Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to re: 'good news from Iraq' posts

Your good news was welcome but you never acknowledged the bad.
azstrummer — (archived)

Well Tom, my guess is you heard from the rest of us what you expected and not what people actually posted. Obviously there were a few naysayers that pretty much dismissed whatever you referenced and I have to admit that it would've been easy for me to do but here's my take on how I responded when you posted "good news". Instead of dismissing it as inaccurate, I instead said that the good had to overwhelm the bad in order for it to be effective.

Imagine if you will that one of your children, after years of telling you nothing but the truth, suddenly tells you an out and out extremely effective lie. The shock that hits you tends to overwhelm the equation and you insist that child needs to slowly rebuild trust again. You can't just say to yourself that all the good years mean you can simply ignore the lie. It's not a quantity thing whether it seems fair or not.

Building two schools does not undo the damage of an Abu Graihab prison scandal or any other military atrocity. The overthrow of a violent ruler and the removal of that spector from the life of an Iraqi family cannot compete with the violent loss of multiple family members from shock and awe bombings. The image of armed American servicemen breaking down doors in the middle of the night with assault rifles in their hands cannot be dismissed by some random act of kindness done by a soldier at another time.

Tom, I applaud the good but it's always been my contention that it never would be enough given the circumstances of this war and the demographics and cultural differences of the region. Maybe there was a window where we could've stabilized the country with sufficient force and planning but each day I'm even doubting that.

Let's not forget that the media "treated" us to weeks of "great news" during the invasion and the days afterwards. We saw almost no bodies, no coffins of servicemen coming back, lots of pretty explosions without any of the terror they caused, statues being toppled, valiant rescues (which turned out later to be heavily doctored), and lots of shots of vehicles flying across the empty sands. Excuse us if we got a bit jaded by that manipulation. It's not what the rest of the world was seeing, especially the Mideast.

You'll never believe this but I firmly attest that all of us wish for absolute success and a lack of suffering for the Iraqis but what you view as a jaded opposition is just people being realistic. If that trait is no longer allowed then we have no business ever engaging in warfare again.

Art

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