Every now and again I drop in to see whats the latest arguement for the Iraq war. Lately its fairly quiet round these parts. It seems the same gun tote'n folk re-appear under new names and bar that nothing else changes.
It takes a stuborn fool but a fool non the less to speak of glory and nobility in the quest for war and war for ideology, a concept that has plagued humanity throughout the ages. Wars to end wars, wars for peace, wars for a social concept that is for the betterment of man...yet war is war, and in war the environment exists for the worst of humanity to thrive, almost casually. For any state to survive, the concepts of social justice must exist. For criminals to be brought to justice. For the innocent to be protected from the ones that wish to do harm. Yet within the framework of war and the very nature of it, violence is the only concept that holds merit, and within in lays the certainty of friction, dispute, vengeance, humiliation, despair and deep seeted hatred.
What particularily annoys me about the entire Iraqi situation is the commentary that blooms forth from it. Individuals a thousand miles safe from harm discussing the do's and don'ts of war. We are mere spectators. Often we loose sight of the reality of war and by doing so we are as ignorant as the unborn, as baseless as the dead. As we remove ourselves from the debate as and when we choose and return to our lives as shared with our families and our friends, we place that situation in a box which we can open when we feel we have a suitable arguement to defeat our foes.
Yet the one thing I have learned from talking to people in nations once aflicted by horrific wars is this: In wars human beings are destroyed. They are destroyed physically, they are destroyed mentally and emotionally and they are destroyed in that their very lives are ruled by it, dependent on it yet slaves to it. Generations pass the torch of it to their offspring. There are people on this planet that were born into it and will die during it, knowing nothing of peace. The ramifications of war are so profound, so wide and powerfull, and some of us...most of us here in fact, will never truley understand what that is actually like.
So to me words like republican, democrat, left, right, pacifist, neo-con etc., mean nothing to me. For just like the naeive arguement that guns dont kill people, people do....words dont kill people, people do. To watch the act itself, void of context...only the truely sick could advocate what has happened to the people who live in a part of this planet that we've determined Iraq as a positive thing. It is self-serving to absorb suitable language to promote your own patriotic ideology as a viable excuse for killing people. All the while you live in fear of being illegally killed by your own countrymen on your own streets at night. Only governments can actually legally advocate murder. For everyone else it is a heinous crime of sickening proportions. The serial killers who enjoy noteriety for their numbers do not enjoy the same anonimity as those who grace the battlefield in quests for glory, those who surpass them.
I suppose the point is this: we've created contexts of convenience where it is acceptable to kill people while promoting a society intolerant to murder. We have danced with the english language and covered the nakedness of our acts with linguistic charm and nostalgia. We have indeed made it acceptable to end the lives of any innocence, of all ages under the banner of collateral damage.
We've made it ok to kill children.
If you strip the world of the spoken tongue, if you wipe clean the slate of linguistic comunication and instead focus on the real... ie. the act itself, no human being alive would view war as acceptable at all. For if they did they would be advocating the murder of the people they love and care for, for the victims of this war indeed leave the grieving, the humiliated, the despairing and those left with nothing but deep hatred for those who deicided it was ok for them to die. Yet we here speak of these people as if they never existed at all. These lives are somehow less precious, more inclined to waste for an idea concieved not by them but by us.
Lest we forget: Western society has produced the very worst wars of all, and they were executed by virtue of the idea which was held dear...over life itself...we cannot move forward without any degree of certainty without first knowing our past, recognising our failures as human beings and realising that aggresion ALWAYS DOES and ALWAYS WILL breed aggresion.
This, all of this...did not begin one morning on the 11th of September.
In both the US and Britain we have leaders (and sadly they remain in power) who were hell bent on appearing tough to their respective populations and to achieve this they sent other people to fight for them, and to kill and die. Machismo by proxy.
The tragedy and irony is that these two men, so enthusiastic for war, have never experienced any war or conflict or anything like the kind of chaos and violence now rampant in Iraq. And just like their clueless, idiotic decision to attack Iraq and start this war, they are clueless as to how to stop it now.
