Bloodless Coup

Yes, it has been a bad month so far, after five straight months of declining fatalities.

1) Love the convenient use of data that points out a trend - a past trend that's not the case any more (as April's death toll will exceed March's).

2) For someone who so often preens about and goes on and on about the importance of every life and cell cluster, well, your remark almost implies that if you think only a few dozen Americans die every month it's not really that bad.

3) And of course while US military deaths may have slid for a few months, the total loss of life in Iraq has been rising (and sharply) more and more each month. What - Iraqi lives don't matter to you? Or is it just Iraqi zygotes that do? Am I being flip - sure. But the basic point is that while US deaths might have declined for a few months (and that's stopped now), the overall death toll has been increasing markedly every single month for a while now. Things are indeed getting much bloodier.

Bro,
You're drifting. The original post was about how Rumsfeld's doing a lousy job, and here's all these troop deaths to prove it. The fact is, troop deaths had decreased five months straight. It's certainly lamentable that the deaths of Iraqis have gone up, but how is that Rumsfeld's responsibility, he's not in charge of Iraqi police units, his policies are about our military, not Iraq's. This is the continued liberal confusion that insists all deaths in Iraq are somehow the fault of the United States, not the responsibility of insurgents and terrorists who are actually killing people or the responsibility of Saddam who violated UN resolutions and killed at least a hundred thousand of his own people and let his sons shoot target practice with the Iraqi soccer team. Yes, this has been an awfully rough month for our troops, but how would you like it if your students were tested and had their scored go up five straight terms, then the first term they went down you were accused of being incompetent? The last five months aren't just expressing the success of Rumsfeld, they're also expressing the success of our soldiers in the field who keep fighting smarter, turning their humvees into pope mobiles and the like. But where on this blog is the post about how innovative our soldiers are, why is it almost always the bad news? Occum's answer of course is that you're invested in our defeat in Iraq, because that will confirm your hypothesis that Bush is bad and incompetent. For five straight months we did better, but you can't take yes for an answer.

Morris, you write "You're drifting. The original post was about how Rumsfeld's doing a lousy job, and here's all these troop deaths to prove it."

Really? Where exactly did you read that that's what the post was about? The title? The section on dead Iraqis? The part about the important shrine that was destroyed? The original post was NOT just about Rummy and US troop deaths (blood's blood - Iraqi blood is just as awful as US blood).

If our troops are succeeding in fulfilling some of their assignments (and staying alive), of course I'm happy about it and it's absurd to state that I'm not (or just evil - but I'll be nice this morning and not call you that).

The fact that Iraq is drifting deeper into chaos, death and destruction all the time has something to do with what we have and haven't done - and Rumsfeld's plans and decisions have everything in the world to do with that. Is he personally gunning down 10,000 Iraqis a month? Of course he not. But his failures and disinterest (and he's famously disinterested in the state of Iraq - rather dangerously so if you believe that Iraq is of strategic importance to this country) have set the stage and created the conditions for the country to plunge into ever darker chaos and war.

Bro,
You were drifting to talk about abortion in an Iraq thread. I agree that it is just as inconsistent to value Americans and not Iraqis as it is to value one form of development and not another. If you're happy about our troops succeeding, why don't you post about their victories? Show some love! If all you do is bash when we have a setback, then of course that's going to take a toll on their morale. How would you feel if in your job the only time you ever got feedback it was critical? My guess, not highly motivated. But of course, that would fit in with confirming your hypothesis, as I said above, that Bush is a failure. Do you honestly want us to succeed in Iraq? If you do, I'd welcome a few posts on successes. It's only if you don't want us to succeed that you wouldn't post on our successes over there, unless maybe works of architecture are more important to you than Iraqi prosperity.
And before you go on too far about the depths of darkness over there, remember that millions and millions of Iraqis voted for someone besides Saddam, and millions of millions of them aren't dead. That wouldn't have happened five years ago, it would have been labeled an uprising and they would have been summarily executed.

1a) You keep hitting this point, and we keep having to explain to you that it's a much smaller deal than you make it out to be. Yes, millions and millions of them voted all right (after the cities were shut down for days and cars banned from the roads so they could vote without getting blown to bits) - for people who'll take away a host of basic freedoms most Americans could never even conceive of as imperiled, for a bunch of people who run murderous death squads, and for a bunch of people who'll do all they can to put women back in the dark ages where apparently these champions of democracy think they belong. Elections don't mean freedom dude - as you might recall, if, say, you actually knew anything about the stuff you whine and complain about - they had 'em in Iraq before, they had 'em under the Soviet regime, they have 'em in Iran now ... the results are hardly always things to cheer about.

1b) They voted 4 months ago - and yet still no government. Uh-huh - that's quite the success story.

2) When we start having some strategic victories in Iraq I'll post about them. But sadly, those (if there have been any) have been very few and very, very far between - the fact that there's been a relative decline in the number of body bags being flown back to Dover isn't a "victory" in my book. The fact that our soldiers are somehow managing to live through the day doesn't mean we've "won" in Iraq. Of late it appears that the bad guys have just found it more to their liking to kill other Iraqis than Americans. And we aren't anywhere near a "success" at stopping this.

