Page 1 of 1 pages
I saw “No End in Sight” last week at a free showing at a local theater that included a discussion after. It was hosted by our local progressive talk radio host who announced the viewing on his show prior. As he described the audience, it was the usual suspects, meaning the anti-war crowd that has been against the Iraq War since before the war started (myself included).
It was immediately decided that this film was nothing but one part of the government criticizing another for mistakes made. This was not an anti-war film, but an anti-war plan film.
I was impressed with some of the footage from Iraq, yet I don’t recall hardly one Iraqi even being interviewed. Yes, there were a few, but it shows how much disregard we’ve shown towards the people of the country we attacked. But again, this was a movie about the mistakes made rather than whether the war should have been fought at all.
The movie covers most of the mistakes in chronological order up until “the surge” which probably was instituted after the completion of the movie. I personally noted that every mistake was actually conventional wisdom when the decision was made.
Whattheheck….I should remind you that the idea you put forth is now the conventional wisdom we are hearing constantly, that we can’t leave Iraq because “all hell will break loose.” This is the current Washington and media talk. But why should I believe this new conventional wisdom when all the other cases were wrong? This film quite clearly showed how every time those talking heads on TV and our leaders in Washington predicted that this or that would happen or work, they were wrong. With conventional wisdom’s track record of near total failure, again why buy it now?
The most accurate predictions about Iraq came from the anti-war crowd. We were the ones saying that the WMD thing was a lie. We were the ones that said Iraq was about oil…it is. We knew that Iraq’s oil would not pay for this war. We laughed or some were simply disgusted on Bush’s “mission accomplished.” We knew there was no post-Iraq plan. Some of us had faint hope that elections might actually save the country, but deep inside knew they wouldn’t. We saw the Halliburton’s etc. getting the war profiteering contracts and knew that there would be untold billions just flushed down toilets. And many of us suspected that the Iraq War would probably unleash religious and ethnic violence. All this flew in the face of conventional wisdom.
It is time to finally listen to the “unconventional wisdom” that is spoken from the Dennis Kuciniches of the left and Ron Pauls of the right. Time to get out now, it’s been long past due.
Posted by Jon B on Jul 26, 2007 at 12:12 AM
Jon B,
I’m not much of a believer in conventional wisdom or polls. Polls are meaningless unless you know the way in which the questions were posed and are the primary source for what we call conventional wisdom.
I believed we had too few troops before entering because I knew Bush Sr. and Clinton had cut the military in order to attain better looking economic numbers. So did many military leaders.
Everything is related
Posted by whattheheck on Jul 26, 2007 at 5:25 AM
There you go, plenty of distortions.
The people of Viet Nam were the same or the same thing is going to happen, this is fantasy. The two situations have little comparison. Whatever “hard evidence” you have from that war doesn’t apply to Iraq.
I didn’t say that conventional wisdom WILL be wrong again. Let me explain again. It has consistently been wrong so far as to Iraq, and this is due to the fact those giving us the conventional wisdom obviously don’t have wisdom. So why believe them again? If someone constantly can’t add two and two, I will expect them to continue to get a wrong answer until the prove they can come up with four. The Twain/cat thing is stupid. I know dogs that are on invisible fences, will get shocks yet will continue to test the fence. But both the cat and dog examples are irrelevant because the Iraq War is about people who incidentally believe themselves to be superior to animals.
The fact is that armchair quarterbacking means nothing. You can’t prove that having more troops would have made a difference. Since there were any number of military experts with varying advised troop levels and notwithstanding whether we had the troops to even follow the advice. And since you claim that previous presidents cut the military (highly debatable) then apparently you don’t believe we had the military to wage the Iraq War in the first place and you should have opposed the war at the beginning based on that reason.
Savages? All people are savages. Our country has an entire history of savagery. Native American genocide, slavery, civil war and since WWII no country has started or participated in more wars than the US.
Finally, we didn’t “buy it.” I didn’t and plenty of others didn’t either. We don’t “own it” either. This is some type of consumerist theory applied to war. We have gone into any number of countries and helped screw them up then left without ownership. What we are really doing is theft. Just because we decide that oil is our national security (The Carter Doctrine) we believe it is our right to make sure we get it from other countries no matter what it takes, that is just plain theft. We decide that we will continue to have our way of living, the suburban oil culture, and that the oil regions then must supply us. Instead of solving this cultural problem, we steal.
