sherman said 'war is hell' and he made sure it was, too

[jazzfish]

How Did I Get It Right?: "[T]here were some reasons to believe that I might make a serious error on the question of the Iraq War. In fact, however, I was barely tempted; for a very long time I could hardly even bring myself to believe that people were seriously proposing something so self-evidently stupid."

I still have trouble believing that myself. From my mostly news-inured perspective in late 2002 and early 2003 it was inconceivable that anyone might think it was a good idea to go to war with a country that posed no threat to us ("WMD" is adequately mocked in the linked post, if indeed there can be adequate mockery for something so patently ridiculous), and whose fifth-rate military was still sufficient to screw up my eighth-grade year a decade ago. I have never, ever, gotten a satisfactory answer for "why are we doing this?" from anyone.

But then, I'm a dirty hippie, and I've been opposed to military intervention in nearly all forms since early September 1990. I mean, I even thought invading Afghanistan in late '01 was a bad call. So what do I know?

Comments

[rbandrews]

That icon is pure win.

I remember the morning of 9/11, saying "we're gonna find whoever did this and wipe them off the planet! How could anyone be so dumb as to pull this and expect to live?" But, as it turns out, I was wrong: we never found who did it; we wiped a bunch of other random people off the planet instead. In my mind, that's the worst part of the whole Afghanistan / Iraq debacle: that we still never accomplished the one damn thing we set out to do.

"... we must climb the mountain of conflict."

[jazzfish]

("'Climb the mountain of conflict?' You sound like a Nazi Julie Andrews!")

I seem to lack the "vengeance" impulse. It wasn't an act of war, it was an act of terrorism. It destroyed two landmarks and caused severe damage to a third, and killed something south of 4000 people. Shit happens. Yeah, I thought (think) the people responsible ought to face consequences, that's not something you let slide. I thought (think) of it in terms of individuals or organizations, though. In terms of small operations and police action. Not in terms of states or open war.

Basically, apart from about four hours of panic because I'd heard that there'd been an explosion at State and I wasn't sure if my father was okay, it was a horrible thing that didn't affect me. I treated it like any other horrible thing that didn't affect me, and don't understand the fear and, well, terror that it engendered in other people it didn't affect.

(This feels similar to my lack of a strong emotional response when Seung-Hui Cho killed a bunch of people at Tech a few years back.)

Re: "... we must climb the mountain of conflict."

[rbandrews]

Yeah, exactly. I knew it was an act of terrorism; I thought we'd find the terrorists and kill them. And I supported that: you do something like that, you get killed. That's how it works.

But, I mean, you happen to live in the same country where a guy told another guy who told us that some dudes who did that live? Why are we sending troops there again?

And I can't count the number of times I brought up this question to Patrick, and the response was always the same: Saddam is a bad guy! The world is better now that he's gone! Yeah, maybe, but so what? How is that relevant to what I was asking?

Re: "... we must climb the mountain of conflict."

[skreidle]

Personally, I liked the response of "Cho bought his guns legally, from gun shops, and brought them where firearms weren't permitted, and killed people--therefore, we need to change the rules for gun shows, and strengthen laws against straw purchases, and continue to disallow guns where they already weren't allowed."