Heads You Win; Tails I lose: OR The Incredibly Oddest of Peculiar Wars:
I bet immediately the War in question is identifiable---perhaps a war generated by the incredibly oddest of peculiar Presidents. History, not I, will of course be the judge, but history is also moot, inert---unmodifiable in fact, but not in retrograde perceptions. I guess at some point the past really doesn't matter anymore since the future will not be what it used to be.
Most wars are about territorial expansion, genocide, or religious differences. The cruelest always seem to be those of genocide or religious warfare. When God is on somebody's side, WATCH OUT. If all the followers of various religions took the precepts of their religion as the real dictates of their behavior there would be no killing kind of war except of defensive nature.
At any rate, Iraq takes the cake. Consider the following:
I can't think of any war where the reasons for the war have changed so much so fast for so long. We must be now on the 5th or 6th reason for the War over a 5 year period.
There are no standing armies attacking each other.
Never has there been a war with such an imbalance of military power which has lasted so long.
Never has there been a war with such an imbalance of killing by one side which has lasted so long with the possible exception of the Vietnam War. There the side which killed the most lost the war.
Never has there been such a long war with such huge casualties without a military draft.
Never has there been such an expensive war.
Never has there been any other expensive war accompanied by tax cuts and no domestic economic sacrifices of any sort.
With the exception of the Pope, who opposed the war, the strongest support for the war continues to come from the religious right of all persuasions including Catholics, the Pope not withstanding.
The U.S. President, who recently met with the Pope and said he was in awe of the Pope, apparently is not at all awed by his dictates about the war. That Bush is truly awesome himself. Unfortunately.
The volunteer U.S. army is almost exclusively from rural and smaller suburban areas of the country, mostly from families who have supported the war from the beginning, and on a percentage of the population basis, is heaviest from the Red States. This weird reality prevents any riot of young people as in previously unpopular wars.
This is essentially a war by one country to determine what form of government another sovereign country is to have.
This is the first U.S. pre-emptive war. The invaded country had attacked no one, had no weapons of mass destruction, was not involved in the Al Queda attack on the U.S., and was invaded without the support of other international bodies.
This war is also unique in that ahead of time the plan was to blow up much of the infrastructure and important buildings, then rebuild them, along with a putting in place a desirable form of government. When did this become our mission in the world?
This war is more costly than any other war.
This war is being financially supported on the backs of the next generation. When the War ends, if it ever ends in the foreseeable future, the financial burden, with interest, will then fall on everyone at a later date.
This and the Vietnam War are the first Wars by the United States (I think) to be wars of occupation. Even in the many invasions of South American countries we were in and out rather quickly. Same with the any Middle East invasions of the past. In Lebannon, when dissidents blew up the army barracks of the U.S. soldiers, Reagan got the troops the hell out of there. So did Clinton in Somalia. When push came to shove, Reagan knew when to fold. Reagan may have liked to play John Wayne, but he was responsible enough to do so with places like Grenada. In the middle East he rode in and rode out with due speed, while with the Soviet Union he used negotiation and charm to solve conflict and break down barriers. We all knew Ronald Reagan and George Bush is no Ronald Reagan.
This is the second war now (Vietnam was the first) where military power and modern weapons of mass destruction have been rendered useless against forces with primitive weapons. With no clear targets and no uniformed soldiers to attack, we have been reduced to lobbing bombs at suspected enemies mixed in with innocent people of all ages, including children.
This is the first or second war where the United States makes no attempt to document how many of the enemy has been killed, only how many of our own soldiers are killed. I guess it would look foolish to be reporting that for 5 years we have killed 10 times as many of them as they have of us, and yet we are losing the war. War is just not like it used to be.
This is a war in which the enemy ends up being defined by after the fact deaths. In other words when a particular bomb kills several hundred people, then those dead become the labeled enemy. Before they were dead, in many cases, whether or not they were enemy was pure speculation.
Starting with the Vietnam War, high ranking officers in our military are never killed or even wounded. The deaths are almost always low level recruits finding themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time, killed by a suicide bomber or a planted roadside bomb. There are no high ranking soldiers being killed leading troops into battles. Well, that is comforting, who wants to lose high ranking military leaders like Al Queda does, almost every week. Damn, Al Queda must have a bunch of important leaders.
The American army in Iraq rarely includes the sons or daughters of our affluent population. These young people engaged in our "defense" are by no means remotely a cross section of our population. They are, for the most part, good people suckered into a situation which is unpardonable. No American young person should be dying in such a sordid war for all the wrong reasons.
This war and Vietnam War are the only American involved wars where the more we kill the more numerous become our enemies, and not just in Iraq, but across the globe.
This is the first American war where those who fight against our invasion are all referred to as terrorists, rather than enemy soldiers. This classification is useful to justify torture, imprisonment with no time limits, no access to courts, and God knows what else. Thus, this is the first war where any citizen of a foreign country who fights to get American military forces out of their country is labeled a terrorist, which I guess is supposed to mean they are plotting to come to this country and blow up our buildings and people, like we do to their buildings and people. Something is a little disingenuous here and too arbitrary.
Anyway, I am tired of all this now. But there is enough here to justify calling this Iraq War the Incredibly Oddest of Peculiar Wars. I never have liked war, but this war is way over the top, too scary, and creating too many crazy-with-revenge relatives of dead victims with access to methods of revenge which we will not be able to defend ourselves against. Ask Israel. Ask our former soldiers in Vietnam. Mass killing to solve conflict has never been a good choice and never in history has it been a worse choice. Despite the Bush Rhetoric, I feel increasingly like we all may become the ones with no place to hide.