Since FDR we’ve been in bed with the House of Saud, we don’t give a rats buttocks about that regime because of the oil. We loved Saddam as long as he played the oil game with us. We kissed the behind of the Shah of Iran despite how he treated his subjects (secret police) because of the oil. Now (if you are aware of it) we are caressing the leaders of some fairly ruthless regimes in some of the former Soviet republics in the Caspian Sea region, you guessed it, OIL. But we don’t say it’s oil. No, it’s in the name of the War on Terror. Whenever you see that term, rename it War for Oil and look deeply into why we are stuffing our military bases into those countries or surrounding them with bases.
Incidentally, we’ve ASKED for international support for Iraq, we don’t have it. Our coalition of the willing is down to a few, the coalition of the paid off. The UN at one point WAS in Iraq, we couldn’t protect their building. We will get international help when we divvy up Iraq’s oil production among the major powers like Russia, China, Europe, not until then. The “benchmark” of Iraqi’s sharing oil is conditioned on corporations producing that oil, not on Iraqi’s having a state-run company such as in most Middle East countries, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Why is that? Because at our rate of oil consumption the Middle East must INCREASE production by 40% by 2020 to satisfy America’s needs. That’s going to take a lot of production investment, more than even the Saud’s can accomplish on their own within their own country. It’s all about the oil, until you get that, you don’t understand Iraq.
Posted by Jon B on Jul 26, 2007 at 12:59 PM
WtHeck…“we
Posted by Jon B on Jul 26, 2007 at 1:38 PM
WTH, you say “There is ample reason to think people who bomb and maim indiscriminately in a land with a history of tribal, sect or family retribution as the norm will impose a great price on those left behind. “
Pardon me, as usual I don’t understand your logic. Wouldn’t it be infinitely wiser, kinder and humane not to bomb and maim anybody in any land which never attacked or harmed your land in the first place?
It’s not a matter of number of troops, it’s a matter of they shouldn’t have gone there to begin with. But since you think you have a right to do it, I am surprised you haven’t volunteered or sent your children to join the troops.
As for international cooperation, the USA single-handedly started this war, despite most of the world didn’t agree with it, so why would they change their minds after it was proved it was based on lies? We may be small, underdeveloped countries, but many of us still have principles.
As for calling them savages, it seems there are plenty of savages everywhere.
Posted by Maria on Jul 26, 2007 at 9:50 PM
Whattheheck….To continue what I’ve been saying about US arms manufacturing and sales AND how it relates to oil and the Middle East, from todays NYTimes a proposed new arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
Paraphrasing from the article…The Bush Administration is set to offer a $20 billion arms sale package of advanced weaponry. To offset this, military aid to Israel over the next decade will total $30.4 billion, which is a significant increase. The so-called reason is for Saudi Arabia to counter Iran.
But let’s get real. This is just another bonus for US arms manufacturing. I would imagine that our share of the worlds arms exportation has just increased even further beyond what we already by far lead.
And if we look at it from the Saudi perspective, isn’t this just another way for them to keep supporting the Sunni faction in Iraq? Here we are trying to tamp down Iraqi violence and then we supply the Saudis with weapons. And we do this because we (and the world) need to bow down to the oil kings of that country.
Just the other day I read an article in the Wall St. Journal about the efforts of the US to go after Saudi banks that are involved with charities that are linked to Al Qaeda. It turns out the US didn’t take a hard stand but basically begged the Saudis to deal with it.
This is how diplomacy works with Saudi Arabia… The US meets with them while on their knees, “please, oh great oil gods can you see your way to listening to us on terrorism?”
And on another related news item, the House of Representatives yesterday voted overwhelmingly to ban the Bush Administration from establishing permanent military bases in Iraq as well as not condition oil production on American companies being involved. It will still have to pass the Senate and then a Bush signing statement where he signs the bill but adds a statement to the effect that he doesn’t have to follow the bill if he doesn’t want to based usually on “security.” He’s been doing these signing statements for some time now, most people are unaware of it.
Posted by Jon B on Jul 28, 2007 at 4:50 AM
Iraq: Mismanagement or Mass Murder? Mass murder of course. The ‘mismanagement (conspiracy) theory’ is simply a cover story. What do psychopaths do for fun and (literally) profit? This is Western “Civilization” after all. Remember Rome? Crucifying a whole village? Or Hiroshima? Besides, killing people this way is a lot more cost-effective than dropping conventional bombs: malnutrition and disease are much more efficient, and getting people to kill each other is cheaper too—and has the advantage of “plausable denial”—it was just mismanagement, or germs. The same thing is happening in the U.S., but to a lesser extent, and using less obtrusive methods—e.g., cutting funding so hurricanes flood heavily populated areas—so it is easier to keep true motives hidden. Medicaid funding was just cut to zero in Calif. —Lots of dead old people to come, and out of sight and out of mind. And, as long as it isn’t happening to my family, so what. It’s the Law of the Jungle here in the US. People have accepted that since the 50’s. What do you think the Free Market is? Do you think the millions of aliens from Mexico care? (That is one of the reasons the border is kept effectively open.) A nationwide strike? Hell NO! (Unless it will seriously and suddenly reduce 10’s of millions of people’s income.) Current tribute (termed “profit”) on gasoline is about $1/gallon, but that is due to “Peak Oil” and the “Free Market”.
