(no subject)

[drewkitty]

During the 1st Gulf War I was in my last year of high school, confident in getting my nomination to West Point. (I was kidding myself - eyesight was the main reason - but I did not know it yet.)

In speech and debate competition called international extemporaneous or "extemp" we give five to seven minute speeches with less than an hour of prep time. Topics are drawn from national news magazines.

Needless to say, almost every article was chock-a-block Gulf War.

So in the next tournament, we went in to be handed our topics and were handed ... trivia. Snippets from Africa or Asia. Nothing on Iraq or Kuwait. The students competing compared instead. All of us - the adults who had no chance of going Over There had decided to censor us.

My 2nd round speech was to state my topic, inform the judges that it was irrelevant compared to the actions America was taking as we spoke, that would directly shape and warp our lives even if we never wore a uniform. I then outlined these consequences; lost blood and squandered treasure, veterans coming home wounded in.mind and/or body, desensitization to violence for many others, loss of international prestige (I had NO idea), and last but not least, for I was very naïve, the cost in innocent human life.

I said truthfully that Saddam was a monster who had to go and touched the highlights of his crimes. I asked at the end, "Will it be worth the price?"

Ultimately the organizers had to invalidate the competition because so many of us pushed the format to rebel. One started her speech by asking the judges to honor a moment of silence, waiting five minutes, explaining her arithmetic on how many were killed in Baghdad in that time, and pointing out that what cost the judges five minutes cost all of them "everything.". How do you grade that?

I never imagined that I'd be seeing video of aerial gunnery tear apart a van in Iraq sixteen years later. That Saddam would be a rotted corpse for years, a President elected largely by the anti-war vote who increased our presence anyway, a majority of Americans now in opposition simply being ignored, Congress without the gumption to end the war by turning off the funding.

But between 1991 and 2010 I lost the ability to feel surprised, or betrayed, or even puzzled.

It was always a facet of my historical, political and military education that Realpolitik is played in lives. Gulf War I and the fate of the Marsh Arabs who believed us and died for it made me a believer. Gulf War II I opposed not because we couldn't take down Saddam but because we were too stupid to run the place and too clumsy to build a multinational structure to do it right. Our continued presence in Iraq fell at first into the "we broke it, we bought it" category but now adds "and we"re not even gonna pay for it, whatjagonna do call the cops?"

105,000 dead civilians in Gulf War II and post-invasion Iraq.

Tell me again why I'm supposed to care so much about people playing minivan soccer dad picking up wounded (or weapons) with kids in the back, reason unknown, or journalists who pushed a little too hard and got the wrong kind of exclusive footage.

Dead is dead, whether in "Hospital City" from too many wounds and not enough meds, 30mm gunfire, starvation, insurgent torture, faction infighting, an inconvenient suicide bomber at the market.

So why are we there?

Same damn reason we went there two decades ago.

Oil.

An Iraqi life is worth just as much as an American one. Maybe we should start acting like it and call our troops home. We need peacekeepers in Iraq? Fine, hire them with the oil revenue and whatever you do, do NOT send them out to play war in populated urban areas. Because 30mm cannon fire is neither biodegradable nor adequately selective.

Put that in your gas tank and drive on it.

Comments

*sigh*

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Being a student of history is enough to make you hate humans, some days.

When I was little, in the 1970s, there was an oil crisis. I said, "We should stop using oil. We should use something else." Been saying that a long time now, without much luck convincing people.

These days, it's less about making the world a better place than about making sure when we're standing in the Foyer-Ever-After that I can turn to the imbeciles responsible for wrecking everything and say, "I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO."

Re: *sigh*

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

One obvious alternative is commercial nuclear power generation, which I wholeheartedly support and doubles as a nice way to get rid of nuclear weapons. (It does not work the other way around, there is nothing you can steal from a power plant to make a nuclear device with.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/energy-environment/10nukes.html

Coal plants put out more radioactivity than nuclear ones. Chernobyl type accidents can't happen with Western style reactors. We froze nuclear reactor development in time through excessive bureaucracy and regulations. Modern designs such as helium pebble-bed are even safer, but we paper-chained ourselves out of further development.

I'd settle for better coal generation, such as MHD, but apparently it's OK to burn the same old coal the same old way when we could burn ALL of it and cut own pollution dramatically. Solar chimneys are another promising technology.