Rubble Without A Cause

[shereads]

I'm too tired to turn this into the thread it deserves to be. Suggested topic: Fallujah.

Talk among yourselves.

 

[Couture]

Fallujah - fallujah - where for art thine insurgents?

We allowed you to set your booby traps
and pick your hiding holes

While our moral leader pulled back the troops
so that his stock would rise in the polls

The election is over
His side were the winners

They saved this country
From becoming a bunch of gay sinners

Now the election is over
and our troops are ordered back in

To give life and limb
for our president's sin.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

. . . Suggested topic: Fallujah . . .

Blarney Rubble

 

[Huckleman2000]

Fallujah - fallujah - where for art thine insurgents?

We allowed you to set your booby traps
and pick your hiding holes

While our moral leader pulled back the troops
so that his stock would rise in the polls

The election is over
His side were the winners

They saved this country
From becoming a bunch of gay sinners

Now the election is over
and our troops are ordered back in

To give life and limb
for our president's sin.

Works for me!

 

[Pure]

The newspaper coverage is also quite spectacular. You'd swear it was a story of liberating Paris.

 

[Songcatcher]

The Schweinesystem has long ears.

 

[rgraham666]

I'm thinking of the old aphorism that "Losers fight the next war, winners fight the last one."

I'm also thinking of how the U.S. military now resembles the Allied military of WWI.

And finally dragging Vietnam into the whole mess.

In WWI, the Allies never believed they lost a battle. They just didn't do enough of the right things. So they did the same thing again, only bigger. All this resulted in was bigger casualty lists.

The U.S. won WWII. It did not, in it's mind, lose Vietnam.

So, it's tactics and strategy are simply repeats of WWII. With smaller casualty lists for the soldiers, larger for civilians, and still no victory.

Military formation is like water - the form of water is to avoid the high and go to the low, the form of the military force is to avoid the full and attack the empty; the flow of water is determined by the earth, the victory of a military force is determined by the opponent.

So a military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: the ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.

We seem to be fresh out of genius.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm really hurting for our guys in there. I just feel like they're being given a really shitty, pointless job, and they know it.

As for fallujah itself, it looks like we'll have to destroy it in order to save it.

Now I understand we're going to pay to rebuild it.

There's something here that just doesn't seem right.

---dr.M.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

... Now I understand we're going to pay to rebuild it.
There's something here that just doesn't seem right....

That’s the Bush Doctrine in action, Doc.

What they knock down, we build a monument over.

What we knock down, we pay to have Haliburton rebuild.

That’s why we get to stand upon all that High Moral Ground.



Assuming you have fallen into the trap of equating acts done to us by al Qaeda to be somehow reciprocal to acts done by us to Iraqis.

 

[thebullet]

Fortunately, according to US and Iraqi government sources, there have been no civilian casulaties in Fallujah. But well over 1200 insurgents are dead and half the city is in rubble. They cleverly only bombed the half of the city where the insurgents were, I guess.

 

[Subo97]

and more to come

Now that we've destroyed Fallujah in order to save it, we're apparently moving on to Mosul.

Perhaps the Bush exit strategy is to choose the Kurds and the Shiites (those wonderful folk who gave us the
ayatollah Khomenei) to dominate the Sunnis. Presumably this will all happen before the elections in january. (Oh God, that's funny) Hopefully our air strikes left enough buildings standing so htere'll be polling booths. Will there be early voting? Will hospitalized Iraquis get to use absentee ballots? Is fallujah a blue city or a red city? Does Allawi have bona fide right to life credentials?

I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down
the flames went higher
it burns, burns, burns
the ring of fire.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I'm really hurting for our guys in there. I just feel like they're being given a really shitty, pointless job, and they know it.

As for fallujah itself, it looks like we'll have to destroy it in order to save it.

Now I understand we're going to pay to rebuild it.

There's something here that just doesn't seem right.

---dr.M.

We did that with Germany and Japan and Italy also.

 

[SlickTony]

The administration's been carrying on like this war was like WWII. It's a damned strange way to fight a war, then. Where are the scrap drives? Where are the victory gardens? Where are the ration books? Tax cuts in the middle of a war? WTF? Apparently we're supposed to support the war--those of us who haven't been forced to enlist because we couldn't find work in our towns--and/or are too old to fight, are supposed to support the war effort by continuing to shop.

And if Fallujah had been done right last time, we shouldn't be having to do it now. As it is, when we've finished with Fallujah, we'll have to do all the other towns the same way.

 

[shereads]

Re: and more to come

Now that we've destroyed Fallujah in order to save it, we're apparently moving on to Mosul.

Democracy is on the march. I have to admit, it feels good to be an American right now.

As adamantly as I opposed the war, I feel proud when I realize that what's left of Fallujah is no longer under the heel of tyranny.

BTW: did Fallujah always look like 1980s Beirut? Or is that a recent trend, like the "loft" craze that's just begun to burn out in Miami? Builders were actually paying a premium to give new apartments that unfinished "starving artist" look of exposed ceiling pipes and concrete floors.

Maybe Fallujah isn't so much in rubble, as it is slightly behind the trend-curve?

 

[shereads]

We did that with Germany and Japan and Italy also.

Oh God. The Germany/Japan comparison has been debunked so thoroughly, I'm amazed to see it pulse back to life.

Germany/Japan: governments surrendered; U.S. soldiers trained for up to two years in advance of occupation, to understand local cultures and language; no armed resistance after official surrender; no fears of civil war among competing cultural/religious factions.

Iraq: not so much.

 

[shereads]

Now I understand we're going to pay to rebuild it.

There's something here that just doesn't seem right.

Correction: we're going to pay select U.S. contractors to rebuild it.

Which was, after all, the point.

Occupied Iraq has a remarkably business-friendly corporate tax rate of only 15% and is an ever-expanding source of construction and telecommunications contracts. The trade sanctions are history. U.S. taxpayers are screwed and so are military families who have no clue when they'll be free of this, but in corporate boardrooms the news is all good.

Which part doesn't seem right?

 

[Pure]

Good analysis of Fallujah

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1683/

November 12, 2004

Fallujah 101

A history lesson about the town we are currently destroying.

By Rashid Khalidi

 

[shereads]

Thank you for the link, J.

It's easy to think of cities beyond Bagdad as dusty little desert outposts. I was surprised when I read that Fallujah was a city the size of Tampa, Florida. The thought of troops clearing a city that size, block-by-block and door-to-door, is overwhelming. It was only a matter of time before fear and exhaustion led to execution-style killings like the one on film and under investigation, of a wounded and disarmed Fallujah insurgent. It's Vietnam with cities instead of hamlets.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Oh God. The Germany/Japan comparison has been debunked so thoroughly, I'm amazed to see it pulse back to life.

Germany/Japan: governments surrendered; U.S. soldiers trained for up to two years in advance of occupation, to understand local cultures and language; no armed resistance after official surrender; no fears of civil war among competing cultural/religious factions.

Iraq: not so much.

I would take some exception to some of those statements but that's not the point. What I said was that the US and the Western Allies rebuilt Germany, Italy and Japan. I don't think anybody would disagree with that.

 

[Songcatcher]

Thank you for the link, J.

It's easy to think of cities beyond Bagdad as dusty little desert outposts. I was surprised when I read that Fallujah was a city the size of Tampa, Florida. The thought of troops clearing a city that size, block-by-block and door-to-door, is overwhelming. It was only a matter of time before fear and exhaustion led to execution-style killings like the one on film and under investigation, of a wounded and disarmed Fallujah insurgent. It's Vietnam with cities instead of hamlets.

My pacifist-anarchist-humanist-radical philanthropy has run out.