Besides, if the media make it look entertaining, who’s going to take it too seriously? Why do you think horror movies are popular? Only a tiny fraction of the German population knew about the Holocaust until long after the war. This is just business as usual—that is why Congress isn’t doing much and why they are not getting much flak from their constituents, only the polls. Bush’s popularity isn’t low because of all the killing, it is low because we seem to be losing. Profits of cronies are up and the population of Iraq is down—everything is going quite well.
For those who doubt this, I suggest you read “CHRIS FLOYD’s report, “Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism”, chosen as one of ProjectCensored’s Top 25 Stories of 2002/2003.
Marksman, I wish you were exaggerating but I’m afraid you are not. As arms continue to be produced and sold or traded, sectarisms are patronized and God Market is worshipped there’s no hope for the world. In the name of a so-called democracy, the humblest and weakest are being wiped out. There isn’t such a thing as democracy being practiced anywhere. People seem to be satisfied just to vote every 4 or 6 years for one of the candidates in offer and then they are never consulted again about anything that matters. lEveryday you get up to read in the papers something that has been decided upon and performed in “your name” though you were never consulted, while the media, the movies, and the ads never consider any issue seriously but continue their brain-washing effect . You compare this situation to the Law of the Jungle. Let me add that in the jungle each species does what his instincts tell them to do to keep alive, or fed but in the human species that is not enough by far, they are so sick that insist on the need of accumulating (money, or property or power) ignoring their own mortality and lacking compassion to others. Some hide behind a flag, others behind a corporation, others behind a religious mask, but most never assume their basic responsibilities towards everybody’s right to live and enjoy life, because Earth is everyone’s planet as it’s everyone’s duty to keep it healthy for future generations.
Posted by Maria on Aug 8, 2007 at 6:25 PM
Couldn’t agree you both (Maria, Mark) more.
Maria, “everyone’s planet” unfortunately isn’t so, most of the Earth is owned and possessed by the rich and powerful or governments when you measure by property rights.
Posted by Jon B on Aug 13, 2007 at 9:05 PM
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Reader Comments
It
I saw “No End in Sight” last week at a free showing at a local theater that included a discussion after. It was hosted by our local progressive talk radio host who announced the viewing on his show prior. As he described the audience, it was the usual suspects, meaning the anti-war crowd that has been against the Iraq War since before the war started (myself included).
It was immediately decided that this film was nothing but one part of the government criticizing another for mistakes made. This was not an anti-war film, but an anti-war plan film.
I was impressed with some of the footage from Iraq, yet I don’t recall hardly one Iraqi even being interviewed. Yes, there were a few, but it shows how much disregard we’ve shown towards the people of the country we attacked. But again, this was a movie about the mistakes made rather than whether the war should have been fought at all.
The movie covers most of the mistakes in chronological order up until “the surge” which probably was instituted after the completion of the movie. I personally noted that every mistake was actually conventional wisdom when the decision was made.
Whattheheck….I should remind you that the idea you put forth is now the conventional wisdom we are hearing constantly, that we can’t leave Iraq because “all hell will break loose.” This is the current Washington and media talk. But why should I believe this new conventional wisdom when all the other cases were wrong? This film quite clearly showed how every time those talking heads on TV and our leaders in Washington predicted that this or that would happen or work, they were wrong. With conventional wisdom’s track record of near total failure, again why buy it now?
The most accurate predictions about Iraq came from the anti-war crowd. We were the ones saying that the WMD thing was a lie. We were the ones that said Iraq was about oil…it is. We knew that Iraq’s oil would not pay for this war. We laughed or some were simply disgusted on Bush’s “mission accomplished.” We knew there was no post-Iraq plan. Some of us had faint hope that elections might actually save the country, but deep inside knew they wouldn’t. We saw the Halliburton’s etc. getting the war profiteering contracts and knew that there would be untold billions just flushed down toilets. And many of us suspected that the Iraq War would probably unleash religious and ethnic violence. All this flew in the face of conventional wisdom.
