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But what I know about is Texas, and down here you're on your own
by anna at 07:04 PM on January 02, 2005
I bet most Iraqis weren't significantly impacted by Saddam's brutal tyranny. They had enough sense to keep their yaps shut and their noses to the grindstone. It's dissidents, rabble-rousers really, who ran afoul of his death squads and wound up in mass graves with that signature single bullet wound to the back of their heads.
Mostly trains ran on time just as under Mussolini. Oil flowed as freely as semen in a pre-AIDS whorehouse. For the government could easily circumvent sanctions through the UN's corrupt oil-for-Saddam's whores and toadies program. Electricity and running water were plentiful. Life was good for everyone except said rabble-rousers and they were dead and thus didn't care.
In that respect they're a lot like you 'n me. Chances are you have precious few dealings with the government, aside from paying taxes and maybe voting. I don't receive any government assistance. I am not in the running for any grants. I don't do crimes anymore so I don't deal with law enforcement. It's just this huge amorphous blob that is out there doing something or other that I don't care about. Not only is it irrelevent to me but I expect nothing from it and that's exactly what I receive.
Now that could change overnight were a marrauding army of invaders to come storming into my 'hood with tanks a-rumbling, guns a-blazing, guards a- PFC Lynndie Englanding and soldiers kicking in doors willy-nilly. When they started hauling my neighbors off to God knows where, I'd fully expect my government to step up and respond forcibly. I'd expect the US military to repel the invading forces. It wouldn't matter to me if they told me their way was better than George W Bush's regime because I never cared about it in the first place.
(It is worth noting here that today W announced his plans for permanently housing suspected terrorists that he doesn't have the goods on to charge, but are deemed too dangerous to every release. Yes, permanently, as in forever!)
But what if they failed? What if our troops were too weak to protect me and my family? You can rest assured I'd take up arms and fight them to the death with whatever means I could muster, including car bombs, booby traps, sabotage, germs and poison. Not by holding elections because in my experience that has never changed anything. Pesidents come and they go, but everything remains the same.
Hence the so-called "insurgency" in Iraq. These people are doing what anyone in their right mind would do under the circumstances. Just imagine if the roles were reversed and it was you that had been invaded.
comments (8)
I defend my family and friends, all the time. Anna, I would defend you too.
by LOCKHEED at January 3, 2005 1:52 AM
Rest easy Anna, I don't think an invasion is imminent. The only thing bringing America to its knees any time soon is America. God Bless... nuclear weapons? Taking your country by military force is nigh on impossible, hence the terrorism. It's the only way most western countries can be fought... Unless they’re torn down from within, uhm, with disinformation and the like.
The Labour government here isn’t hot, though more than half of their policies and promises have been kept, but in the most underhand ways. For example: "We will reduce unemployment by half in our first four year term."
Unemployment has been halved, statistically, but the unemployed have simply been moved around and placed on ridiculous training courses, which suddenly render their status: Employed. They're not though, and any qualifications they might attain through these courses don't really amount to anything. All the while they're on them they're still claiming benefits. But once a party is elected they have the power to change titles and the like, bunch of lying twats to the very last, politicians.
If you were at home eating your breakfast and a family member arrived wailing that another family member has been arrested or shot because she showed too much ankle, I think you'd care. It's about the same as having your door kicked in by conscripted Chinamen during a mass invasion of the States. lol. That’s how it was in Iraq.
But yeah, I agree with you, the little people don’t really give a shit unless they’re affected personally, and then even when they are they stomp on regardless, trying to make something of life. Just look at Europeans during WWII, how half survived is beyond me. Or further east the Russian women and children living in cramped cellars, the children being sent out at night to strip meat from horses or to capture stray dogs to eat. All the food from those factory farms going to the Red Army and none to civilians… Starving people.
The attitude then was, “The war can’t last forever, things will get better you’ll see.” And that’s probably how the Iraqi’s feel. Though I imagine most are just praying that the elections will move swiftly, and that the coalition will leave them to do what they will with their own country. Shame it’s not that simple, non-Iraqi insurgents and those crazy Islamic fundamentalists will continue to do their utmost to fuck it up. If there was no media the war against insurgents would be suppressed by now me thinks.
Everybody seems to have this notion that the Allied infantry heroes of WWII didn’t kill civilians in great numbers, or enemy troops after they’d surrendered. The Saving Private Ryan’s and the Band’s of Brothers are pulling a veil over how staggering it was. Strikes me that the media is also giving terrorists identity and strength too, but I think that must be down to the governments telling them to air the tapes of Osama and co. for fear of him not sending any more.
I started babbling didn’t I? Uhm... Yes I agree with you, I take a rapid assessment of a party’s policies, and if they suit me I’ll cast a vote. The government is just there, and as long as alls quiet on my front I tend not to give a flying monkey shit what they’re up to.
by Ex Crimson Guard NCO at January 3, 2005 5:40 AM
Well thanks Lock, time may come when that is what is needed. As for Iraq and the ankle-baring issue, the funny thing is that it wasn't like that before but it may be after the elections. Iraq was actually a beacon of secularism flanked by the fundamentalist killers of Iran and Afghanistan.
As much as I, a staunch US patriot, hate to say it: I think the US military is afraid to confront its real enemies like Iran and North Korea (with its million + standing army, modern artillery and nukes.) It prefers to pick on patsies like the Taliban and Iraq's pussy-foot, fleeing Republican Guard.
by Anna at January 3, 2005 9:41 AM
And I think that February 1 2005 our troops should just up and leave. Leave these folks to their own devices. As Nixon did in Nam, simply declare victory and come on home. Or go help the tsunaami victims. Though I must say the level of aid forthcoming so far is astounding. How much, exactly, is enough?
by Anna at January 3, 2005 11:44 AM
How's the Warm Weather Treating you Anna? Kinda bizarre if you ask me... from sub-zero to spring for a week, retarded really. Filled with down syndrome.
by LOCKHEED at January 3, 2005 4:06 PM
I'm so old I view the weather in terms of my heating/cooling costs. So this rocks.
by Anna at January 3, 2005 6:07 PM
I've started a post (several times) but never finished it. The working title of the post is "Why the Iraqi Insurgents are dubmasses." The basic point of the post is that if they are insurging against America, than they should stop shooting at the Americans, because the Americans can't leave while people are shooting at them. Stop shooting, they leave. Keep shooting, they'll stay. It doesn't seem to make sense, but it does. We are looking for any excuse to leave the country at this point, but we can't do it while things are so unstable. Its unstable because of you. Stop being unstabling.
Now, if you are just insurging against democracy/capitalism/non-theocracies in general, rather than the U.S. in particular, then stop shooting, let the elections happen, and then U.S. forces can leave. Once the U.S. forces leave pick up your guns again and over-throw the Iraqi "army." Doesn't it make more sense to fight an army that would rather be safe at home and is poorly armed and organized than to fight an army that would rather be safe at home, but spends about 4 times as much as the rest of the world (combined) on military spending?
by mg at January 3, 2005 11:40 PM
Damned if that pretzel logic doesn't make perfect sense. But logic doesn' mean much in the middle east. I mean, the same could be said of the Palestinians vis a vis the Israelis. You think those settlers really want to be squatting there?
by Anna at January 4, 2005 7:43 AM