[This was written in reply to a post from my friend Jessica, the bulk of which was a letter from Michael Moore.]
MIchael Moore and the rest are using two different methods of calculating involvement in this “longer than World War II” thing. For WWII they are counting the time from 07 Dec 1941 to 15 August 1945. This is the time period from US entry into WWII until the government of Japan announced unconditional surrender. If we use that same criteria with regard to Iraq, US forces invaded on 19 March and by 01 May, the government of Iraq cease to exist. Therefore, if we use the same standard to measure the Iraq War, it was so much shorter than WWII as to be completely insignificant. There were battles in WWII that lasted longer than the Iraq War.
If we measure the time of involvement in WWII by including the occupational periods, US involvement in WWII was about 10 years. In the period from 1945 to 1952, US occupational forces were providing security and support for the rebirthed governments. And that is what US forces in Iraq are doing today. You get people’s attention when you draw a comparison of almost anything to World War II. This comparison is disingenious.
Most of Michael Moore’s “history” throughout this letter is equally sketchy. Comparing Saddam Hussein to King George, calling improvised explosive devices constructed from 155mm artillery shells, priming mechanisms that are triggered by cell phones “two tin cans in a pothole”, and completely overlooking the fact that we did indeed try to dictate government to Japan, writing their Constitution for them. Mr. Moore grabs the sensational sound bytes and polls that serve his cause, provides ‘references’ to make it appear official and accurate, and completely ignores whatever facts do not suit his cause.
Among those that actually know something about what is happening in Iraq — Michael Moore clearly does not — the vast majority do not support a withdrawal of Coalition troops. To do as Michael Moore suggests is to destine Iraqis to a return to rule by some one like Saddam. The Iraqi government went before the UN and asked that Coalition forces remain in Iraq for another year. The UN agreed. Coalition forces are now in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government and the United Nations.
The simple fact is, there is no easy road into or out of Iraq. The American public suffers from hindsight bais and believes that we should have seen this going in. Democrats try to claim they knew, yet they voted in support of the invasion of Iraq. And now, there we are. There is a UN Resolution that calls on the United States to provide security for the Iraqi government for another year. Shall we simply thumb our noses at it and the UN? We should have worked with the UN going into this thing. We should work with the UN now.
Yes, US involvement in Iraq is about oil. The world economy runs on oil. Not just the US, the world. We can deny it, we can wish it wasn’t true, we can talk about how it shouldn’t be, we can talk about what should change. But in the world that we live in today, the world economy runs on oil. Iraq is sitting on a huge pile of it and Saddam had designs on gaining control of more of it. That is the US interest in Iraq.
Michael Moore — like Rush Limbaugh — is an entertainer passing himself off as a political pundit. He should be taken as such.
The American education system is a product of the society that made it. Some schools are better, some are worse. Schools here in the bay area suck. That is one of the primary reasons that we home school our children.
I think the Democrats are in trouble. It is very easy to point a finger and say, you suck. It is far more difficult to state clearly what is wrong and devise a plan for correcting it. The Democrats are united on only one thing. They are united on the fact that focusing on the Iraq war is very likely to get them elected. Now they’ve been elected and everyone is watching them. I suspect that in 9 to 14 months time the American public will realize them for what they are and, in 2008, we will see voters simply vote out the incumbant, regardless of their party. It has happened before.
An aside: Kosovo is still on the list of exotic places I might get an all expenses paid, one year trip to, courtesy of the United States government. The Dayton Accord in 1995 supposedly ended that conflict. What the hell is the US interest there??
Smittie
[posted with ecto]