A Dozen Years?
Posted on June 27th, 2005 in Uncategorized | 12 Comments »
So Donald Rumsfeld thinks that the Iraq insurgency could last for twelve years, despite the fact that it lacks “a Mao or a Ho Chi Minh.”
And yet, in the very same interview, he defends Dick Cheney’s assertion that the insurgency is in its last throes. “If you look at the context of [Cheney’s] remarks,” Rumsfeld said yesterday on Fox, “last throes could be a violent last throe, just as well as a placid or calm last throe. Look it up in the dictionary.”
All right. Here’s how my dictionary defines “throe”:
1 A severe pang or spasm of pain, as in childbirth. (See Synonyms at pain.)
2 throes A condition of agonizing struggle or trouble: a country in the throes of economic collapse.
Not much about placidity or calm in those definitions, is there? Just a lot of nasty stuff about pain and agony, spasms and struggles.
It’s increasingly obvious that the macho men in the Bush administration, who so like to project the image of overwhelming competence, simply have no idea how to win this war in Iraq. (Hell, they can’t even buy armored Humvees.)
When they can’t convince us that they know what they’re doing, how can they possibly expect young men and women to volunteer to go to Iraq for the next decade?
I used to think that all those Iraq-is-Vietnam analogies were facile. But when the secretary of defense starts to talk about a decade-long insurgency, and practically invites the rebels to come up with their own Ho Chi Minh….
12 Responses
6/27/2005 11:10 am
Just wanted to say that I’m amused that, while all these conservatives are defending Jonah Goldberg’s honor, none are defending the twelve-years’ war in Iraq…..
6/27/2005 1:34 pm
Did you know Vietnam was the only war in the alst 5000 years?
I didn’t, until I read this site. Maybe you could get off your cliches and look up the history of the successful defeat of the insurgency by the British in Malaya, starting in 1948.
But nooooo…you just have to relive your pathetic wasted youth by pretending Vietnam was the highlight of dialectical materialist history.
I can’t wait for all you dirty 60s hippies to croak.
6/27/2005 1:37 pm
Um, anonymous—I was born in 1964.
6/27/2005 2:24 pm
You are still Vietnam-obsessed, the sign of a small mind. You are out of touch old man, the world will be better off after you are gone.
Peace out. Make love, not stupid cliched Vietnam anologies.
6/27/2005 2:40 pm
Oh, grow up, junior.
6/27/2005 3:11 pm
If you’re so young, and you feel so strongly about the war, why aren’t you signing up to fight in it?
6/27/2005 4:04 pm
Maybe Bill Clinton should have had them up-armoured.
“Since its inception, the HMMWV has undergone numerous design and configuration updates and changes. These changes have included technological, environmental, operational, and safety improvements, such as higher payload capability, radial tires, 1994 Environmental Protection Agency emissions update, commercial bucket seats, three-point seat belts, four-speed transmissions, and, in some cases, turbo-charged engines and air conditioning.” (source globalsecurity.org)
Well at least they got more environmentally sound and a good set of seatbelts.
6/27/2005 4:34 pm
” you feel so strongly about the war, why aren’t you signing up to fight in it?”
So don’t believe in civilian control of the military? You must be a fascist then…
6/27/2005 5:18 pm
I’m not signing up because i’m a college student and there are other ways i can contribute to society. what’s your excuse?
6/27/2005 6:50 pm
Because I’m against the war. I wasn’t at first; I thought that if Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction, maybe we should take him out. But that was before I knew the president was lying.
6/27/2005 7:39 pm
(ok, call me “anonymous A” if you must have all the anonymous posters differentiated)
I am frankly amazed by the vitriol of these comments. Where has the ability to have an enlightening dialogue gone? I fear that the division of opinion over Iraq is tearing apart the fabric of our society.
6/27/2005 8:52 pm
Anonymous A—
I agree with you. I’ve noticed that too—as the war effort becomes, at the very least, murkier, emotions and tensions have risen. I worry too that we’re losing the ability to have civil disagreements about the country’s most important issues.