Monday, December 19, 2011

8 Years 4500 Casualties Later

I know I should be happy the war in Iraq is ended and the last troops officially left yesterday.  I am.  But I'm angry.  I'm angry it  in the first place. I'm angry it was sold to us with a lie.  I'm angry we  bought into the lie and I'm angry we didn't call out the perpetrators of this lie once the lie was exposed. 

I'm not the parent of someone in the military.  I am the daughter of a WWII vet and cousin of a lifer in the USAF.  I don't hate the military.  I respect the people who fight for us.  What I don't respect are the men who make these decisions, the so-called "leaders", the Masters of War:  Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush II, Tony Blair, majorities in U.S. Houses of Congress as well as Members of Parliament.

British weekly newsmagazine New Statesman, contains a well written op-ed on the legacy of the Iraq War.  Always interesting to hear how other countries view the U.S., even when they're our bed mates.

"Faces of the Dead" is a NY Times interactive visual of every soldier killed in Iraq & Afghanistan. This is what you call a reality check.

Was it worth it?   We'll be arguing this as long as we live without as much conviction as we argued about Viet Nam.  This perspective was written in 2007 but it's still relevant today; perhaps more so.

As a final note, here's the Iraqi Body Count and their latest estimates on civilian Iraqi deaths.

Dylan's Masters of War music video

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4 comments:

BLissed-Out Grandma said...

I suspect that Iraq will be unstable enough that the 17,000 contractors we left there as part of the "embassy" will be kept busy for a long time. And would Halliburton happen to hold any of those contracts? I believe they've profited more than anyone else (including the Iraqis) from this war.

DJan Stewart said...

I don't like to think of what will happen now. But you're right: we NEVER should have gone there, it was a mistake and now nobody wants to say that because of all the dead soldiers and Iraqis. A tragedy for our time.

CaliforniaGirl500 said...

the benefactors of war profit when things are bad and good.  Kinda like Wall Street brokers:  they profit as long as you keep trading whether or not you make money.

CaliforniaGirl500 said...

Why do we repeat ourselves, go where we aren't wanted, kill and get killed, then realize we shouldn't have gone there in the first place?

Christina

Christina
by Cole Scott