Drakeshead wrote:Don Miller wrote:They should have hanged George Bush instead.
Why?
I can say this from experience. I have been thanked for my sacrifice and time away from my family for assisting the Iraqi people by more Iraqi's than I have from American's. Everyone wants piece in the world just as long as they do not have to assist in the efforts. We have become too accustomed to sitting back and watching TV, playing on computers and video games and hoping someone else handles all of the problems in the world. Back in WWI and WWII it was an honor to be part of the military. Movie stars and professional athletes left their lime light jobs to enlist and serve in the worlds finest military; to take part of in upholding democracy throughout the world. No a days no one wants to do anything unless it happens on their back porch. Well, I for one do not want it on my back porch, in my back yard, on my block, in my county, in my State, or in my country! I would much rather take the fight to them!
And if anyone that thinks Saddam would not have tried to use all methods to cause harm to the United States is completely mistaken.
AMEN, Brother. Been there with you and have the pictures to prove it.
If any of you don't believe that the Iraqi people are better off without our help you are wrong, I have been there and lived amongst them and I am telling you 95% of the Iraqi people want a free, peaceful, and prosperous nation, they just are having disagreements on how to accomplish that, mainly because they have established 30 years of bad habits, (Like using car bombs, AK 47's and RPG's as tools to eliminate political opponents and influence public opinion, something they learned from Saddam), they will have to learn to overcome before they can become the great nation the Iraqi people want to be. That life is all they knew before we came and they are learning as quickly as they can that there is another way.
For those of you who are armchair quarterbacking but have never stepped up and pitched in to even try to make the effort a success just know that the vast majority of Americans who have served over there come away from the experience with an even higher sense of purpose than when they started just like I did. Once you learn to know and make friends with Iraqis, you understand that while you and I may not agree with everything they do, it is not always necessarily wrong, just different. Any of you who believe there is no way to make an arab country peaceful and prosperous please take a look at countries like Jordan, or Dubai, or the United Arab Emirates, or Bahrain, or even Kuwait . Most of them are countries you have never heard of but all of them are peace loving predominately Muslim arab nations that are rarely, if ever, in the news for anything negative. The main difference between those countries and Iraq is poverty. Iraq is sitting on top of the world's largest oil fields, but very little of the money from that oil ever made its way into the hands of the average Iraqi. In most of those other middle eastern countries the governing bodies share the wealth with their people and have a vibrant, and relative stable middle class. In Iraq, under Saddam, there were simply those that supported him and his greedy, murderous, leacherous ways and therefore had plenty, and those who didn't and tried to live on government established $10.00 a month take home, (all amounts in US equivalents) salaries in a time when a trip to work for the average Iraqi on a bus cost $0.25 one way and in a cab $0.50. If you think about it that it adds up to $1.00 a day to go to work to bring home about $0.33. You want to know why Iraqis are the way they are, try bringing that news home to your wife or kids. Then see whether you would be willing to commit suicide in a very messy, very public way to earn a couple thousand dollars to feed them for a long time because no matter how hard or how well you work, you can't make enough for them to live on alone.
I'm sorry but you guys got me on my soap box now,
When hurricane Katrina hit and I was working in the aftermath, I found the people around me acting earily similar to the Iraqis. When you don't have anything to lose, everything is on the table. I saw gas lines where people, AMERICAN PEOPLE, pulled guns on each other because someone cut in line. I saw all out gang-fight brawls over basic staples like water and electric generators, and I saw compassion and caring from people I never would have guessed would have provided it. It is the same over there only with one difference, most people over there have never had a single day, in their whole lives, where they were free to decide what would be best for themselves until we came. They did what they were told because not to do it would have meant death. Now we are asking them to make all kinds of responsible decisions they don't know how to make. It takes time for them to learn. The closest comparison I can make is raising a child. Here in America we have randomly decided that it takes either 18 or 21 years for a child to learn enough to make their own decisions legally. But we are expecting the Iraqis to learn it in just a couple years, and from just about the same base of knowledge. The bottom line is that this was a 10 to 15 year project from the start, (by the way, just about as long as it took our own nation to ratify the constitution AFTER our own Revolutionary war ended). And with just about the same amount of ruckus albeit much more violent and much more public because of technological developments since then. I promise you, given the time and the proper amount of support the Iraqi people I met can and will make their country a safe and prosperous place to be. The Iraqis are the main ones fighting and dying in huge numbers for their own freedom and yet there are still more of them coming everyday to stand in line to beg for the opportunity to work with the Iraqi police and Iraqi military, (when just standing in line could get them blown up), than could ever be hired.
Lastly, we are just there in a support role. If you ask; should we gradually pull our support back as it is no longer needed? Certainly we should, but not in huge chunks of manpower and equipment and only when we are sure that they can handle the job. If you ask; Is it an effort worth undertaking? Each person has to answer that for themselves. I believed so much that it was that I gave up a good job and left my family for a year to go help only to have to start my whole career over when I returned. Do I expect you to do the same thing, of course not, but don't cast aspersions on those that are trying to help and don't minimize what they are doing by saying it can't be done. It can be done and it will be done, (no matter who is in office, watch what I say). The difference is when the liberals take over the task, which they will, the media will lay off, it will go away from the front page, and not a whole lot will have changed except your perceptions of what is going on. Ask yourself if we still have troops in Bosnia... Where? or Kosovo, or East Timor, all countries with strong muslim populations that we assisted along the path to freedom with US military intervention, (albeit under a democratic American President at the time) and all countries we still have an active military and law enforcement presence in after over a decade. The entire effort is just a matter of perspective guys. The main question we all need to ask is "If we don't finish the job now, who will?"
Sorry for the long post.
Bob, Vicksburg, MS