Politics ahead - Rage and sorrow

[neadods]

Nothing like a little news to make the problems of your life look so utterly trivial.

First up, we have the winner for Oy Vey of the Day in the anti-Roe/Wade counterprotest - Focus on the Family's Post-Abortion Grandparents Kit. If there's one thing that the childfree groups I'm on harp on constantly (actually, there are about three things, but this is one of 'em) it's the vile notion that daughters were born for the express purpose of pumping out grandkids regardless of whether said daughters WANT to have children. So here's a little more guilt and manipulation, under the helpful guise of letting meddling granny "overcome post-abortion syndrome in your daughter."

On the same page is a book that complains that abortion is a "hidden grief" and promises to make a world where women don't have to "hide their pain." Except I haven't seen anything hidden, considering that the anti-choice people trot out the women who regret their abortions like trained ponies at every opportunity, simultaneously punishing them by making them confess again AND whoring out their pain for the edutainment of the crowded masses. Would you like a little bread with your circuses, Mr. Dobson?


And then, there's this graphic photo. (CAUTION: very graphic and disturbing!)

Yes, I know her parents ignored the warnings to stop the damn car. Yes, I know they're in a war zone. Yes, I know about all the car bombings. I'm not saying there's a clear-cut right and wrong here; the soldiers had to do *something.* But did they have to do THAT something?

Damnit, that little girl could be me. Not that I live in that situation, but that she looks just like me at that age. I have pictures. Only in mine, I'm not shrieking in horror and covered with my parent's blood while surrounded by the soldiers who shot them in front of me.

Tell me again about slam dunks, Mr. Tenet. Tell me again about hearts and minds, Mr. Rumsfeld. And Mr. President, please remind me - what mission has been accomplished?

Comments

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

Ehh, you're gonna make me play devil's advocate on this one aren't you. Yes it is a war zone, yes there are car bombings, yes with upcoming elections security measures will be at a paranoid high level. Please don't fault the soldiers; they aren't paid to think. Their nerves are shot from constantly being on the alert and they've been given one order: halt and inspect the vehicle or treat it as a hostile. Everyone's a potential hostile, everyone's a potential target.
I am active duty, I do proudly serve my country; I have seen the third world; I have pulled bodies out of plane wrecks and natural disaster zones, men, women, children, the elderly, the young, mothers to be. I know the look of a people who do not have the freedoms that we take for granted every minute of every day.
I do not condone war for the sake of war. I won't comment on WMDs; I think this has been beaten; equus mortis, we all know the truth of this by now I hope. I will say that we have accomplished removing of a maniac, a dictator and his regime, a mass murderer, and given a people who lived in fear to speak freely if nothing more than the promise of freedom and better days. You want WMDs? Mass Grave Count , my sources tell me the mass grave count is more like 500k....and rising as we uncover more each week. Is the spilling of any amount of innocent blood worth the freedom of millions? Are the deaths of our own troops worth one less mass grave? I don't know how to answer that; and wouldn't begin to. I can only hope that our efforts aren't in vain, that the paradigm shift that we have caused will not be seen 20 years from now.
And I ask you this? Would you be any more or less sympathetic if those were 500k Americans laying in those shallow graves covered in lye? Would it have drawn more of a world backing if we discovered the bodies of Jews in those graves? Or is it okay to turn a blind eye while 450,500 Muslims and Khurds are murdered?
-=Jeff=-

[neadods.livejournal.com]

you're gonna make me play devil's advocate on this one aren't you.

To some degree. (See also reply to Kefira below; she's a military brat.) I do understand why the soldiers did it. But it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Let the car through, it might be a bomb. Shoot the driver and get a PR nightmare that will be used in hundreds of terrorist training brochures.

And I ask you this? Would you be any more or less sympathetic if those were 500k Americans laying in those shallow graves covered in lye?

I would be more sympathetic to the soldiers, but then, I would also see the direct relationship as to why my country was over there fighting. This country has no problem turning a blind eye to the children dying of starvation here while we trumpet what we're doing for the children of Iraq. This country has allowed massacre after massacre happen in the Sudan, turning an eye that, if not blind, is certainly severely myoptic.

Bottom line for me - we do not have the troops or the mandate to police the entire world. Policing the parts that we want to smack around and calling it noble while we ignore harder challenges and more horrible massacres is hypocritical at best.

As for "the world is better without Saddam" - is the average citizen in Iraq any safer now than they were under Saddam? I am not convinced. Convince me of that, and I'll forgive a war under the pretense of protecting ourselves from someone who hadn't been in a position to threaten us for decades.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Reading the reports of that story there, her parents ignored a warning coming from unseen soldiers randomly walking along the side of the road, very much like, say, miltants and carjackers (who, by the way, are also setting up checkpoints like the US checkpoints, even if the car had been anywhere near a checkpoint instead of on an empty road), and which came one second (by the photographer's reckoning) before the soldiers opened fire on the car.

And that's not just blood. That's also brain tissue, apparently.

"Freedom is messy", indeed.

[kefiraahava.livejournal.com]

"I'm not saying there's a clear-cut right and wrong here; the soldiers had to do *something.* But did they have to do THAT something?"

IIRC, the shoot/don't shoot decision is made in something like a second's time.

This is unspeakably tragic. I am sickened for all involved. I suspect the soldiers involved are paying penalties in heart/soul/mind we can't even imagine. If they're not...dear God, get them out of the military NOW.

