Jimbo.Info

the iraq war is simply cultural terraforming. It's our best chance at making a difference in the region and to help oput a stop to the brutal culture that thrives there. It's the center of instability in the world currently and has already proven to be able to attack us. Plus we owe the iraqis a blood dept from 1991 when we let the shia get slaughtered after encouraging them to revolt. We've lost 2000 men and about 10K wounded. They lost 300K people and an untold number of amputated and mutilated. So there are good reasons for us to be there and I honestly think it was the best option other than invading Iran.
But thats just my opinion we are all citizens and entitled to judge our government however we choose.

If we're going to terraform a culture, there's plenty of culture right here that could use it.

I don't want to start a food fight on Jimbo's blog (unless he wants one) - but it's interesting how all the justifications for us being in Iraq now, that the (in)famous WMDs aren't even mentioned. The American people would not have been persuaded to go to war lost 2000 of their own or spent hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used *here* merely for reasons stated. The fact that this Administration had to lie to the American people about the reasons and then continually move the goalposts and change the justifications once it was shown that the WMDs were a myth has to count for something and can't be ignored. We're not stupid and many of us totally resent being treated that way by the Administration and its supporters and apologists.

I think any correct interpretation of this dream must focus on the fact that you seem more concerned that the former middle school was hosting a Taste of India food festival despite never having any Indian students than you are that the dream featured a bathhouse in the basement. Presumably, the former middle school also did not have a bathhouse in the basement.

Just sayin'.

well me simply MUST invade something every few years...have to keep the troops experienced in the real thing after all. And its really the lower classes that lose life and limb..I mean....infantry after all....plenty more where they came from... just wave a flag in their face every few days and they stay loyal....off ya go..watch for the landmines kiddies.

Spreading freedom and democracy is our divine mandate! (except gays who want to marry....perish the thought). Its a pretty simple thing to take a western derived concept like universal sufferage which developed over hundreds of years in europe and north america and ram it into an alien culture..it will work jussst fine!

And now and then snatching a horrible little dictator out of his own country after he has displeased us keeps all the others thinking. Remember Manuel Noriega? He is on an extended stay in Florida isnt he? In fact I daresay that rabble rouser Paul Martin up in Canada had better watch this whole marijuana seed business with his citizens...imagine Canada espousing a different view point than the USA....what is the world coming to!? Shameful!

This IS how Empire works after all. Thanks to Conservatives we keep our spine!

Food fight? Is this an art canvas or a comments section? (Democratic political discourse is too messy for some?)

I'm far from a conservative, and i support the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

It might be incoherent to most Americans, but a democratic(-islami?) mideast is all about America's future, and the world's peace. A mostly young, under/non-employed, and a politically neutered mideast society is a perfect, easy-bake recipe for regional tyranny on a violent-high scale -- and a far larger, far more long-lasting, and far more destructive war in our collective future. Economic globalization (in contrast to the regional economies most of us grew up in) and things like global-mass-communication makes the state of affairs in the mideast a global concern, and responsibility.

GURL is correct. This war is about a difference of policies, a difference of opinion. It's a war about values, but core values. It's about whether free political discourse, social equality before law, and what is generally known as basic human rights are essential precursors to a peacefull community, local and global. While most Americans might not see clear to marijuana cultivation being a value in conflict to these commonly held core-truths, or one worth fighting over, most Americans do support war when our core, shared values are in danger to ourselves, or others on a global, spreading scale. War to ensure free elections and human rights is a war worth fighting for. It's political investment.

American society (which is really just a composite of like minded people from all over that hold common values) is all about transforming global society. And that agenda, all along, has been one of the reasons given for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and for American society.

rob@egoz.org

jimbo...love your description of the dreams...i just wanted to add a point that most americans were fully in support of an afgan invasion. as was the majority of the world. the perception being that that country needed some "cultural terraforming". i think that we could have acutally done some good there by liberating the society from the grips of poverty imposed by decades of invasion and upheaval. but the administration was not out to impress the world nor do any good, it was out to make a legacy.
one more note:
interestingly, the main objection of the bush administration to kerry's take on fixing the war was that the war on terrorism was not a police action, but a war. i wonder if we had a bombing on a new york subway, if we could find the terrorists as quickly as they did in london (which was literally amazing). i wonder if we spent 200 billion on training intelligence officers, developing stronger ties with our allies, substanative changes in protecting our infrastructure, etc....would americans be safer? hard to say definitively - but (as you point out) we would not have 1800+ soldiers dead and many thousands more permanently maimed just to settle a personal score. and we might acutally catch a terrorist as opposed to getting our boys and iraqi civilians blown up.

overall, and this is sad - americans voters deserve what they vote for. its getting time to become an ex-pat....

It's funny how many people have been floating the idea of becomming an ex-pat for the past FIVE YEARS. Ditto the suggestion that anti-terrorism is some kind of zero-sum game, or the suggestion that somehow more Iraqis have magically been killed in sporadic low-casualty car bombs than Saddam Hussein's systematic death-camps...

Don't forget that Bush listed WMD along with removing the worst dictator in the Middle East AND the promotion of human rights AND the enforcement of international law in his list of justifications for the invasion. While the WMD data turned out to have been wrong, the other reasons have not somehow become invalid over the past three years. And 1800 soldiers over two years? If only our OTHER wars were so easy... we really have no idea how spoiled we are today when it comes to fighting.

It's all context, context, context. Look at the whole thing in Iraq through the prism of the dot-com boom, or the prism of a neo-marxist conception of American Empire, or the MacKinder prism of "controlling the heartland" (Asia), or the prism of history and basic human decency, and the picture that emerges will be radically different. But to assume that it was personal, or completely reasonless, is on a very deep level, silly.