It's not just the "how", it's the "what"
I want to reiterate a point I made here.
Wars that are worth fighting (and I do believe that there are such wars, they are called wars of self-defense) don't become not-worth-fighting because "our guys" are getting killed. We should have accepted that cost before "going in". That's why war is always a lousy choice. No, in legitimate wars, if we were to quit (cut and run) we would face massive casualties or enslavement by our belligerent enemy -- those who attacked us. For when you are in a war legitimately, then cutting and running really can be seen as cowardly and wrong.
But that is what is wrong in the case of Iraq... because in that situation, the U.S. is the belligerent participant. GWB started the war! When you were wrong to start, you are not wrong to stop. In fact, that is what war criminals must do, they must "cease and desist" and then submit themselves to justice. And that is what BushCo can never do because to do so would be to admit to what they will never admit to -- that they were wrong. But not just technically, as in, they went about it badly and screwed it up.
No, they are wrong in the sense of being the "bad guys", the villains. So they desperately hope that by "doubling down" they can put off their day of reckoning, that they can keep fooling people into believing that they are the "good guys" and that this adventure is worth doing. But as the good-old-boys say: that dog won't hunt.
No, the sad reality is that, when you are doing a bad thing, doing it better doesn't make it a good thing, but doing it badly can make it worse.
It's not the fact that the U.S. has lost this war that makes it wrong.I thought that it was wrong for the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003 and nothing has changed since then that makes that invasion/occupation any less wrong (or any more right). That is why the U.S. should leave... not, as I have said before, because the U.S. is "losing". In fact, I don't agree with most of the people who have change their minds more or less recently and decided that the U.S. should now leave Iraq because most of these people have come to that conclusion because "our guys" are being killed.
Wars that are worth fighting (and I do believe that there are such wars, they are called wars of self-defense) don't become not-worth-fighting because "our guys" are getting killed. We should have accepted that cost before "going in". That's why war is always a lousy choice. No, in legitimate wars, if we were to quit (cut and run) we would face massive casualties or enslavement by our belligerent enemy -- those who attacked us. For when you are in a war legitimately, then cutting and running really can be seen as cowardly and wrong.
But that is what is wrong in the case of Iraq... because in that situation, the U.S. is the belligerent participant. GWB started the war! When you were wrong to start, you are not wrong to stop. In fact, that is what war criminals must do, they must "cease and desist" and then submit themselves to justice. And that is what BushCo can never do because to do so would be to admit to what they will never admit to -- that they were wrong. But not just technically, as in, they went about it badly and screwed it up.
No, they are wrong in the sense of being the "bad guys", the villains. So they desperately hope that by "doubling down" they can put off their day of reckoning, that they can keep fooling people into believing that they are the "good guys" and that this adventure is worth doing. But as the good-old-boys say: that dog won't hunt.
No, the sad reality is that, when you are doing a bad thing, doing it better doesn't make it a good thing, but doing it badly can make it worse.
posted by Bill at 11:47 PM
2 Comments:
As that kooky liberal Dennis Kucinich said, it was wrong to go in and its wrong to stay.
That's my kind of kooky liberalism... being proved fucking right!
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