I know I disagree. I certainly believe there should be a monument to our OIF heroes - but not for the reason this guy wants it: Yet even as we leave [Iraq], we should not forget. Common decency demands that we honor the service and sacrifice of those who bore the burden of waging that war. No doubt some committee will soon start lobbying for the construction of an Iraq War Memorial to be erected on the Mall in Washington. That effort deserves to succeed. My own view is that every American war, large or small, ought to be commemorated smack dab in the middle of the nation’s capital. Crowding every inch of the Mall with granite and marble war memorials—the bigger the better—just might help deflate the continuing American illusion that we are a peaceful people desirous of nothing except to be left alone. It might help us see ourselves as we really are. And what is that? What are we, really? To hear some of these jokers talk you'd think the US was the second coming of the Third Reich. A deliberately warlike nation only happy when engaged in conflict or conquest. A country whose driving desire is to what - control the world? Or its resources? Or its people? According to this guy, we need that memorial to reminds us we aren't the peaceful people we think we are. As usual, we're subjected to a context-less whine by an author perfectly willing to address the Iraq war in a vacuum, sealed away from all those nasty facts that surround the event and which might derail his premise. However, he can't shake the fact, even as he tries to write his way around it, that we're leaving Iraq and planned to do so from the beginning. In this man's mind, we're warlike first and forever (and, as he implies, imperialists as well) and that belief twists his words in epic ways in an attempt to maintain his fraudulent premise, even in the face of contrary facts: Apart from a few diehard neoconservatives still keen to use Mesopotamia as a springboard for the pursuit of imperial fantasies, Americans can’t wait to shake the dust of Iraq from their feet and be done with the place. So, if it is true we're leaving, and it certainly appears to be - what kind of people are we? The contradiction found in that single sentence is amazing when compared to the implication this joker tries to pin on all of us in his second paragraph above. If we're warlike imperialists, if we're bent on conquest, if that is a national trait - why in the hell are we leaving Iraq? And then there are the overriding benefits of what has happened to further refute his claim: 29,000,000 citizens of Iraq are now free to choose their own form of government instead of being under the violent heel of a tyrant. A bully and murderer who sponsored terrorism and caused instability in a vital region of the world - important to everyone - is gone. How is that not a positive development? And, oh yeah, we're leaving - remember? It is one thing to argue the war in Iraq was wrong or something we shouldn't have done. It is another thing altogether to claim the reason it was fought is because we're a warlike and imperialistic people who are only happy when engaged in conquest. That's nonsense on stilts. In fact, as it turns out, this piece is nothing but another in a long line of contradictory, simplistic, and thinly disguised tirades aimed at the left's favorite boogey men: the Neocons. It is another scream by the left for their desired pound of flesh for waging war in Iraq. This yahoo just tried to disguise that by tarring an entire nation with his hateful rhetoric and at the same time dishonoring those who fought and died in Iraq even while pretending to want to honor them. Ironically every one of the heroes that died in Iraq would gladly defend his right to throw this nonsense out there without fear (something Iraqis can now do as well). That damn sure doesn't mean anyone has to agree with it though.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/4zFMlv3u-Xg/29000000-free-iraqis-may-disagree.html
Posted
Apr 17 2010, 05:18 AM
by
BLACKFIVE