3) The fact that there aren't more "good news" stories is hardly our fault or our job. We spend lots of taxpayer dollars to get those stories out. The fact that the military is often too inept to cobble together a happy, proud narrative after their "wins" - well, that's hardly the fault of 3 people in West Virginia - and it's yet another sign that this thing is being run in a ruinous and inept manner.

4) And you're presumptuousness continues to verge on the mind-blowing. To actually think we want to see a "loss" (though you do conveniently fail to mention what a win and a loss respectively are) ... well, if I go by what I think you mean - you're a fucking asshole who should really keep his arrogant opinions about what happens to be in Binky's heart or mine to himself.

Though of course you're someone who'd gladly see a woman's life threatened so she can serve as some sort of birthing device to please your personal religious sensibilities - so your arrogance and presumptuousness and limited regard for basic freedoms is pretty well established. And of course your views on that are only one way that that's been well established (I could go back and pull-up some of your comments where you've said you'd give bare majorities veritable mob rule powers, but who has the time?).

Evenso, stop claiming to know what we really think. It's seriously fucking rude.

Echoing Armand, there's a huge gaping difference between wanting us to lose and wanting us to cut our losses. Even that said, I don't know that anyone her has called for outright withdrawal. Just a strategy that takes heed of centuries of anti-insurgent wisdom that this country and others have cobbled together, none of which approaches have been seriously employed in Iraq, and most of which have been poo-pooed as too soft. Thing is, soft works when battling an insurgency, far better than trying to blow everything that moves to bits. And our continuing failure in Iraq testifies to this.

As for tone and criticism, does democracy just end when we go to war? Is that what you're saying? Do you really believe that the freedom of dissent and transparency the Framers enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights has no place in wartime? Do you think that's what they meant? Do you think the Supreme Court was right to strike down the Sedition Act? Are you sure? And if your answer to these questions is yes, have you looked at real estate in North Korea? I hear it's cheap, and you'll probably make a bundle when reunification finally occurs (although you'll probably want to sell or rent it out so you can go somewhere else where an authoritarian government rules with an iron fist).

Seriously, Morris. Do you really think our troops are such Ming vases that they can't bear to think of people back home asking every day whether their deaths are warranted? Bear in mind, the military operates under a gag -- perhaps they'd be better suited to raise criticisms, but last I checked that's a good way to end up in Leavenworth. Far from sharing your condescending view of our troops and their fragile egoes, I suspect more than a few of them are happy to know that people are asking hard questions back home, since the way things are going, an absence of questions suggests interminable rotations through a war zone, continuation of stop loss policies, and so on. That they don't outwardly protest (granted, their Commander in Chief reveals serial contempt for the law, but they don't have that luxury) doesn't vindicate the futility of the current enterprise as it's being run by the incompetents in D.C.

Oh, and Rummy's comments about how, given the number of generals involved in Iraq, there are sure to be a few who don't like what's going on . . . that all sounds good. The real question, though, is in past campaigns how many have gone out of their way to reveal their feelings to the public? I'm sure some did in Vietnam, but if that's our benchmark, then we really have lost already.

Let me just say that I strongly agree with Moon's 3rd paragraph - and that's a point I was meaning to respond too, before my irritation at Morris's supposed omniscience led me to stop typing.

This notion that troops whose lives are on the line every day are such fragile flowers that they can't bear the thought of anyone questioning whether or not their leaders are actually pursuing effective strategies - well, that's just silly, and rather insulting. What do you think they are thinking Morris? "Gosh, I was all ready to fight today, but then I read that someone thought maybe the people in the OSD weren't performing as well as they could have - and now, I just don't think I can muster the energy to do my job anymore." Puh-leeze. That's ridiculous. And shows oddly little faith in the abilities of Americans who wear the uniform for some who supposedly wants them to be "shown more love".

Huh? How is my heart in this thread? I've uttered nary a syllable.

And I have a straightforward question for Morris: how often do you talk to people in the military? Do you know many people who have served, especially in Iraq/Afghanistan?

I was just mentioning your heart (in addition to mine) since Morris REPEATEDLY claims to know our deepest thoughts, desires and true beliefs (of course this isn't the first thread wherehe's claimed to know what we're REALLY thinking - and been completely wrong about that) - and since he seemed to be taking a bossy, judgmental swipe at all of us given his wording.

Binky, did Armand break your heart!?

Btw, am I the only one who, upon reading the Atlantic article this month on Chavez (the Venezuelan one) kind of shivered about some of the echoes of Bush's arrogation of power? I mean, to be clear, we're nowhere near the Venezuela the article portrays, but still, the allowance of dissent all while quietly taking down names, the weird mix of faux-democratic bon mots to mask autocratic actions, etc.

It just sort of creeped me out.

I thought that article was pretty good. It captured very well the way that traditional populism masks the authoritarian tendency of the caudillo. While I don't think Bush is drawing on that tradition consciously, you do make a point about our faux man of the masses.

I thought that Chavez article was quite good too - both in terms of it being insightful and illustrating its topic, and in terms of the writing. But then it's a Franklin Foer piece, and both him and his brother can be damn good writers.