"Unwinnable" comment draws GOP fire

[mboln52000]

This is a quote from a CNN article:

"Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, in a news conference with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said the problems in Iraq are due to a "lack of planning" by Pentagon chiefs and "the direction has got be changed or it is unwinnable."

Republicans seized on that word, ignoring Murtha's overall point: that more troops and equipment should be sent to Iraq."

Just what exactly is a "winnable situation" in a culture dominated by moslem philosophy for, oh, about 6,000 years????

Are these guys for real, or what? more troops and ammo?? Just how is that going to change the culture?


Thats what this all is now. Its a cultural war. I gues if we used enough troops and ammo, and completely obliterated all traces of muslim thoughts and idealogy, then things might change.

I agree that saddam needed to go, and reports of wmd needed checked out, then to me, its time to go home.


I really dont have a political favorite for our upcomming election, i do not think much of kerry at all, another hanoi jane in my book. But, the current administration made a huge error in judgement here. To me, they missed the boat completly thinking they could bring a democratic goverment to a country in a year and undue 6,000 years of culture, beliefs, tradition, and religion.

Again, I find myself thinking.... were these guys hoping to happen??????

[Guy Meilleur]

Your math puts Mohammed 4 millennia befor JC; he actually came after...but hyperbole aside, we should leave Iraq to...what? anything but civil war would be great; if anyone has the answer let's hear it, and tell dubya and Kofe right away.

[oakwilt]

Tell me or am I completely wrong.

Didn't we discuss all this when the fervor was amped to go to war?

I mean, specifics.

That's what I mean, just that right there.

It says a lot about what we're quagmired with now. A lot.

Again, I recall specifics, such as even up to and including troop strength when it became inevitable irregardless of the key justifications. Many who painted it "quick and easy" and "welcomed in the streets" need now to think more importantly than waving just a flag and watching the whole enchilada go down. Look at the situation we are now facing. I'm not meaning daily troop deaths either....I'm talking about a surge of response to the failures we've initiated so far. Global and otherwise. Trust me, the 'otherwise' we certainly aren't ready for, given the last few months and compared to the hype when we helped go in.

That's what we should be discussing. The realities of why instead of what should we do now. We cornered ourselves into this, plain and simple and black and white. Now our response - let alone survivability, is are elements we need to figure out.

I would think.

The alternative? Screw the blame and such at this late point. How would you and your family care to travel abroad right about now, let alone a few years form now? Feel safer? Even just now?

[Crofter]

How can we make them apreciate everything we have done for them eh? Even if you win you lose; as Oakwilt points out, it wont be pleasant to travel abroad and no amount of ash kicking or security will change that. There are tactics than can be used against us here too, that would make 9/11 look like a mere disturbance in terms of disrupting our lives.
Good intentioned or not, the bottom line is we appear to be meddling in affairs on another continent. What kind of spin can you put on it, to sell it to the masses there. In a way they have the hammer.

Frank

[mboln52000]

Sorry if i am rehashing it, but i wasnt around here when the whole thing broke out.

Its a mess, with far reaching consequences that will last for years.

Very true on the travelling abroad part. For many years I have wanted to see eqypt, pyramids, etcs, but that a little out of the question for quite some time.

True, my math on the existance of the moslem's is a little off, but ya know what i mean about the culture of that many years.

Frank brings up some very good and true points.

[eyolf]

Without being aware of it, MB might have been a little closer to the truth with that 6000 years thing.

Mohammed was around 600 years or so after JC, but you can't really believe that the prophet changed the basic underlying culture of the Arabs. The Hebrew bible explains the Arabs away, 2000 years earlier, as the children of Ishmael, son of Abraham through Haggai. Ishmael "was a "wild ass of a man" in our own version, which says a lot...coming from the jews who were no froup of scouts, either.

many theologians and historians interpret the stuff in Genesis about a "tooth for a tooth, life for a life" as a civilizing set of rules being imposed upon an unruly race...instead of proscribing severe punishment, it is understood by some to limit punishment. It was no longer acceptible to murder an entire houshold for a crime committed by one person for example.

That pretty much explains who the Arabs are...they seem to be stuck in the dark ages, still, looking for vengeance and retribution, rather than solutions to their problems.