It is time to finally listen to the “unconventional wisdom” that is spoken from the Dennis Kuciniches of the left and Ron Pauls of the right. Time to get out now, it’s been long past due.
Jon B,
I’m not much of a believer in conventional wisdom or polls. Polls are meaningless unless you know the way in which the questions were posed and are the primary source for what we call conventional wisdom.
I believed we had too few troops before entering because I knew Bush Sr. and Clinton had cut the military in order to attain better looking economic numbers. So did many military leaders.
Everything is related
There you go, plenty of distortions.
The people of Viet Nam were the same or the same thing is going to happen, this is fantasy. The two situations have little comparison. Whatever “hard evidence” you have from that war doesn’t apply to Iraq.
I didn’t say that conventional wisdom WILL be wrong again. Let me explain again. It has consistently been wrong so far as to Iraq, and this is due to the fact those giving us the conventional wisdom obviously don’t have wisdom. So why believe them again? If someone constantly can’t add two and two, I will expect them to continue to get a wrong answer until the prove they can come up with four. The Twain/cat thing is stupid. I know dogs that are on invisible fences, will get shocks yet will continue to test the fence. But both the cat and dog examples are irrelevant because the Iraq War is about people who incidentally believe themselves to be superior to animals.
The fact is that armchair quarterbacking means nothing. You can’t prove that having more troops would have made a difference. Since there were any number of military experts with varying advised troop levels and notwithstanding whether we had the troops to even follow the advice. And since you claim that previous presidents cut the military (highly debatable) then apparently you don’t believe we had the military to wage the Iraq War in the first place and you should have opposed the war at the beginning based on that reason.
Savages? All people are savages. Our country has an entire history of savagery. Native American genocide, slavery, civil war and since WWII no country has started or participated in more wars than the US.
Finally, we didn’t “buy it.” I didn’t and plenty of others didn’t either. We don’t “own it” either. This is some type of consumerist theory applied to war. We have gone into any number of countries and helped screw them up then left without ownership. What we are really doing is theft. Just because we decide that oil is our national security (The Carter Doctrine) we believe it is our right to make sure we get it from other countries no matter what it takes, that is just plain theft. We decide that we will continue to have our way of living, the suburban oil culture, and that the oil regions then must supply us. Instead of solving this cultural problem, we steal.
Since FDR we’ve been in bed with the House of Saud, we don’t give a rats buttocks about that regime because of the oil. We loved Saddam as long as he played the oil game with us. We kissed the behind of the Shah of Iran despite how he treated his subjects (secret police) because of the oil. Now (if you are aware of it) we are caressing the leaders of some fairly ruthless regimes in some of the former Soviet republics in the Caspian Sea region, you guessed it, OIL. But we don’t say it’s oil. No, it’s in the name of the War on Terror. Whenever you see that term, rename it War for Oil and look deeply into why we are stuffing our military bases into those countries or surrounding them with bases.
Incidentally, we’ve ASKED for international support for Iraq, we don’t have it. Our coalition of the willing is down to a few, the coalition of the paid off. The UN at one point WAS in Iraq, we couldn’t protect their building. We will get international help when we divvy up Iraq’s oil production among the major powers like Russia, China, Europe, not until then. The “benchmark” of Iraqi’s sharing oil is conditioned on corporations producing that oil, not on Iraqi’s having a state-run company such as in most Middle East countries, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Why is that? Because at our rate of oil consumption the Middle East must INCREASE production by 40% by 2020 to satisfy America’s needs. That’s going to take a lot of production investment, more than even the Saud’s can accomplish on their own within their own country. It’s all about the oil, until you get that, you don’t understand Iraq.
WtHeck…“we
WTH, you say “There is ample reason to think people who bomb and maim indiscriminately in a land with a history of tribal, sect or family retribution as the norm will impose a great price on those left behind. “
Pardon me, as usual I don’t understand your logic. Wouldn’t it be infinitely wiser, kinder and humane not to bomb and maim anybody in any land which never attacked or harmed your land in the first place?
It’s not a matter of number of troops, it’s a matter of they shouldn’t have gone there to begin with. But since you think you have a right to do it, I am surprised you haven’t volunteered or sent your children to join the troops.
As for international cooperation, the USA single-handedly started this war, despite most of the world didn’t agree with it, so why would they change their minds after it was proved it was based on lies? We may be small, underdeveloped countries, but many of us still have principles.
As for calling them savages, it seems there are plenty of savages everywhere.
Whattheheck….To continue what I’ve been saying about US arms manufacturing and sales AND how it relates to oil and the Middle East, from todays NYTimes a proposed new arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
Paraphrasing from the article…The Bush Administration is set to offer a $20 billion arms sale package of advanced weaponry. To offset this, military aid to Israel over the next decade will total $30.4 billion, which is a significant increase. The so-called reason is for Saudi Arabia to counter Iran.
