Poor, Duped Soldiers, Oil, Iraq = Vietnam

As I said in a letter to the editor...

I have it up to my eyeballs with the whole "poor youths duped into war to serve the Military/Republican/Oil conglomerate and turning Iraq into Vietnam". I may have to puke. Frankly, I think anyone that repeats such nonsense should be whipped through town, tarred and feathered and rode out of town on a rail.

Or, at least protect us from having to read such idiotic garbage in the letters to the editor section of my local paper.

I tried to leave a comment there, but for some reason, typepad wouldn't let me sign in. So, I opted for a letter to the editor. A toned down letter to the editor, edited down for print and certainly did not contain all the other thoughts I had about the short, but ignorant letter by a fellow Kansas Citian.

If you've read me at all, you know that making it "short and to the point" was very painful. Let's see if it gets printed. If not, here it is for your edification:

I've had it up to my eye balls with the whole "American Soldiers are uneducated rubes escaping poverty by joining the military" meme. Usually these remarks are directed at soldiers who are serving in Iraq because this is the controversial war. No one seems to mention Afghanistan and this alledged mass of poor idiots that are serving there. I suppose soldiers in Afghanistan are somehow immune to this disease because they are fighting on the popular front in response to the 9/11 attack.

George Baggett wrote in a letter titled "What we’re doing to Iraq" -"President Bush continues to justify bizarre adventures to control Iraqi oil at the expense of a volunteer force that includes many poor youths seeking escape from poverty. "

Mr Baggett fails to recognize that many of these same troops have had tours in Afghanistan. They are poor and stupid in Iraq, "parading around", but apparently wise and capable everywhere else.

Let's be clear, American Soldiers are us. They are the policeman who patrols our streets, they are the accountant the does our taxes, they are the mechanic that fixes our cars, the neighbor across the street, and, yes, they are even high school graduates that may have never held a job before. They are from every walk of life, every ethnicity, every religion, every economic background and every educational level. They are a cross section of America.

To portray them as uneducated and poor victims because they are currently serving on a front that people see as unpopular is, well, ignorant.

I signed my name and gave them a number to call. I didn't address the rest of his idiotic letter. I just saw the "soldier's are victims" section and then I saw red.

As for the rest of his screed, it was barely worth anything after his "poor youths" being "paraded" around Iraq. But, I have news for these folks:

We didn't go into Iraq because of it's abundance in oil. We went into Iraq because it's oil was a pittance and any interruption to that flow would cause the minimum damage to the oil market, oil prices and the economy. If people think the raise of gasoline to $2 to $3 dollars/gallon or a 15% increase in heating and electricity costs was painful, imagine had we done what any number of idiots were demanding and gone into Saudi Arabia.

Imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth after that. Not that we had to worry. Much as the Democrat party used oil or Saudi connections to lambast the Republicans, I don't think any of them had the the cajones or the sheer ignorance it would take to do that. Not to mention the damage to their own investments and political contributions from these nasty oil profiteers.

Further, any folks concerned about the war profiteering of oil companies should check their 401k and IRA portfolios. It's very likely that you are planning your retirement on the blood of our soldiers.

Second, the reason we went into Iraq is because Saddam was an unstable, murdering sociopath who was a well known state supporter of terrorism. Maybe he didn't have a direct line to Osama. I'm sure he didn't call OBL up and say, "Yo, Obi-wan, why don't you get some guys together and fly planes into some buildings in the US."

Nope, the real issue here is the if or, more likely, when, he'd say, "Yo, OBL, nice job on the towers and Pentagon. You sure had those Americans stepping and a crying. I've got some stuff that will really rock their world."

And, folks, the fact that we didn't find all the "WMD" we expected to find (yes, we found some), scares the bee-jees out of me. We're talking bout the guy that tried to hide a biological warfare plant in a plant that allegedly made vetinarian medicine (al-Hakim 1995) at the height of sanctions. So, pardon me if I find the whole "WMD" thing still a major concern and a good reason to kick butt.

Third, we'd been "at war" for a decade with this moron routinely shooting at our jets. In the middle of a war with some crazy middle eastern guys, it doesn't seem like a brilliant idea to leave another crazy guy in a "war posture" on our flanks. I'm no military strategist, but it does seem like a bad idea.

