apathy? who cares?

[rone]

Here's my take on the war: don't give a fuck.  Bomb away, give `em democracy, give `em peace, put Saddam Hussein in Camp X-Ray.  Ten years from now, Iraq will still be a horrible place.  "Our" "victory" will be empty.  Same as it ever was.  History is so last millennium.

I suppose i could be optimistic and look forward to when one of our little sorties will buck the trend.  If nothing else, hey, we might actually learn something this time... ha, who am i kidding.  Here, fucking read this, will you?  That's a good chap.

Comments

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

I kind of look at it this way...

The Middle East has been a quagmire for thousands of years. While I think Saddam Hussein is a maniac and should be gotten rid of, I don't like how the U.S. is going about it, and I don't know that it'll make much difference in the long run.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yes, now that i'm in a more lucid state, what i was trying to say is that this "war" doesn't address the core of the problem, and as such it's just a rotten bandage on a festering wound. It might be better in the short run, but it won't be in the long run. But we Americans are not big on long-term... hell, planning for retirement stretches our abilities as it is. This is what must change; looking ahead 100-200 years should be part of what's called "common sense".

[tritone.livejournal.com]

As a textbook on history repeating itself, A Peace to End All Peace (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805068848/qid=1048153330/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-1618614-1298330?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) is an excellent recounting of the way the modern Middle East was shaped by the imperialist powers at the end of WWI. In particular, self-styled "Arab experts" in the British and French foreign service who really knew nothing about Arabs created the arbitrary boundaries around Middle Eastern states that directly led to the problems there today.

One wonders how many self-styled "Arab experts" in the current administration actually have a clue what things are really like over there.

I heard recently about a show called "Mosaic" on one of the local Bay Area stations that rebroadcasts clips from various Arab news agencies, with a running English translation. If nothing else, it might be a way to get some sense of what Arabs are exposed to in their own media, as a way of starting to understand how we're perceived in the Middle East.

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

I didn't have any clue until yesterday that Zogby isn't a neoconservative himself. His use of phrases like "neoconservative infantile fantasy" and "neoconservatives reject the practice of diplomacy" somewhat disabused me of that notion.

There is also a fundamental disdain for and even rejection of the most fundamental assumptions and philosophy of international diplomacy. Neoconservatives reject the practice of diplomacy. But diplomacy is what you do when you build structures to bridge the gap and mediate the differences between different systems in the world. It is the opposite of the Manichean and apocalyptic, even childishly simplistic fantasy of seeing the "other" only as an evil to be confronted and annihilated.

That's huge. I think I've finally found the text for that tattoo I've been wanting.