Things You May Not Know About Iraq, But Should
Dean
Military history books will record that the Iraq operation has been, quite simply, the most successful military operation in world history. The lowest casualty rate of all time; the highest enemy kill ratio of all time; the lowest percentage of civilian casualties of all time. It's just stunning.
Quite possibly the most amazing operation of the whole war to date (possibly, there are so many amazing stories it's hard to say for sure) has been the operation in Fallujah. You know, that operation that was all over the news when things looked dramatic and grim, but which dropped completely off the mainstream media's RADAR once we were victorious?
So in case you didn't realize it, your must-read article on Fallujah today is Jack Kelly's Victory in Fallujah: Iraq's Iwo Jima gets scant media respect.
Just the "mopping up" operations in places like Iwo Jima after World War II had more casualties than the entire Iraq operation to date. To look at the press, you'd think somehow it was an unending disaster. Yet, as even the New York Time's Thomas Friedman notes, the overwhelming majority of troops serving in Iraq are optimistic and proud of what they're doing. Which, of course, anyone who reads the military bloggers (or saw how our Reserve and National guard troops voted this year) has known for quite some time.
Anyway, not all the good news in Iraq is strictly military. The amount of good news in other areas is simply jaw-dropping--and, of course, generally ignored. For more on that, please go out of your way to read (and tell others about) Art Chrenkoff's latest installment of The Good News From Iraq, which documents excellent progress in the economy, in education, in infrastructure, in civil rights, and more.
Note something interesting about Chrenkoff's news roundup: It's huge, as usual. And by that I mean it's really long. Know why? Because there's so damned much good news. So, seriously, don't miss it.
A final item to note: Instapundit links to even more economic good news for Iraq, and an explanation for why our government has apparently been silent on the Oil-For-Food scandal at the U.N. (hint: it helped them get major economic concessions for Iraq).
Elections on January 30. I can hardly wait. The whiny voices of gloom and defeatism grow smaller every day.
It's music to my ears.
Related Posts (on one page):
- More You Should Know About Fallujah
- Things You May Not Know About Iraq, But Should
One in twelve children in Iraq are starving. That's more than double what it was in 2001.
It may continue to be harder to feed them if the farms keep losing all their crops. Abu Khaleel, who Dean quotes often and has been a big supporter of America in the various issues of "Carnival of the Liberated" is apparently having trouble on his farm. To quote:
I went to the farm with the hope of clearing my head. The long walks, the good weather and the peace and quiet in the countryside this time of the year usually do wonders to my mood… but it was no use.
[Incidentally, there was not much to do at the farm. For the past 17 days, there was not a single minute of electricity. For the past six months, there was literally not a drop of water in the irrigation channel. No planting. The barley season is lost (as was the corn season before). The wheat season is unlikely!]
Oh, and those elections that you can't wait for should really bind the country together nicely if the Sunni boycott the election, eh?
I know that the Bush bobbleheads respond to each and every aspect of this with "Well... war is hell and some bad things are bound to happen, but in general..."
Sorry, but I throw the bullshit flag now. I was willing to buy into that, at least to some degree, until recently. This weekend CNN showed pictures of the recently "liberated" Fallujah, site of the "incredible victory" that Dean cites. You know what? The city is flattened. More than half the mosques are completely or partially destroyed, and a greater percentage of the rest of the buildings, both residential and commercial, are likewise. They showed side by side photos taken by aircraft from five years ago, earlier this year, and this weekend. That city isn't liberated with precision bombing, etc. It's destroyed. More than a quarter million people with no homes or businesses to return to. I'm sure they feel really "liberated."
On that topic, take a look at some of the "liberating" literature we've been dropping on Baghdad and Mosul homes. Makes you feel all warm inside, doesn't it?
Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.. we need to get the hell out of that country, just as Abu Khaleel suggests in the blog entry I listed above.
Not because of your disagreement, and not because of your stunning ignorance of military matters. Merely for being insulting.
You don't get another warning. If you'd prefer to leave in a huff now, feel free.
I can definitely see the utlitity of the various debtors forgiving 80% of Iraq's debt, and that is quite important.
I just wonder how much more damage the UN will do because people won't see through it. Hopefully there is some back-channel improvements to that body.
