Wednesday, August 03, 2005

The War is Over, and We Won
(Headline, AEI magazine, April, 2005):

Contrary to the impression given by most newspaper headlines, the United States has won the day in Iraq. In 2004, our military fought fierce battles in Najaf, Fallujah, and Sadr City. Many thousands of terrorists were killed, with comparatively little collateral damage. As examples of the very hardest sorts of urban combat, these will go down in history as smashing U.S. victories.

And our successes at urban combat (which, scandalously, are mostly untold stories in the U.S.) made it crystal clear to both the terrorists and the millions of moderate Iraqis that the insurgents simply cannot win against today’s U.S. Army and Marines. That’s why everyday citizens have surged into politics instead.”

August 3, 2005
14 U.S. Marines Killed in Iraq When Vehicle Hits a Huge Bomb
-- Headline, NYT.

American Journalist Is Shot to Death in Iraq -

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 3 - An American journalist writing about the rise of fundamentalist Islam was shot dead overnight after being abducted in the southern port city of Basra, American embassy and Iraqi officials said today. The journalist's translator was also shot and is in serious condition at a Basra hospital.
-- story, NYT, August 3, 2005. The journalist wrote for the National Review.

Address, Counter-recruitment site, youth and the military.

Strike against the vanity war. Let's shrink Rumsfeld’s army to the size of his heart.

2 comments:

Roger Gathmann said...

Paul, I don't think so. The Iraq war is a public war -- and anythiNg is fair game. Period. Those antiwar people who take down pics of soldiers who died in Iraq because the parents don't like it -- I have no patience with them. American soldiers have no business in Iraq, period. So as long as the occupation is going on -- as long as Iraqis die there all the time, with American weaponry, under an American occupying force -- I have no pangs of conscience whatsoever about the death of a man in a city that has been held up as a model of the occupation. So -- it is as silly to hesitate using the murder of Vincent to make the point that the lies and propaganda of the side he supported is ridiculous as it would be to hesitate using the 9/11 attack as a casus belli because some of the people who died in it were undoubtedly pacifists. Public lives, public deaths, public comment.

Roger Gathmann said...

Oops. Now, not getting the verbs right I am sorry for. "... are ridiculous..."

My Mount Rushmore: DIDION MALCOLM ADLER HARDWICK

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