Iraq Headlines & Commentary by Michael Zacchea
Joe Galloway continues to be spot on in his commentary on the war. Stay the course is a euphemism for "doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results." This is the classic definition of insanity. Is anyone else frightened that the neo-conservative alpha
males of this adminsitration seem to be crack-smoking delusional??? Does anyone else care?
The nation has been entrusted to mad men. Now Henry Kissinger is advising President Bush. Kissinger is a well-known Machiavellian practitioner of the real-politique school of international relations. Just to refresh everyone's memory, he is the one who concocted the "peace with honor" slogan to get us out of Viet Nam, and orchestrated the withdrawal of US troops from Viet Nam, and withdrew support from the South Viet Namese govt. This led to the sad spectacle of Operation Frequent Wind, the evacutation of the US Embassy that saw Americans hanging off of helicopter struts to get out of Viet Nam as the NVA took Saigon. This led to a decade of Viet Namese fleeing the country in boats as refugees. Just to further refresh everyone's memory, he is the one who screwed the Kurds in 1973, saying "There is a difference between charity and diplomacy." Two weeks ago, MajGen Richard Zilmer, CG of 2nd Marine Division in Iraq, said he didn't have enough troops to win the war in Al Anbar, but he did have enough troops to conduct his mission to train the Iraqis. That same week, Gen Abizaid said, "Given unlimited time and unlimited resources, we are winning." This is another way of saying "We're losing." without appearing defeatist.
It appears we are losing because the Bush Administration is not deploying troops to fight to win, but rather to fight to train the Iraqis. Whenever Kissinger gets involved, someone is going to get royally screwed, and decades of misery for hundreds of thousands ensue; and the US winds up looking like a**holes. I am calling it right now, President Bush is fixing to f**k some group of people over hard...my guess is the Sunnis.
Comments (3)
i am presently in the midst of this subject and see it from a micro as opposed to a macro level. i can say that the experience is very similar to my impressions of vietnam. i was young fella then and remember watching the nightly news casts with the body counts. of course, we don't have that now but what we do have is the the similar support network for the enemy: read Iran/Russia, Syria/Laos and the idea that we can impose our culture and government style on folks who are not even remotley close to living at a standard that they can consider it. They are trying to survive for the most part, not come up with some political system to fix their woes. It is frustrating, and many question what we can, or have accomplished. To this end, it seems a lot like Vietnam.
As a young guy I chose to read war stories about Vietnam over the lit I was assigned to read in school. Some of the stories I read back then, sound vaguely familiar now. The same frustrations and confusion exist. There are disagreements, which are healthy, but can cause stagnation if they become too grandious. I see many similarities and yet we live in a different time with a "flatter World" as Tom Friedman puts it. Seems we need to elevate this subject above the level of political sparring (like the isssue was treated in Vietnam) and treat it for what it is. Life and Death. I sure don't want to see a book published in 2025 by a former Secretary of Defense, talking about the horrible mistakes he made back in 2007.
Wait, didn't that happen in Vietnam too?
Posted by: evolo on October 21, 2006 18:24
Nice Joe. Guess I have a hard time filtering the banter from the conviction. Hate the banter. Love conviction. Thanks again.
Posted by: evolo on October 24, 2006 13:02
Mc P's.
Yep,I have heard of it.
Paying bills is rough. Banter has made people pay with their lives, you are correct. Seems a dude named hitler used some banter to cause a bit of a conflict a few years ago.
Sometimes banter saves lives. The "Velvet Revolution" was one recent case.
Speaking of banter,
I've done too much.
Posted by: evolo on October 25, 2006 19:02