Iraq 1
Iraq 2
Marines In Fallujah
I was wandering on YouTube and found a couple (a lot, actually. I'm just posting a couple for brevity) of videos that have, uh, wartime footage not sponsored by CNN or FoxNews.
Looking at a couple comments on these videos, there's a lot of hate and general misunderstanding regarding them. I have not been there, and I don't know what war feels like. But I do know a couple people who have spent some time over there, and I do believe (from what they've told me) it's the closest thing to Hell on Earth someone can experience in this day and age.
These guys don't care about the politics of the situation. They care about getting home. They care about their brother next to them. They care about killing insurgents, because if they don't the insurgents will kill them.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this recently. I think in a lot of ways this war is more complicated than what the average American thinks. I think that yes, war is not a good thing. I also think that now the U.S. has dug itself into this situation that we need to throw all the resources we can into stopping the insurgency and stabilizing Iraq so these guys can come home. Because believe it or not, the United States has a responsibility to Iraq to finish what we started.
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I'm not for pulling out either.
But I agree with whoever (I can't remember right now) said that it was naive to think that we could enforce democracy at gun point.
And I think it was Tom Friedman who said we could continue to fight this fight but where will we be in 10 years and at what cost both lives and money? (Do a google search for Tom Friedman)
Sadly at this point it might be irresponsible not to re-group so we can be prepaired to fight the real battles, and the real threats.
All reports (our own generals!) say that our military is worn out through attrition as it stands. We are forcing reserves to go back for 4 tours! Something is going to have to change.
(It's been a long time since our own generals have spoken out against the leadership in the numbers that they are now) It is really unusual for them to speak out like this.
If Musharraf's government in Pakistan falls (and I believe it is clearly on very thin ice) then we will have a (real) problem and that country does have nukes, and it really IS the breeding ground for Islamic Jihad.
(the pres couldn't even identify some of these other leaders before he got elected) How very sad.
If that isn't bad enough, we clearly had our eye off of the ball to not see that Iraq was not the threat that Korea was.
(Korea was the first thing that came to my mind when they started to talk about going into Iraq.)
Our military men and women are awesome. But our leadership is.. well substandard at best.
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