> Iraqis suffer from contaminated drinking water, inadequate hospitals,power cuts and funding shortage
22 April 2005, 22:35
Yeah, I know about the Marshall Plan. I also know that people in your camp whine about every reconstruction dollar spent in Iraq, saying it could be better used to buy free false teeth for everybody in America, or whatever. You can’t have it both ways.
Iraq is not Germany or Japan or Korea or Vietnam or Grenada or Lebanon or Panama. I was responding to someone who set up the premise that America oppresses and exploits every country it defeats, remember? I just knocked that premise down, that’s all. (The person to whom I responded said "Americans have always been bad imperialists . . . in the countries that they leave in desolation.")
I’ve read my Machi. My favorite point he makes is the one about how its best to avoid making enemies, but if you do make enemies, you damned well better treat those enemies like enemies.
You missed one huge difference between post-war Iraq and post-war Germany and Japan. Germany and Japan were totally, completely, and utterly destroyed. Germany was cut in half. 16 million Germans fled eastern Germany to get behind US/UK lines, the largest mass-migration in history. American and Brit bombers had flattened every city in Germany, and the Red Army burned whatever was left. Japan got double-nuked, for God’s sake, but actually lost far more people to firebombing campaigns. Hysterical rhetoric about Fallujah = Dresden notwithstanding, nothing like that happened in Iraq. (You may have noticed that on the day Baghdad fell, there was still a Baghdad for lots of people to be driving around gawking at film crews. Compare to newsreel footage of Berlin after V-E day.) I’m sure we could rebuild Iraq more efficiently if we had waged total war against it first, but I’m not for that. It’s not necessary in this case.
Yeah, I know about the Marshall Plan. I also know that people in your camp whine about every reconstruction dollar spent in Iraq, saying it could be better used to buy free false teeth for everybody in America, or whatever. You can’t have it both ways.
Iraq is not Germany or Japan or Korea or Vietnam or Grenada or Lebanon or Panama. I was responding to someone who set up the premise that America oppresses and exploits every country it defeats, remember? I just knocked that premise down, that’s all. (The person to whom I responded said "Americans have always been bad imperialists . . . in the countries that they leave in desolation.")
I’ve read my Machi. My favorite point he makes is the one about how its best to avoid making enemies, but if you do make enemies, you damned well better treat those enemies like enemies.
You missed one huge difference between post-war Iraq and post-war Germany and Japan. Germany and Japan were totally, completely, and utterly destroyed. Germany was cut in half. 16 million Germans fled eastern Germany to get behind US/UK lines, the largest mass-migration in history. American and Brit bombers had flattened every city in Germany, and the Red Army burned whatever was left. Japan got double-nuked, for God’s sake, but actually lost far more people to firebombing campaigns. Hysterical rhetoric about Fallujah = Dresden notwithstanding, nothing like that happened in Iraq. (You may have noticed that on the day Baghdad fell, there was still a Baghdad for lots of people to be driving around gawking at film crews. Compare to newsreel footage of Berlin after V-E day.) I’m sure we could rebuild Iraq more efficiently if we had waged total war against it first, but I’m not for that. It’s not necessary in this case.