Originally posted by: Bowfinger
Originally posted by: palehorse74
Originally posted by: shira
But what completely cheapens the sacrifice to the point of worthlessness is the fact that it's a all for nothing. The invasion was for nothing, the continuation of the war is for nothing, and all the dead and wounded American soldiers are for nothing, other than for George to save face.
I do not see it that way. Some of us would like to clean up the mess our government created, and we're doing pretty well in that regard in both Iraq and Afghanistan... at least for the moment.
And any sacrifices we might make are either for the Iraqi's or the guy next to us - for the most part, we've tuned out the rest of the American people, and we know that we're not there to fight for them. That doesn't mean that we have no more reason to fight... rather, our priorities and purpose have shifted and adapted to the current mission.
That's an interesting admission, that our presence in Iraq is not to serve the interests of the American people, but rather to serve the Iraqis and other troops.
And all this time I thought the purpose of the military -- i.e., Department of Defense -- was to defend America. Instead we have thousands of dead Americans and upwards of a trillion dollars pissed away ... for what? Iraqis, Iraqis who largely want us gone? (Or to be precise, the remaining Iraqis who haven't been slaughtered and haven't fled their hell-hole country in desperation.) This seems especially absurd since five years ago Iraq was part of the so-called "Axis of Evil". Now we're allegedly dying for them.
You probably wouldn't understand, because CNN wont show you any of the good things we're doing, but we're making positive changes every day... we really are.
Yep. And the Iraqis destroy them the next day, if not through hostile sabotage then through old-fashioned, American-style capitalistic entrepreneurialism.
I have a friend over there in a civilian role that takes him to our bases all over the country. He's interesting to talk to because he's proud of what he's doing to support the troops, but is disgusted and frustrated with the mismanagement, incompetence, profiteering, and unmitigated waste of our operations there, as well as with the general malfeasance of the Iraqis we're trying to help. He's heard horror stories from all over the country of major projects that we completed, only to have them destroyed or rendered useless within a few days. He says there was a review of our projects there that showed less than 10% of them were still usable. They were either damaged by attacks or scavenged for profit by the Iraqis who were supposed to manage them. Maybe one of these days I'll start a thread listing some of the examples he's given.