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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (115971)	5/24/2005 4:34:10 PM
From: michael97123	Respond to of 793822

Time out for a second. You have afganistan as a 1 and iraq as nearly 3. That certainly is looking thru a rear view mirror. If afganistan was harder than thought that too quickly goes to 3, no? And as far as WW2 or the period immediate post 9/11, in todays world the sudden surge of patriotism and/or the desire for revenge is inversely related to the degree of perceived difficulty. Whether we like it or not, most americans are fat cats, even the poor have too much fun to give it up too quickly for gloryl most recent college grads are taught pacifism. Not a good place to look for recruits. Where are the Hessians or the French Foreign legion. Play for pay. mike

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (115971)	5/24/2005 9:44:22 PM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793822

Who cares if we offend Muslims? We voted for war By Bill McClellan Of the Post-Dispatch Monday, May. 23 2005 My mail continues to run heavily against my so-what attitude toward allegations that interrogators desecrated the Quran. We have offended the Muslim world, letter-writers tell me. So what? Wars are like that. Some people get killed. Some get offended. As regular readers know, I was very much against this war in Iraq. In the weeks leading up to the invasion, I was a loud, strident anti-war voice. But the government did not listen to me or my kind and off to war we went. There was much cheering. Recently, a reporter asked President Bush what he thought the results would be if there were a referendum on the war. We had a referendum, the president said. It's called an election. As far as I'm concerned, the president was right. The election was about the war. I suspect that very few people voted for George W. Bush because of his economic programs. His administration was the first since Herbert Hoover's to have a net loss in jobs. We went from surpluses to deficits. For the most part, he ignored that stuff and ran on the war. He won. Everything we know now we knew then. Weapons of mass destruction? There weren't any. The happy theory that Iraq's oil would pay for reconstruction? No way. We've spent billions and 85 percent of Iraqi households still lack a stable source of electricity. We'd be greeted like liberators? Even the Shiites call us occupiers. Furthermore, anybody who wanted could get on the Internet and look up the Project for the New American Century, the neocon manifesto that called for the remaking of the Middle East. Iraq was just the first step. We knew all that and we re-elected President Bush. Country singer Toby Keith expressed the popular sentiment pretty well. "We'll put a boot up your (behind). It's the American way." It wasn't just the honky-tonk crowd, either. A great many religious leaders supported the president. Archbishop Raymond Burke went so far as to say that if a Catholic voted for the other guy, that Catholic couldn't take Communion without first going to confession. Gay marriage was a greater evil than war, Burke opined. So, yes, we had a referendum on the war. My side lost. I can live with that. Still, I'm afraid that a great many people don't understand how nasty wars are. Remember the last election when the neocons accused John Kerry of having shot a Viet Cong in the back? Like it matters which way a guy is facing? Just last month, Captain Rogelio Maynulet was court-martialed for shooting a wounded insurgent, who had been deemed "untreatable" by a medic. The captain said it was a mercy killing. He was thrown out of the Army. I thought of a sniper from a different war. He saw a man in a clearing about 150 yards away. He shot him. The man flopped around. The sniper waited and watched. A minute, two minutes. He waited to see if someone would come over to help the man and he could then shoot the helper. Nobody came. Either the man was alone, and that was unlikely - few people traveled alone in the Big Woods - or his friends knew what they were doing. Either way, the sniper figured he should leave. First, though, he shot the man again. Should the sniper have been court-martialed? I say no. Then again, I would not have court-martialed Captain Maynulet. War is war. Which brings me back to the interrogators. I try to be more than just tolerant of other people's religious beliefs. I try to be indifferent. But if people believe their religious duty is to kill unbelievers like me, well, I am no longer indifferent to their beliefs. I am hostile toward them. Furthermore, I figure it is they themselves who have desecrated Islam, and if the Muslim world is going to be offended by the actions of our interrogators, that's unfortunate. Sadly, things are likely to get worse. More deaths, more hate, more resentment. We are in the process of remaking the Middle East. We're going to impose democracy on the region. We had a referendum on this, and we have sent an army of working-class kids over there to get it done. Let's not get squishy now. E-mail: bmcclellan@post-dispatch.com Phone: 314-340-8143