Letters to the Editor
MereMortal
Published Letters: 151 Editor's Choice: 19
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@bri2000
[Read the article: The waning power of the War Myth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think you nailed it, your superbly thoughtful post, shows that the warmongers want to have it both ways, by conducting unpopular wars and then blaming the populace for the eventual defeat when they make their feelings know about this. It's easy to forget that the Vietnam war towards the middle and end became hugely unpopular with the soldiery and then these returning soldiers acted in a symbiotic manner with protestors by spreading the word of the horror of what they had seen, experienced and been asked to take part in.
It was painful for Americans to have the myth that they were the good guys, shattered, but here were returning American soldiers saying "shut up, we were there, we were awful, and the whole thing is not worth it", The US political classes were ashamed of the retreat in vietnam, but they didn't seem to be ashamed of the harm they had done to a sovereign country, it seems to me that they learned the wrong lesson "fear retreat at all costs" rather than "thou shalt not go on mindless killing sprees"
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is the cover story of the 'supposed' nuclear and Iran WMD the whole story?
[Read the article: The president's escalating war rhetoric on Iran]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Whilst the mullahs and the anti-Israel stance doesn't go down well with the likes of John Bolton etc...
could it also be part II of the strategy to sew up the last remaining Middle East oil fields in hostile [to the US] hands?
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plus ca change
[Read the article: Bush's Napoleon complex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]this among many sentences caught my eye
"This first Western invasion of the Middle East in modern times had ended in serial disasters that Bonaparte would misrepresent to the French public as a series of glorious triumphs"
I'm reading right now in Woodward's third tome "State of Denial" how the Whitehouse kept the figures of the insurgency highly secret whilst they were escalating dramatically during 2004/5. Lately we had that report by O'hanlon's on Iraq's rosy future. Petraeus's opus will be next, although the last I heard the Whitehouse is writing it and that he won't be testifying in public to the congress.
When Israel took their off the shelf plan to attack Hezbollah after the kidnap of the two soldiers last June, I distinctly remember Olmert saying "we will destroy hezbollah" implying a "once and for all". I thought about this at the time, for not very long and it occured to me that he must be insane.
Hezbollah is an indigenous and highly popular movement with incredibly tough and well trained fighters. Their sectarian backing is at least 30% of the population. Israel is going to destroy them with an aerial bombing campaign??. The usual rogue's gallery of neocons Bolton/Blair/Bush/Rice etc.. piped up to give Israel more killing time with the transparently weasely 'sustainable' ceasefire gambit, but really! what a deluded fool Olmert was!
At some level, a military campaign has to be a set of practical aims on the ground, if your overwhelming aim is as incoherent as using [mostly] an air force to destroy a popular indigenous resistance movement, then it doesn't take a genius to figure out that you will live to regret the initial grandiosity or your public pronouncements.
Bush with Iraq is of course in an even more invidious position than Olmert or Napoleon. As I say to anyone who cares to listen, both Afghanistan and Iraq will end in retreat and defeat for the West, but the leaders who tooks us in, don't want the loss of face involved, so they manufacture dire threats to world safety if we leave, not forgetting that old good money after bad trap, "if we leave now we will have sacrficed lives for nothing" i.e let's throw more good lives on the pyre. There's nothing new here, it's always the next administration that has to clean up, it's just the way these things work.
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and additionaly to your great post @ron smith
[Read the article: Bush's Napoleon complex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]in 'State of Denial' it says on page 384, there's a discussion about Stephen Hadley (white house aide) when Bush was telling him that he had to brief him with new strategies etc..
"At the same time as Hadley knew well, the president's predominant emotion was often impatience, if he wanted something fixed he would often assign it to the nearest person, that often meant Rice or Hadley"
a disturbed mind and an impatient one to boot, not great qualities for grapsing the complexities and nuances of reality.
here's what Leonardo has to say about Impatience:
"An Impatient mind kills progress"
so there you have it