Still forgiving Iraq's debt will have a more immediate impact on the quality of lives of the Iraqi people than will any general knowledge of the UN oil-for-murder program, so even if the UN doesn't improve, it's still good news.
And despite the whiny crybaby losers who hold their breath and stamp their feet, we aren't leaving any time soon. The situation in Iraq is already immeasurably better than either Germany or Japan were at this point after World War II, and the defeatists in the West were shrieking even then that we'd "lost the peace" and that you "can't impose democracy" and of course sympathizers with the Tojo and Hitler regimes groused constantly that things were so much better before the evil Americans and British came.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Here's the Esmay theory of history: whiny crybaby losers always predict failure, and piss on every success, and generally act like surly teenagers even as they find themselves, once again, on the wrong side of history.
Watch them carefully. You never want to turn into one of them. I know, I used to be one and it's embarassing.
The elections in Iraq will be imperfect, and Iraq will not turn into Massachussets overnight.
The fact that both will inevitably be true will be seized upon by whiny defeatist crybaby losers as proof that the entire enterprise is a failure.
Because that's just what whiny crybaby defeatist losers always do.
I used to think they can be reasoned with. Now I just view them with contempt. It's a contempt they've earned. They never fail to disappoint, after all.
Let's just be clear on this. That's your quote, and you are rattling your saber about my posting links to other items that don't conform to your opinion as "merely being insulting?"
Feel free to throw the switch now. I certainly never posted anything there as insulting as you've been. If you can't take a discussion with people with a dissenting opinion, it's your blog and your right to keep the conversation restricted to people who agree with you. (The ubiquitous term "bobblehead xxx supporters" has been thrown about so much in both left and right forums, I refuse to believe that you honestly find that nearly as offensive as "whiny crybaby defeatist losers". Really mature, Dean.)
In any event, that's how I've always posted here, and have no intention of changing. If you consider that "improper for posting on Dean's World" than throw the switch now, big guy, and I'll leave you and your fans to agree with each other.
We don't all agree with each other. For example, I disagree with Dean on education, public decency, and some other topics.
Your main problem is that you don't argue, you state your evidence and conclusions, and just re-state them over and over again without meaningfully addressing anything said to you.
That's no argumentation, that's simply rude, among other things.
Plus, it doesn't help that you seem to work hard to show little perspective or insight. For example, whether someplace is free and whether someplace is wealthy have nothing to do with each other. Yet you cite the lack of wealth as a proof of the lack of freedom (in both cases, of fallujah).
It's difficult to take something that irrational seriously.
Again, you cite a single example of a farmer who lacks electricity and water, without any indication of why he lacks these things, and without any apparent weight given to how many people lacked electricity and water under Saddam (if they were outside of baghdad).
Now, the real state of such questions may be in favor of your conclusion or against it, but you only come off like an aggressive idiot when you don't even give a nod to those problems with your argument.
You have the further problem of being on the side most prominently championed by idiots, fools, and bribed frenchmen. The various protest marches where people proved beyond a doubt that considering them brainless buffoons could not err far from the mark really tarred your side of the debate with the mark intellectual vacuity. Now, truth is truth even if spoken by a fool, and in error, as the old saying goes: You might be right. But you're arguing from a very disadvantaged position, and for your own good you should realize this.
Fair or not, you have to come accross as especially rational, or you'll be dismissed as one more sqweaking moonbat.
It is my saber to rattle. You are in my home and here at my discretion. If you do not like it, you can go back to your own blog and rant about how mean and rude and meretricious and wrong wrong wrong I am on your own dime. I get trackbacks everyday from assholes who do that to me, and it's reached the point where I no longer care in the least. At one point I asked them to stop but I realized that was fruitless. But if you're here in my comments, you're here at my sufference and entirely because of my good graces, and if you don't like it, then don't let the door hit you on your ass on your way out. Indeed, I'll be happy to shot a shotgun blast full of rock salt into your posterior as you exit.
However, you are not being upbraided for disagreeing with me. I am disagreed with on a daily basis by regulars to this establishment on countless issues. You're being upbraided for implying that your host is a "Bush bobble-head" and snottily implying that if everything in Iraq isn't perfect, that means that all the good news I post about is merely a sham.
