Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Author James Galloway-- Xenophobe?
Although this bit of sunshine titled "We can't win in Iraq, so let's bring our troops home" is supposed to be a straight news story, it reads more like an editorial, in fact, exactly like one. James Galloway, author of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (and eyewitness to some of the important Viet Nam battle of Ia Drang, which is the subject of the book), has ruined some careers by quoting lower ranked officers here and there in Iraq. If their careers aren't ruined, at least they are going to have to spend a lot of time explaining to higher ranked officers how Galloway quoted them out of context.
But more striking, is the conclusions Galloway draws:
Here's what it boils down to: We are not winning in Iraq, and we cannot win in Iraq by staying the course.
I know he's been there and talked to our fighting forces while I've just been an armchair general safe here at home, but he's just wrong. We have won and are merely providing security to a defeated enemy as they build from scratch a political solution and form their own military forces, kind of like we did with Germany and Japan 60 years ago. The forces in Iraq are being trained and the political solution is coming right along. The Iraqi people will vote on the proposed Constitution within a few weeks and will have another election in a few months. The political solution is just around the corner. Galloway must be very impatient to call it defeat and advocate getting out before the job is finished. Of course, that's just what he advocated in Viet Nam 35 years ago. Running away when the going gets the least bit tough must reside in his DNA.
But what really hit me is this pronouncement:
So please tell us again, Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld, why we must stay in Iraq when we can't win there? Why your obsession with the overthrow of a tin-pot tyrant led us down a path to the deaths of 1,900 Americans in a country that isn't worth the life of even one American soldier?
The country (of 25 million humans) isn't worth the life of even one American soldier? Twenty-five million Iraqi are not worth the life of one American soldier? The Iraqi people must therefore be individually worthless. Galloway's lack of compassion is stunning, but it sounds worse to my ears. It sounds like the worst form of xenophobia, the kind that declares foreigners non-people.
But maybe I'm quoting him out of context.
But more striking, is the conclusions Galloway draws:
Here's what it boils down to: We are not winning in Iraq, and we cannot win in Iraq by staying the course.
I know he's been there and talked to our fighting forces while I've just been an armchair general safe here at home, but he's just wrong. We have won and are merely providing security to a defeated enemy as they build from scratch a political solution and form their own military forces, kind of like we did with Germany and Japan 60 years ago. The forces in Iraq are being trained and the political solution is coming right along. The Iraqi people will vote on the proposed Constitution within a few weeks and will have another election in a few months. The political solution is just around the corner. Galloway must be very impatient to call it defeat and advocate getting out before the job is finished. Of course, that's just what he advocated in Viet Nam 35 years ago. Running away when the going gets the least bit tough must reside in his DNA.
But what really hit me is this pronouncement:
So please tell us again, Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld, why we must stay in Iraq when we can't win there? Why your obsession with the overthrow of a tin-pot tyrant led us down a path to the deaths of 1,900 Americans in a country that isn't worth the life of even one American soldier?
The country (of 25 million humans) isn't worth the life of even one American soldier? Twenty-five million Iraqi are not worth the life of one American soldier? The Iraqi people must therefore be individually worthless. Galloway's lack of compassion is stunning, but it sounds worse to my ears. It sounds like the worst form of xenophobia, the kind that declares foreigners non-people.
But maybe I'm quoting him out of context.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:28 AM 
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Except for the wetlands we started restoring, almost all of Iraq is a desert, so I don't think a quagmire there is possible. It's just too dry. If you're using the term as a VietNam era metaphor, all I can say is we were in similar quagmires in Germany, Japan, Korea, and Bosnia and I never heard a peep of left wing complaint. How about you?
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