Truly sickening...

[gabyyyyy]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040401/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=716

This is why our soldiers are over there. Some of those people in Iraq are INSANE!

[ThaSaltCracka]

those are some sick [censored]. Seeing [censored] like this makes me forget about any of the so called "atrocities" committed by our troops.

[krazyace5]

Yes, very disgusting, I think the US should pull out of there and just let those animals destroy each other. What a bunch of crazy, uneducated, freaks. But hey "were the bad guys"

[Zeno]

This incident is, unfortunately, nothing really new, unique, or surprising. And it certainly is nothing unique to 'them' or 'the Arab world'.

A little perusal through any time frame of history of just about any people will reveal the same types of atrocities and cruelty.

Do not imply from the above statements that I approve of what occurred, or that I don’t think that what occurred isn't revolting and sickening. It is just not as unique as most in the media or politics would want to imply or play it up to be.

-Zeno

[sam h]

[ QUOTE ]
A little perusal through any time frame of history of just about any people will reveal the same types of atrocities and cruelty.

[/ QUOTE ]

Much, much worse, I would say. Not only has the number of deaths needed to constitute a real atrocity in the public imagination gone down, the ingenuity of the sadists seems to be waning as well. Dragging people through the streets and stringing them up? Beating corpses with sticks? Pretty banal stuff.

[nicky g]

Yeah, noone's ever been lynched in the US.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah, noone's ever been lynched in the US.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're not usually given to introducing non sequiters into the discussion. If you're complaining about his statement as to why US troops are there, your response doesn't address that issue. If you're complaining about calling some Iraqis insane, one does not display an iota of hypocrisy for condemning the Iraqis the original poster was referring to without condemning other atrocities.

[nicky g]

I was responding to thread so far; in particular this:
"Yes, very disgusting, I think the US should pull out of there and just let those animals destroy each other. What a bunch of crazy, uneducated, freaks."
But while you're rioght that my response is not appropriate to those two things individually, together they suggest that Iraq is especially in need of US occupation because it is especially full of insane sick people, as illustrated by a lynching. If all he meant was that there are insane people everywhere, he'd be calling for US occupation of everywhere. Which he'd get, no doubt.

[andyfox]

Sane, educated freaks prefer to kill their victims from the air?

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Irrelevant. If evils perpetrated in the past disqualify a nation from taking a moral stand in the present, then the concept of right and wrong go out the window.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

You know, the funny thing about all of this is that we're having this trouble there precisely because we tried to avoid "collateral damage." We didn't have the same magnitude of resistance in Germany and Japan, probably because we indiscriminately bombed civilian targets.

Andy, if you're a moral pacifist and believe that there is *never* justification for war, I can accept that even if I disagree. I just think to paint our activities with the same brush as Saddam or Stalin (as you did in another post) is irresponsible.

[andyfox]

"Andy, if you're a moral pacifist and believe that there is *never* justification for war, I can accept that even if I disagree."

-I'm not. I was in favor of attacking Afghanistan after 9/11.



"I just think to paint our activities with the same brush as Saddam or Stalin (as you did in another post) is irresponsible."

Refresh my memory. I did put Buckley and Hannity on the same plane of moral thinking as Stalin and Bin Laden when they both said the longed for somebody who didn't let killing 80,000 women and children bother them. Thinking it is not the same as doing it.

[Cyrus]

As usual, America has not done its homework. And it didn't have any long-term plans either for the post-occupation period. As Wwofowitz charmingly put it, that would have been micromanagement.

Turns out the people in Iraq are not ethnically homogenous (I have seen "experts" on the internet calling the Iraqis as Persians, the Iranians as Arabs, etc), and, like most people in the area, do not have the same ideas about government that western democracies have. In fact, Iraqis, like Arabs, still go by the feudal, tribal system of benevolent rulers that take care of their own.

This is a culture clash of great significance. The war was "won" but the peace is being lost : A democracy is being imposed from the outside (always a bad recipe), without any sense of direction (the "party" that will more likely win an election, the Shiite "party", is ideologically and inherently the more hostile to western interests - just ask Tehran students!), but I suppose this qualifies as brilliant strategy for the idiot occupant of the White House.

These events are like the finger that points the moon to us, the moon being what I described above, i.e. the big picture. We should not focus our gaze on the finger.

As to the dead bodies being dragged in the streets by jubilant crowds ? Well, why the fuss? These people (1) hate the Americans, as they would hate any occupying power, (2) expressed themselves morefreely than when the cameras are accompanied by armoured vehicles, (3) gave us a touching reminder of what a mob feels like, be it in Falujah or South Central.

What else is new?

[nicky g]

I think you've also missed my point. Read my response to Adios.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Thinking it is not the same as doing it.

Fair enough

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

OK, I read your response to Adios, but both our responses were the result of the incompleteness of your initial response.

I will address one thing:

he'd be calling for US occupation of everywhere. Which he'd get, no doubt.

I doubt that could happen. We stayed out of Rwanda, for example.

However, if the US were the imperialist aggressor bent on using military force to control the world's oil (as some critics seem to believe), we would've had an occupying army in Venezuela before Iraq. Saddam was nowhere near the threat to US oil imports that Chavez is.

[andyfox]

I don't think a foreign policy choice is based on any one factor. While other factors may well have been more important, it would be hard to argue that oil security did not figure in the Iraq equation at least to some extent. There are a number of reasons why the U.S. considers the Middle East more important than Africa.