Throw your bullshit flags on your own blog, and taunt the "Bush Bobble-heads" there as well. Since both were clear potshots at your host, don't expect them to be taken kindly here.
I'll leave you and your fans to agree with each other.
Snort. I get disagreed with by regulars here all the time. This is such a common complaint from people who just don't like having their preconceptions challenged that it's almost an in-joke. "Hey there goes Dean, beating up people who don't agree with him again!" As if regulars like Casey Tompkins, Arnold Harris, Chris Reid, Michael Demmons, Ilyka Damen, Dave Schuler, Joe Gandelman, Connie du Toit, Susan B., Janelle, and a half-dozen others haven't often disagreed with me, sometimes vehemently, many many many times. (I've lost count of how many arguments I've had with Arnold alone.)
This blog is inhabited by rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con-men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglars, horse thieves, bull-dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, sh**-kickers, and Methodists!
Just don't piss off the owner. He's got an ornery streak and owns a shotgun, and the patience of a saint worn thin.
Dean: I don't stomp in "huffs" but at the same time, I post the way that I naturally post in comments sections everywhere, which is not far off from my blog, though more casual. If you don't care for it, then by all means take your big, bad shotgun full of rock salt and pull the switch. I have no plans to modify my opinions and style based on the forum. And I've hardly been insulting to any degree... certainly not to the level to which you've sunk here.
I think you *do* disagree with some posters on a variety of social issues. That's one of the reason I bother spending the time to often check in on your comments sections instead of just reading the posts. But, whether or not you admit it, when it comes to two subjects (The invasion and occupation of Iraq, and second, Michael Moore) you turn into a ranter when somebody disagrees with you, and go on at great length about it. And that's fine too. How you argue is up to you.
As I said, you want to ban me and call it for whatever reason you choose to pick, feel free. It's your blog. You might cut back a bit on the hypocricy though, if a poster used the ubiquitous "bobble head" reference (and if it offends you that badly, I apologize, ok?) and you come back with your high school level "loser" comments.
Of the miscreants he lists, I can say with certainty that I'm not a Methodist. One of my Polish ancestors, I'm told, was hanged for horse thievery. Who knows what else lurks in my family tree.
But that's them, not me. I'm occasionally rude and stupid, but I have the good grace to come back and be embarrassed about it. Some people are blind to their stupidity and arrogance.
If Dean threatens you with banishment, you have to be aggressively and unrepentantly offensive. Don't look to me for support.
Slightly OT, but good news about an Iraqi... FoxNews just need an update on Tabby and her surgery at MUSC. May want to take a look at it.
Jazz - "More than double what it was in 2001"? Do you mean when Sadam was running the statistics? LOL, not at the current situation, which is completely unacceptable (and mostly caused by insurgents preventing the safe return of humanitarian organizations), but at your gullibility. BTW, what do you think the malnutrition rate would be if we pulled out right now; yeah, you really care about the Iraqis.
Iraq is, quite literally, a war zone. Therefore it is a disaster compared to normal life. Therefore good news is taken relative to it being a disaster.
Life is not always normal, and it unfortunately can't always be normal.
Those who refuse to consider all news as relative to what it might otherwise be simply place themselves outside of the realm of rational discussion.
Intelligent people don't need to be told that the things being described are good news because Iraq is a war zone. Intelligent people don't need to be told that when a military campaign has gone astoundingly well, that's relative to what one might expect for a military campaign given history. Of course any military operation will be far, far worse than happiness and love and bunnies.
In short, get some perspective. You're not going to be treated as worth talking to unless you demonstrate some understanding of just how awful life can get — and often is. Study history. Learn about just how awful man's inhumanity to man can get. Find out about just how terrible life can be.
Hint: for starters, the romans not only slaughtered all of the cartheginians, they also destroyed all of their buildings and then salted the earth so that nothing would go where carthage had once been. That's ancient history, but it certainly can happen again. History is absolutely filled with stories like this.
So if you want to be taken seriously, read history and find out just how bad things can get, just how easily they can get that bad, and by comparison how bad things haven't gotten.
Or, if you've already done so, show it.
Because right now, you look like a fool who's never even heard of the word "perspective". Just FYI.
Are you planning to work for CBS? Seems like your building your resume.