But I think the issue beyond the heartbreak of this single incident may be one of "What SOMETHING can one reasonably ask soldiers to do *given their training*?" The soldiers are being put in the position of being told to be soldiers/goodwill ambassadors/cops/societal reconstruction artists/interpreters/Generalized White Hats. With little or no training in much of anything except the first, it seems.

The military trains people to kill, first and foremost, in its combat lines. As much as it may make society as a whole uncomfortable, there is no getting around that. My father had a quote many years ago, during Gulf War I in the context of the Marine reservist who took tens of thousands of dollars for his college education and then claimed he didn't know what the Marines did when he signed up for the college money and he was a peacenik, thanks so much for the cash and no he wasn't going to go: "What, did the kid think he was joining the PEACE CORPS? The sole purpose of the Marine Corps is to KILL PEOPLE!" (The Marines were not terribly pleased about the kid taking cash and then reneging on his enlistment contract. The kid spent time in Leavenworth.)

So. The military's purpose by sworn oath is to (she said, attempting to quote from memory) "protect and defend." Do you blunt the killing edge and get more of your people killed that way? Do you turn your military into something that is not purest military, but a hybrid force? Where do you get the training for that? Where do you invest the training monies, in the killing edge or the society-building edge? I don't know.

But I think--and hope and pray--that the forces on the ground are trying to do the best they can to minimize tragedies such as this *given what they are trained to do*. (Barring things like Abu Ghraib, which are appalling and dishonorable; frankly, I'd love to see *those actually responsible* shot for dishonoring the uniform, I'm that disgusted.)

As my father put it many years ago, "Honey, no sane military man [I snarled and he subbed in "person" quickly] wants war. And any sick stupid SOB who WANTS war is not one you want to be around because that SOB is going to get his people stupidly killed. War is nasty and brutish and bloody, and no one I ever served with WANTED to go to war. But sometimes, you HAVE to go to war."

Jeff's point about the mass graves is one I turn over in my mind again and again, trying to find an answer for. Do you go in to get rid of a dictator who feeds people into paper shredders, even if there aren't WMD involved? Do you turn away? When do you intervene and not betray your country's ideals? When do you NOT intervene and not betray your country's ideals?

I think there have been so many screwups/lies in the way this war has been handled by the uppermost administration that I just don't know any more. I'm here, safe in a civilian existence, not in the heads of young soldiers in Iraq. Do I have the experiental base to even dare to try and judge an incident like this? I don't know. All I know is I hate it.

*bangs head into wall several times*

[neadods.livejournal.com]

What's wierd is, if this took place on our soil, with cops and a road block, I'd be completely on the side of the cops. I admit to a fuzzy distinction here - and one that is massively triggered by the physical resemblance.

But there...

Jeff's point about the mass graves is one I turn over in my mind again and again, trying to find an answer for.

See my comment to him. The US's intervention to stop massive human rights violations has always been spotty, conditional, and capricious (sp?) We intervene in Iraq, which not too coincidentally has a resource we want and a dictator with bad personal history with our current ruler (nevermind all the deals other members of the administration have made with him over time). But we do not intervene in the Sudan, or the Ukraine, or China...

Sometimes you do have to go to war. I had no problem with the strikes on Afghanistan and the attacks on Al Queada. But I have many problems with this mess in Iraq. Much like people quoting Leviticus to prove the Bible is anti-homosexual while dodging all the other rules they don't follow, we're pointing to Saddam's mass graves while ignoring Osama's continued freedom and the massacres in Africa, human rights violations in Saudi, etc., etc., etc.

[kefiraahava.livejournal.com]

The US's intervention to stop massive human rights violations has always been spotty, conditional, and capricious (sp?) ((((

Yeah. I wouldn't deny that for a minute. Another reason for that *head bang into wall* glyph. I'm torn between the "yeah, someone SHOULD nail the dictator who feeds people into shredders" response and the "then why the HELL were we shaking hands and dealing with him during the Iran/Iraq War, damn it!" headbang.

Said headbang only hurts more when adding in the problems you cite of limited resources and what seems, some days, to be a "let's deal with massacres only when they're politically convenient and/or sitting on a resource that would be nice to have" mentality.

Yes, I'm a military brat, and a slightly unusual one in that *both* my parents were Navy officers (and my mother was one back when women had an even harder time than they do now in service). I'm not ashamed of it. Not only was my parents' service honorable, it gave me a perspective that I appreciate more as time goes by.

OTOH, I don't have blind faith in anyone or anything, including the military. I spent too much of my life watching the military for that even if I was too young to realize what I was watching.

Argh. Argh. Argh. I'll just go bang my head some more, don't mind me.*wry grin*

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

The US's intervention to stop massive human rights violations has always been spotty, conditional, and capricious (not a spell-monger works for me :)
Here-here! Meanwhile 7.5 million people have died from hunger in North Korea..and the other examples you gave Nea, are all valid.
I don't pretend to know the master plan behind our force's mechanics; I am just another peon in the grand scheme of things. I do think we pick our wars, and we do so to further our own cause: and I can't figure out what 'our' cause is supposed to be either. These are terrible times, I wish I could say better.

Argh. Argh. Argh. I'll just go bang my head some more I feel your frustration as well, Kefira. Each morning I get up, put on the uniform and stare at the ribbons and medals and other decor, and wonder what the hell I'm doing, wonder what the hell 'we're' doing... and if it's really going to be worth it in the end.
-=Jeff=-

[neadods.livejournal.com]

can't figure out what 'our' cause is supposed to be either.

That, she types ruefully, is because our cause is a moving target.

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

I've never been typed ruefully at before...
-=Jeff=-