It's unreal isn't it - these so-called "hawks", who call themselves "Vulcans" (Jesus - are they insane?) did their own level best to avoid anything resembling a hardhat in Vietnam, y'know - Dubya hardly even turned up to flight training school protecting the skies of Texas from the Viet Cong - he drank beer and tooled around instead. I dunno how Cheney or Rummy or [insert your Republican "tough guy" here] avoided getting shot at in 'Nam but they certainly did, which makes it pretty ironic and a bit sad that they're so hell-bent on sending other people's children to Iraq to die for petrol while they were too rich and privileged and scared to go themselves, the motherless goats.
Colin Powell? Where's he at? In the same black hole as anyone else who gave this mendacious bunch of arseholes the bad news:
Ireland said this in post #1 : Lots of text that was hard to read but I did suffer through it and read it, two times.
War is a necessary evil, at times.
What President has ever gone and fought in a war that was or was not started by him or his country ? That is not a Presidents' job, the President has to live with the knowledge that he is sending people into war to die for a countrys cause.
What President has ever gone and fought in a war that was or was not started by him or his country ? That is not a Presidents' job, the President has to live with the knowledge that he is sending people into war to die for a countrys cause.
We attacked Iraq. Iraq did not attack us. Iraq was threatening neither the US nor America. It had nothing to do with 9/11 or terrorism. Unprovoked, Bush and Blair, choose to attack, invade, and occupy a Muslim country, when we were facing threats from Al Qaeda. Bin Laden must have been extremely pleased.
And Bush and Blair attacked Iraq on fuzzy reasoning that changed as the months passed by as it became clear that they'd got virtually everything wrong.
This war will outlive both their terms in office. That is the legacy we have to thank them for.
Optics said this in post #7 : Ummmm what did your reply have to do with what I said. All it did was show how narrow minded you are on the subject.
There's a massive difference between attacking a coutry and defending your own country from attack. A necessary evil implies no choice, which in the case of Iraq is far from true. The US and UK chose to attack Iraq, they chose to start a war of aggression, which goes against everything the Nuremburg trials were set up to prevent. Have any of these facts sunk in?
President Bush showed his true colours during Vietnam, avoiding any chance of ever getting hurt. Fine if he didn't then become a chicken hawk president, but he did, and he then relished the chance to send other people to kill and die to make him look tough.
What President has ever gone and fought in a war that was or was not started by him or his country ? That is not a Presidents' job, the President has to live with the knowledge that he is sending people into war to die for a countrys cause.
I disagree.
I also think it strange that in the age of the higher context, the good west versus the evil muslims, that our good be guided by necessary evil. Do you not find that confusing?
Was the holocaust not viewed as a necessary evil?
I suppose the question really is, why is it necessary to be...evil?
I understand and indeed support the right to defend. But how can that arguement be divorced of its meaning and placed upon a pro-active aggression? Are we forever doomed to be subject to war on the notion of necessary evils? Are we doomed into being re-introduced to Hitler under a different guise everytime the west wants to start wars?
The problem with argueing about this war is that the arguement centre's not on the war itself but its context. You believe this war to be a necessary evil, the progressive free and powerful west rescues the downtrodden slaves of despotic rogue nations, nations that plan great evil for us all.
Yet this context is determined not by facts but word play, selective fact finding.
You say under Saddam Husseins rule well over a million people died predominantly children, from preventable diseases, predominantly malnutrition.
I say under Saddam Husseins rule a corrupt egotistic nightmare ruled with an iron fist over his people. Meanwhile the west, fixated on punishing a non co-operative one time ally, inflicts the sanctions regeme on Iraqs people, depriving its citizens of basic medicines including anasthetics. Blissfully aware of the effects on the sanctions regeme they allow it to continue because it "contains" Iraqs undemocratic leadership. The Iraqi people at this time did not really matter very much.
You speak of your countries cause. Your country has caused quite a lot of necessary evils, what cause is worth the millions of people from so many nations that have and continue to perish for them? Are your people more important then Iraqi people? Are your people more important that Afghani people? Are your people more important than Vietnamese people, Laos people, Cambodian people?
Maybe gigantic nationalistic causes are the problem dont you think?