[oakwilt]

The first application of written language, optics, mathematics, hybrid plants, formal education, medicine, and metallurgy.

Then the conquerers came.

They subverted, destroyed, re-named, subjegated, tortured, and stole.

Since then there's been little or nothing, until oil.

Kind of reminds me of the Inca. From the most complex cities and infrastructures, roads, and quarries even still understood and not possible to replicate, to govt. handouts and subsidies.

All in the name of something grander, suppossedly.

[RescueMan]

Originally posted by eyolf
The Hebrew bible explains the Arabs away, 2000 years earlier, as the children of Ishmael, son of Abraham through Haggai.

The Old Testament doesn't "explain away", but rather explains the animosity of the Israeli Jews and Arabs. The Arab people were the descendents of the disowned son of Abraham. The Israelis have been treating the Arabs as "bastards" and their Arab brethren have been responding in kind. It's sibling rivalry, the worst kind of conflict.

That pretty much explains who the Arabs are...they seem to be stuck in the dark ages, still, looking for vengeance and retribution, rather than solutions to their problems.

Excuse me, but aren't we talking about the Iraqis? They are Persians not Arabs, descendants of Gilgamesh, scions of Mesopotamia, the seedbed of western civilization. We're talking Babylonians, who preceeded both the Hebrews and the Arabs. We're talking one of the most advanced civilizations on Earth.

Given that the Abu Graib prisoner who was tortured and humiliated and photographed and spoke to the press about his experience said that what was done to him is not a reflection on the American people - it might be fair to say that "those people" are more civilized than we are.

- Robert

[eyolf]

Re: Bastards:

The real beauty of about anybody's scriptures is that they are open to interpretation, and while one can explain their position, even defend it using quotes, somebody else is always going to come along and say that a passage really means something else.

And who is to say..? I take "wild ass of a man" to be pretty deroguatory, but given the Hebrews' own history, it is kind of like the pot calling the kettle black.

AS regards who may or may not have been the issue of a non-legal marriage, Sarai, old Abe's wife was also his relative...both half-sister and cousin, if I recall correctly. Abe even stood by while one of the local Palestine chieftains took Sarai as his own, explaining her to be his kin, but not his wife.

later, in a display of civility I find disarming this same chieftain returns Sarai, but upbraids Abe for lying. The Hebrews must have looked pretty backwards to Abimelech!

****

Yes we are speaking of Iraqis. And some of them are ethnically (genetically) indo-aryans. But for the most part, the modern Iraqi is an Arab (genetically the semitic race) who speaks Arabic and whose ancestors have carried on economic and diplomatic commerce with the rest of the Arab world, as Arabs for many centuries. Makes them a lot closer to Arabs than, say, you and I are.

Does that make it wrong or bad to be an Arab? Heavens, no. But how many Arabs are there that are immersed in a culture that encourages violence and honors vengeance...from birth? An extreme liberal viewpoint might suggest that it isn't someone's fault if they are violent, being raised to be that way. But a pragmatic one would point out that you still need to deal with a violent, vengeful person as a violent, vengeful person.

And that's my underlying point.

[oakwilt]

Culturally speaking it's assuming vengeance isn't qualified if the offending event that stimulated it occurred more than a generation ago.

Our viewpoint.

If benefits from the offense still occur, then it remains an active issue.

My wife's great-great-great Grandmother died on the Trail of Tears and while I see this as an interesting historical event, she sees it as murder and forced displacement not different than if it happened to her own mother. It's how her culture is. Memories of her own life are distinct and separate from those of her ancestors, which instill a sense of purpose and identity and continuity.

While some Christians would consider it blasphemous to destroy the Wailing Wall in favor of condominium development, others would only see an inanimate antiquated structure in the way of progress and prosperity.

We see and judge through our own colored lenses, often unable to understand, assumptions made and in this case mandates issued that we (to the core) believe is in the best interests of those we're killing, displacing, or changing. Mostly to benefit our own subconscious desires or (again, in this case) our prosperities.

It goes with offending limbs and undesirable trees too.

[RescueMan]

Originally posted by eyolf
Does that make it wrong or bad to be an Arab? Heavens, no. But how many Arabs are there that are immersed in a culture that encourages violence and honors vengeance...from birth?

