, if Afghanistan is an unwinnable assault, the Taliban is out of power and marginalized to the rustic boonies, the terrorist training camps have been destroyed, Al Qaeda has been thoroughly disrupted, and the people of Afghanistan -- particularly the women and children -- can breathe easier and think about the future. What are the odds that Mr. Morford would respond intelligently to that?
I'm amazed that everyone thinks war with Iraq is going to be so easy. If there were no weapons of mass destruction, it would be over in a few days, but it's plausible that Saddam and al Qaeda will use WMD in response to a U.S. attack.
Posted by: pj at January 11, 2003 3:03 PMKabul University Gets a Computer
Center
(CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Jan 11, 2003, Associated Press)
"Students studying in the well-worn classrooms of Kabul University used to get their class materials by straining to hear professors dictate pages of
notes and scribbling feverishly to keep up.
Those days were left behind Saturday with the opening of a little, freshly painted yellow building — a $75,000 photocopying and computer center,
courtesy of the Turkish contingent to Kabul's International Security Assistance Force.
It's a small step, but a sign of progress for an institution battered by decades of war and neglect. Kabul University, like the city that surrounds it, is
trying to bring back a semblance of normalcy, even when that means something as basic as making a photocopy. "
If it was all about oil wouldn't it be easier to coddle Saddam than confront him? It seems that Bush and Cheney's nefarious oil buddies would be pushing for no war and easing of the sanctions. Wait! You say it is the left leaners like Morford calling for this? Why, you don't suppose he has a connection to....
Posted by: Buttercup at January 11, 2003 5:04 PMThey might, pj, but which ones?
If they had a nuke, they could drop it on their
own feet.
Chemicals like nerve gases are close to useless
on a battlefield.
Germs? Just how do you use them against
an invading army in your own country?