"You may think that you have felt dumb before, but let me tell you something: until you have stood in front of a man who knows real pain and told him that you are against your country's alleviation of his country's state-sponsored murderous suffering, you have not felt truly, deeply, like a total fucking moron.Now I don't necessarily care for the 'Rove is as evil as they come' bit but at least Simmermon is reconsidering his past positions.
"I still am no Bush fan, and I know that America got lied to. I know we shouldn't have gone, and I think Rove is as evil as they come. But through all this deception and lying, through all this dismemberment and pain, America has wrought a beautiful, fantastic side effect: joy, freedom and a hope for peace. Does it take lies and misdirection to do this?? Is this what the other side of justice is? I feel like such a whiner and I don't know what to think anymore. Ultimately, in total defiance of my mother and grandmother's teachings, two wrongs have made a right and my moral compass is tired and busted."
As for the pro-war folks Totton notes that the Abu Ghraib scandal was what rocked the moral foundation of the pro-war folks. I personally don't agree with this. Either Totton was naive about war in general or he made unrealistic promises to people.
War is war. During WWII there were cases of Canadian soldiers shooting German prisoners on the spot. Of course we can say that this is wrong but can any of us say that we are truely surprised by it.
The same applies to American soldiers today. Bad shit happens, and in every group of people there will be some bad apples. How could this simple fact have surprised Totton or anyone else for that matter?
As embarrasing as Abu Ghraib was for the American forces, we should appreciate the fact that what happened there was considered the low point of the entire operation. Given the history of war, Abu Ghraib in fact reinforces how professional the American military actually is.
3 comments:
Is that Simmermon or Semimoron?
If you were the President of the United States and you wanted to depose a regime for a number of reasons including a concern that the regime might be in possession of weapons of mass destruction would you, when attempting to justify regime change, emphasize the WMD concern or would you hedge your bets and talk about the other reasons which justify regime change, such as: the desirability of enabling the people of Iraq to choose freedom and democracy; the murderous history of the regime; the mass graves; the totalitarian essence of the regime; the regime's support for terrorism and and the poverty and suffering of the people- despite the country's abundant natural resources- because of the regime's thievery and incompetence.
I guess if you're a leftist you would not be smart enough to hedge your bets. The fact of the matter is that the administration (and most of the world) believed, with good cause, that Saddam possessed WMD. (And at this point it is still too early to say that he didn't. Perhaps he didn't, but he gave every indication that he did)
Terry Gain
Agreed, Terry.
The Leftist canard "Bush lied, people died" is dead and buried, in large part because of an oustanding blogging community.
Imagine for a moment there were no blogs counterbalancing interpretation of the news from CNN, NYT WaPo et al?
Without conservative blogs, I believe the enemy (Islamic Fundalmentalists) would be well on their way to winning with America led by a weak President Kerry.
The power of the MSM is persuasive tenacious and persuasive. Look no further than our own CBC and Toronto Star. We need our own blogs to counter their left-wing views and expose the faults in their reasoning.
Agreed.
Many of the Bush Lied People Died crowd in no point prior to the war said that Bush was lying about WMD. And as much as they would like to forget, no major government or organization anywhere in world claimed Bush was lying about WMD.
The left just jumped on the slogan because in hindsight that is the only thing they could chant without looking like total fools and traitors.
Other than Bush lied they have no valid criticism of American actions that would pass the "I'm not an anti-American test".
At the end of the day they want America to be weaker and/or beaten. They can't make any other criticism of what has happened in Iraq because any other criticism would make obvious they're desire for an American defeat.
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