sunday nytimes editorial
posted by jazz @ 1:26 PM
Jazz...in strange places
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I'm with (usually) liberal Mickey Kaus on this one -- it's not that simple. The NY Times editorial says that if we leave a genocide may result, but so what. So what?! If you think America is hated now, how do you think it's going to look if those 200/week Iraqi deaths turn into 2000? We will, rightly, be accused of "breaking Iraq" and then leaving it to descend into hell because it was inconvenient and costly for us. This argument that the Iraqi people aren't doing enough to fight for themselves is disingenous -- let's see how many of us would stick our necks out if we were living there. If nothing else, shouldn't the government of Iraq at least be the ones to tell us when to leave rather than us pulling out unilaterally?
cousin: it's neither easy nor simple.
but we can't stay there forever. and we've been there long enough to show that we're making zero progress. we're making negative progress actually. things have gotten worse. they're always getting worse.
Fair enough, but the general consensus as best as I can tell is that things would be even worse for most Iraqis if we left anytime soon. Polls have shown a majority of Iraqis not wanting us to leave yet and the government hasn't asked us to leave, so presumably they feel the same. The NY Times editorial was saying "even if it leads to genocide, we should leave (or deploy to Kurdistan)" -- to me it was a polite way to say our lives are expodentially more valuable than Iraqi lives, not that we're doing more harm than good. The harm was done in 2003.
Also, I think Joe Biden's partition plan deserves a chance. Let's use some of the billions we're spending to separate the Sunnis and Shiites and work to truly federalize the oil revenue (as opposed to the pro-Western scheme the Bush administration is pushing) so the Sunni areas wouldn't wind up as poor as the Gaza Strip. No, the odds aren't great, but at least there's some historical precedence for it working (Bosnia, post-partition India). I wish something like this would be our final "surge."
Sorry Jazz.
I just talked to my cousin (colonel in Baghdad, and he feels that his efforts are warranted. He has spoken to me many times about the people that he works with, happy to have him there. He has conveyed (many times) his urgency to FINISH the job of helping these people and THEN go home. And he's on his third tour of duty.
I know where you stand politically, and more and more these days I agree with you about the lack of effort in our government to solve real problems (just read the blog about Sicko). But the report from someone IN THE FIGHT takes precedence over the editorial from someone IN THEIR APARTMENT.
stormin,
1.) i'd like you to explain what "finish the job" is and i'd also like to know how your cousin thinks we can stop a civil war. i think your comment is ignorant.
2.) my brother has also spent a fair amount of time in iraq and frankly, they tell themselves they have to be there and that they are being productive because telling themselves otherwise means they aren't doing a whole lot of good. psychologically, they have to feel they're accoomplishing something. by the numbers, they're all just getting killed out there. we need to bring them home.
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