But let’s get real. This is just another bonus for US arms manufacturing. I would imagine that our share of the worlds arms exportation has just increased even further beyond what we already by far lead.
And if we look at it from the Saudi perspective, isn’t this just another way for them to keep supporting the Sunni faction in Iraq? Here we are trying to tamp down Iraqi violence and then we supply the Saudis with weapons. And we do this because we (and the world) need to bow down to the oil kings of that country.
Just the other day I read an article in the Wall St. Journal about the efforts of the US to go after Saudi banks that are involved with charities that are linked to Al Qaeda. It turns out the US didn’t take a hard stand but basically begged the Saudis to deal with it.
This is how diplomacy works with Saudi Arabia… The US meets with them while on their knees, “please, oh great oil gods can you see your way to listening to us on terrorism?”
And on another related news item, the House of Representatives yesterday voted overwhelmingly to ban the Bush Administration from establishing permanent military bases in Iraq as well as not condition oil production on American companies being involved. It will still have to pass the Senate and then a Bush signing statement where he signs the bill but adds a statement to the effect that he doesn’t have to follow the bill if he doesn’t want to based usually on “security.” He’s been doing these signing statements for some time now, most people are unaware of it.
Iraq: Mismanagement or Mass Murder? Mass murder of course. The ‘mismanagement (conspiracy) theory’ is simply a cover story. What do psychopaths do for fun and (literally) profit? This is Western “Civilization” after all. Remember Rome? Crucifying a whole village? Or Hiroshima? Besides, killing people this way is a lot more cost-effective than dropping conventional bombs: malnutrition and disease are much more efficient, and getting people to kill each other is cheaper too—and has the advantage of “plausable denial”—it was just mismanagement, or germs. The same thing is happening in the U.S., but to a lesser extent, and using less obtrusive methods—e.g., cutting funding so hurricanes flood heavily populated areas—so it is easier to keep true motives hidden. Medicaid funding was just cut to zero in Calif. —Lots of dead old people to come, and out of sight and out of mind. And, as long as it isn’t happening to my family, so what. It’s the Law of the Jungle here in the US. People have accepted that since the 50’s. What do you think the Free Market is? Do you think the millions of aliens from Mexico care? (That is one of the reasons the border is kept effectively open.) A nationwide strike? Hell NO! (Unless it will seriously and suddenly reduce 10’s of millions of people’s income.) Current tribute (termed “profit”) on gasoline is about $1/gallon, but that is due to “Peak Oil” and the “Free Market”.
Besides, if the media make it look entertaining, who’s going to take it too seriously? Why do you think horror movies are popular? Only a tiny fraction of the German population knew about the Holocaust until long after the war. This is just business as usual—that is why Congress isn’t doing much and why they are not getting much flak from their constituents, only the polls. Bush’s popularity isn’t low because of all the killing, it is low because we seem to be losing. Profits of cronies are up and the population of Iraq is down—everything is going quite well.
For those who doubt this, I suggest you read “CHRIS FLOYD’s report, “Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism”, chosen as one of ProjectCensored’s Top 25 Stories of 2002/2003.
Marksman, I wish you were exaggerating but I’m afraid you are not. As arms continue to be produced and sold or traded, sectarisms are patronized and God Market is worshipped there’s no hope for the world. In the name of a so-called democracy, the humblest and weakest are being wiped out. There isn’t such a thing as democracy being practiced anywhere. People seem to be satisfied just to vote every 4 or 6 years for one of the candidates in offer and then they are never consulted again about anything that matters. lEveryday you get up to read in the papers something that has been decided upon and performed in “your name” though you were never consulted, while the media, the movies, and the ads never consider any issue seriously but continue their brain-washing effect . You compare this situation to the Law of the Jungle. Let me add that in the jungle each species does what his instincts tell them to do to keep alive, or fed but in the human species that is not enough by far, they are so sick that insist on the need of accumulating (money, or property or power) ignoring their own mortality and lacking compassion to others. Some hide behind a flag, others behind a corporation, others behind a religious mask, but most never assume their basic responsibilities towards everybody’s right to live and enjoy life, because Earth is everyone’s planet as it’s everyone’s duty to keep it healthy for future generations.
Couldn’t agree you both (Maria, Mark) more.
Maria, “everyone’s planet” unfortunately isn’t so, most of the Earth is owned and possessed by the rich and powerful or governments when you measure by property rights.
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