Fourth, the reason we went into Iraq is because, if you want to kill the beast (ie, Islamist nutbags who want to kill Americans and rule their part of the world via the new, old caliphate), you have to stab that beast in the heart. Know your history. Baghdad was the heart of every Caliphate except the last couple hundred years under the Ottomans and even then Baghdad sat on the intersection of the empire. Even the Mongols (Ghengis Khan, Mr. Kerry) knew they had to take Baghdad to own the empire. Nothing will kill the beast faster than turning the heart of their future empire into a Shia dominated democracy.

When it all works out (I don't say "if", I say "when"), it has a bunch of side benefits like being a prick in the side of Iran and Syria. Not as military threat, but because they will be trading partners. Where the greedy capitalist democratic economy goes, so goes the ideas; democratic ideas.

Well, Iraq could fail. We could withdraw.

That's where we get Iraq = Vietnam - Abandon hope all ye who live in Iraq because, now that we've torn down your government, we've decided it's just too hard to finish the job. You'll just have to die by the thousands (if not a million or so), abandon dreams of democracy and live under the next murderous dictatorship.

Lot's of folks probably think that's what they deserve because they are obviously as poor and ignorant as our troops and can't do anything else but submit.

But hey, back to the Vietnamese, I'm happy to see folks feel some guilt over it. Let me tell you that 1 million Vietnamese did not die because the US meddled in it's affairs. They died because the Communists who took over Vietnam killed them. They died because they did not conform to the Communist manifesto. They died because they wouldn't swill Communist re-education. They died because they refused to give up their religious beliefs.

They died because that is what totalitarian regimes do to consolidate their power. They don't simply defeat their opposition and then spend years debating their political and economic beliefs, they eliminate by death all those who oppose them.

Ask the Cambodians, the Nicarauguans, the Russians and the Chinese, just to name a few.

In a few years, after we abandon the Iraqis, we can ask them, since it's likely that the Iranian backed factions will take over. Those folks are as extreme and totalitarian as the last murderous dictator. Or maybe, the Sunni and Shia will finally decide they have to fight it out in Iraq and hundreds of thousands more (a million?) will die in incessant warfare, far more than die today, at the hands of blood thirsty extremists. But, at least in the eyes of some folks, it won't be America doing it or America present while it happens.

These folks can sit back in self-righteous, self-flagellating glee and insist that abandoning Iraq was the right thing to do since we will have given them the power to kill each other or be killed by competing regional powers or Islamist extremists as our last guilt laden "gift".

Very humanitarian of us. Liberty at last for Iraq. The freedom to die in the hundreds of thousands.

Oh, and let's not forget, like the Vietnamese, as soon as we withdraw and the killing really gets started, we'll be flooded with a least a hundred thousand refugee seekers who don't really want to live in chaos or be murdered for their political or religious beliefs or because they had the gall to work with Americans to try to better their country and make a living.

There's some "Iraq=Vietnam" for you.

Then, ten or twenty years from now, folks like the writer of this letter in the paper can revise history and paint Iraq as the struggle of a people to fight off the empirialist oppression of the new improved Oil/Military complex of the United States.

I have just one question..if our current Military complex is after oil...what was the military complex after in Vietnam? Rice? If so, we must have actually won the war and didn't know it because this nice, quiet prosperous country (per Mr B in the KC Star) sales most of it's rice on the American market.

I nearly forgot, after we leave there and all the terrorists we supposedly created have a hay day training up and gathering in the hinterlands of Iraq, they can traipse over to Saudi Arabia and cause a big internal war that actually does interrupt the flow of oil to the US and every nation, sending the world into a depression or world war over remaining supplies. Or, these same folks can have a free pass at transiting through Iraq to Syria and Turkey to really lay some terrorist bombing on Europe or, you know, in the flood of refugees, come on over to the US and blow some car bombs up in downtown LA or New York. They don't need dirty bombs to set off panic and cause a recession/depression.

They need three well placed car bombs.

Then, all the self-righteous self-flagellators can sit back and take no responsibility for it (kind of like the whole "Vietnam" thing). They can just point at "Bush's War" and say something really brilliant like, "Why didn't the government protect us?"

Poor, dupped soldiers, oil/military complex and Vietnam. Who knew we'd have to live with this regurgitated nonsense???????

Okay...I did. Somewhere about March 19, 2003.

I've had all I can stands and I can't stands no more.


As seen at the Castle