You seem to be very familiar with biblical history, but I think this is a culture-blind judgement of the Arab worldview. All tribal cultures have an ethos of justice based upon in-kind retaliation (the equitable version of an eye for an eye: no more, no less). They could not survive as tribes if they did otherwise, and this is based on a sense of honor more than revenge - wrongs must be balanced. Who are we to say this is any less humane or practical than our legal system with it's bloated prisons and electric chairs?

An extreme liberal viewpoint might suggest that it isn't someone's fault if they are violent, being raised to be that way.

It's not a matter of fault. It's a different culture and Americans have always been culturally chauvinistic and largely ignorant and judgemental of cultural differences. And this has continued to get us into quagmires.

But a pragmatic one would point out that you still need to deal with a violent, vengeful person as a violent, vengeful person.

Ok, what would pragmatism require? If you know someone is required by their culture to retaliate, then you avoid using violence against them and avoid betraying their trust, particularly if you're trying to "liberate" them and demonstrate a "better" way of acting.

Israel is committing collective suicide by their campaign of brutal violence against the Palestinians who can't do other than retaliate. And, likewise, the US government is leading us into a deepening hole of insecurity by continuing to "dishonor" the very people we claim to be helping.

- Robert

[RescueMan]

Also, if we're going to criticize or judge the Arabs for avenging their dishonor with violence, what are we to say about a country that avenges violence (9/11) by directing much greater violence (invasion of Iraq) against people who had nothing to do with the attack against us?

And there's another huge element that is hardly being mentioned. The military-controlled media continues to use terms like "insurgents" to describe the Iraqi people who are resisting the occupation and political and economic control of their country by an outside force.

A far better term to describe these people would be "freedom fighters" who are little different from our Minutemen engaged in guerilla warfare against the British (what we now call terrorism only when it's someone else who's doing it).

You'd think we might have learned something from our Vietnam debacle about trying to "pacify" and "democratize" a proud people of another culture much older than our own.

- Robert

[rb_in_va]

Robert,
Crack kills! Stay away from that stuff.

A far better term to describe these people would be "freedom fighters" who are little different from our Minutemen engaged in guerilla warfare against the British (what we now call terrorism only when it's someone else who's doing it).

Yeah, except for the FACT that the insurgents are in the minority. And since when has the media been controlled by anything others than liberals?

[RescueMan]

Originally posted by rb_in_va
Yeah, except for the FACT that the insurgents are in the minority. And since when has the media been controlled by anything others than liberals?

You think the Minutemen were a majority movement? The were just a small band of colonists who were acting on the sentiments of the majority.

Ask anyone on the ground in Iraq. The majority of Iraqis want the US out ASAP and they're getting madder by the day.

I guess if you stand way out in right field, the corporate-contolled profit-hungry media who, according to many professors of journalism, are acting more as government stenographers than journalists, might appear "liberal". And if you care about a free press, the cornerstone of a democracy, then you'd want the media to be as liberal (latin for free) as possible.

The US government has never exercised such careful control over the media as it has during the Iraq invasion. Geez, all it takes is one call from Gen Meyers to get CBS to hold off on broadcasting pictures of prisoner abuse. And Disney has canned their release of Michael Moore's new film because (heaven forbid) it is critical of president Bush.

It's only in dictatorships that criticism of leaders is suppressed. I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said that in a democracy it is the responsibility of citizens to maintain a vigilant distrust of government. And it is the responsiblity of the media to expose corruption whereever it is found.

The media in this country, including NPR, needs very little censorship. They do a fine job of self-censorship. Funny that Britain, that big old monarchy that we fought off to gain our freedom, has a much more free and honest media than "the land of the free enterprise".

- Robert

[rb_in_va]

The US government has never exercised such careful control over the media as it has during the Iraq invasion. Geez, all it takes is one call from Gen Meyers to get CBS to hold off on broadcasting pictures of prisoner abuse. And Disney has canned their release of Michael Moore's new film because (heaven forbid) it is critical of president Bush.

Robert,
You mean Disney is now part of the executive branch of the US Govt? I must have missed a memo or something!