Harry Reid is right

OK. So, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid believes that the war in Iraq cannot be won.

And that’s news?

Most everyone without a political axe to grind has understood this for quite some time. There will be no military solution to this quagmire, only a political one — one likely to happen only after we leave.

And yet the Republicans in Congress (most of them, anyway) insist on offering this kind of nonsense, from U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) :

“If Harry Reid believes that this war is lost, where is his plan to win this war?”

A plan to win? Nice bit of rhetorical spin here, but the issue has not been about winning or losing for a long time. To keep preaching the “in-it-to-win-it” line does a disservice to the soldiers laboring in this misbegotten conflict, the Iraqis and the rest of us. It is just one more bit of wishful thinking from the bubble brigade, a group of politicians that view everything through a partisan prism that distorts their judgment and causes them to speak in loopy slogans.

It is not about winning. It is about how we can get out quickly without making things worse. We are like gasoline on this fiery conflict and we need to get out.

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The coarsening effect of war

War is an ugly business, coarsens the men who fight and the nation that sends them in to battle.

That is single, most salient thing we need to know, that asking young men to kill, that demonizing the men the are asked to kill — well, this kind of story seems all to inevitable.

The Marine Corps chain of command in Iraq ignored “obvious” signs of “serious misconduct” in the 2005 slayings of two dozen civilians in Haditha, and commanders fostered a climate that devalued the life of innocent Iraqis to the point that their deaths were considered an insignificant part of the war, according to an Army general’s investigation.

Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell’s 104-page report on Haditha is scathing in its criticism of the Marines’ actions, from the enlisted men who were involved in the shootings on Nov. 19, 2005, to the two-star general who commanded the 2nd Marine Division in Iraq at the time. Bargewell’s previously undisclosed report, obtained by The Washington Post, found that officers may have willfully ignored reports of the civilian deaths to protect themselves and their units from blame. Though Bargewell found no specific coverup, he concluded that there also was no interest at any level in investigating allegations of a massacre.

“All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics,” Bargewell wrote. He condemned that approach because it could desensitize Marines to the welfare of noncombatants. “Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get ‘the job done’ no matter what it takes.”

The story confirms one of the central tenets of Chris Hedges’ book, “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning,” that war creates its own momentum, its own reasons for being, altering motivation — coarsening us all.

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Inky to South Korea: No apology necessary

The Philadelphia Inquirer offers an apology to South Korea, explaining that the Asian nation has nothing to apologize for in regards to the Virginia Tech shootings:

Don’t get us wrong. It is touching and impressive how you, as a nation, seem crestfallen over the trail of death left on an American college campus by an immigrant from your land. You have held candlelight vigils at our embassy and your president has expressed shock – three times, so far.

But, really, the suspect came to America as a child. He was raised here. Maybe we should be apologizing to you for not taking better care of him. Or maybe the ugly twists that the human spirit can take are just unfathomable.

We are dismayed that you worry about a misdirected backlash against your citizens who have emigrated here. Most of us would like to think America is better than that. But we also recall that, after 9/11, some ignorant people attacked Sikh Americans in the preposterous belief that their turbans marked them as members of al-Qaeda.

Obviously we need to work on our behavior and international image.

So we accept your apologies, unnecessary as they are – as lessons in grace and humanity.

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Politics as usual in the Bush administration

The Baltimore Sun yesterday made plain what so many of us already knew: Republicans have been engaging in a national effort to supress votes in Democratic districts. This should be added to the list of particulars against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — if he doesn’t resign, then he should be removed from office. This is unacceptable.

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Random thoughts on baseballduring the season’s first month

  • What’s the over-under on Charlie Manuel losing his job? His team is terrible (due mostly to the Phillies not finding any useful arms for the bullpen), he fights a reporter and then moves his ace starter into the set-up role. I give him to the end of the month.

  • Felix Hernandez, the phenom pitcher in Seattle, left the game in the first last night — which is not just bad for Seattle but for all of baseball. The kid is a monster.

  • I find it funny that everyone was so concerned about the Mets’ starting pitching before the season — with cause — but no one seemed to worry about the Yankees. So, remind me, which team is it again that is trolling the minors for starters?

  • The Cubs are awful. They will remain awful. And they deserve to be awful. They spent a lot of money to get some real nice players, but in each case they paid more than they should have. So, no sympathy from me.

  • How much fun is it to watch Jose Reyes play?

  • Jimmy Rollins, at least, is doing his part to live up to his boast. Too bad his teammates aren’t (well, too bad if you’re a Phillies fan).

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
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