A Guilty Thing Repris’d
The worst of it is, Iraq is boring. Important, sure. Crucial to understanding and so on. But dull. If maybe now and then it’s different mud sucking at your boots and slopping down in from the top of them, it’s still mud sucking at your feet and filling up your boots. The excuses and lies don’t change much from week to week or year to year, but even when they do, a little, they’re still excuses and lies. Illusions and pretty-sounding justifications remain mirages. Different shit, different days, but still days full of shit.
Comment by Nell —
March 16, 2008 @ 9:13 pm
And so the NY Times goes five for five in marking the anniversaries of the invasion without a single anti-war opinion.
If I’m wrong about that, I’ll be happy to be corrected.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 17, 2008 @ 12:56 am
I tried reading one of the pieces. I clicked on “There’s no freedom gene.” I got this far before descending into rage and curses:
No you motherfvcking idiot murdering piece of subhuman scum: That mantra is the truth, and all your bullshit about freedom is the obfuscation. Shut the fvck up and crawl under a rock.
Sorry, but 7 digit body counts tend to get me kind of upset.
I’ll refrain from reading any of the others.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 17, 2008 @ 12:58 am
OK, I broke down and read another:
Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, pot. Now take the handle and shove it up where the sun doesn’t shine, blunt side in.
I really need to stop reading this.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 17, 2008 @ 1:02 am
OK, finally a decent one:
Have you ever heard of libertarianism? You might find that you fit right in.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
March 17, 2008 @ 7:38 am
No, Thoreau, that one wasn’t all that decent either. Just another “Oh, if only we’d planned it a little better.” None of these geniuses wishes there had been more discussion of the criminal nature of an unjustified invasion, or of the likely civilian death toll.
The front page (of the Week in Review) article by John Burns was pretty slimy. He compares the acts of the air force to the acts of God, and praises the uncanny precision of its bombing, noting that only a few air strikes killed civilians in the invasion phase. While on the other hand Iraq Body Count (which is pretty conservative on casualty figures) says there were about 7000 civilian deaths in the invasion phase, nearly all inflicted by the US and many by air strikes. Burns also uses the figure “tens of thousands” for civilian deaths, though it’s more likely to be hundreds of thousands. And of course he reports that privately most Iraqis want Americans to stay until stability is restored, which might be true for all I know, but if so, he should also report that the majority favor attacks on US troops. It’s a piece that is critical of the war, but crammed full of as many prowar claims as he apparently felt he could make.
Comment by PartisanJ —
March 17, 2008 @ 9:22 am
I bet it’s significantly less boring to Iraqis.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 17, 2008 @ 9:56 am
I’m not so sure. “Hideous” doesn’t necessarily mean fascinating.
Comment by joe —
March 17, 2008 @ 11:14 am
Don’t time advice on democracy from people who’ve never demonstrated any evidence of believing in or supporting it.
Comment by John Emerson —
March 17, 2008 @ 11:53 am
I just dipped into a couple, but as far as I know they are all hawks of one sort or another and no one conceded anything.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to convince people that Sulzberger is not misguided, weak, or confused, but instead knowingly evil, but I’ve never had any success. Unmediated interventionism and hawkishness rule the media, the policy institutes, 90% of the Republican Party, and at least 50% of the Democratic Party. There is nowhere to go for a second opinion and no alternative strategy can be considered.
Comment by John Emerson —
March 17, 2008 @ 11:56 am
Anne Marie has a good surname for a strategic planner, though. And she’s cuter than Kissinger.
Comment by Yahoo Answerer —
March 17, 2008 @ 6:10 pm
The powers that be WANT it to seem boring.