You can take your schadenfreude and cram it with walnuts, mister!
I don't normally even notice when foreign and domestic media play up discontent in the ranks of US soldiers in Iraq. After all, they need to sell papers and gain ratings, and that's part of the game. The truth will out.
Besides, Lord knows the troops have plenty to complain about-- I will NEVER understand why the Army issues the same socks to troops in Labrador and Iraq.
But sometimes, you just have to shake your head in wonder. Like at this Reuters story.
If they had the chance, U.S. soldiers at a base in Iraq would have had one question for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- When are we going home?.But Rumsfeld canceled a speech he was due to give on Friday to the troops at their base at the palace of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his hometown of Tikrit.
"I don't give a damn about Rumsfeld. All I give a damn about is going home," Specialist Rue Gretton said, humping packs of water bottles on his shoulders from a truck.
"The only thing his visit meant for us was we had to clean up a lot of mess to make the place look pretty. And he didn't even look at it anyway," Gretton said after soldiers swept the dusty streets around the complex of lakes and mansions. . . .
Rumsfeld has been criticized for sending too few troops to Iraq leaving them stretched thin on extended deployments trying to help rebuild the country and fight a guerrilla war. He has urged allies to supply some 15,000 additional troops and hopes training Iraqi forces will ease the burden on U.S. troops.
When the Armed Forces Network showed earlier footage of Rumsfeld saying that fresh U.S. troops were unnecessary in Iraq, soldiers at the base threw their hands in the air and shouted "No way" at the television.
"I ain't happy. No way am I happy seeing that," said Specialist Devon Pierce, whose wife was due to give birth to his first son in two weeks. "This tour is hard, real hard. It's too much. It should be six months."
So the US military is a bunch of crybaby milquetoasts who can't stand a little sand in their shorts? Well, sandwiched down at the bottom is this closing nugget: "Many also said that while they wanted to be with their families at backyard barbecues or on trips to the baseball park, they knew what they signed up for by joining the army and were committed to stabilizing Iraq."
Goddamn it. Look, there is no way under the sun to stop soldiers bitching. Every workplace bitches, and when your workplace is an active combat zone in the desert, maybe you do a little more bitching. Rumsfeld is being proven wrong, or at least is losing the tug-of-war. It's just so. . . so. . . maddening that this is the image of our troops that the international press chooses to promulgate.
But I shouldn't be surprised. The lead story coughed up just now by Google News is an MSNBC bit titled "French suppress schadenfreude over U.S. Iraq woes," the gist of which is about how, now that the US is asking for UN support in Iraq, the Europeans get to jeer and point a little at our shattered cowboy hubris.
Well eff you effing bunch of bureaucrats and cowards. I seem to remember a long, long Kabuki dance some months ago, where resolution after resolution after resolution demanding prompt action by Iraq (or else suffer the consequences) was deemed empty of meaning by the very body that passed all eighteen of them. And when the US stepped up to act, the UN chose not to, out of protest for the US' percieved motives. Well, sorry, assholes, for trying to get something done.
I don't agree fully with President Bush's Iraq policy, which has proven disastrously short on the long-term planning and infrastructure management. (In fact, eff him too for putting us in this position!) Bush and his folks did bungle the presentation of case for libervading Iraq to the international community, and they have been less than forthcoming about long-term goals, but I can't stand to see the US as a whole indicted for trying to do something about "eeevil," whatever else is at stake. The US is arrogant, our system can be corrupt, venal, inward-looking, and sometimes cruel. But have these critics looked at what else is out there, at what we are struggling against?
I don't get it. I'm the KING of "yes...but..." and the Emperor of "but have you considered....", which should make me a natural ally of the UN, but FUCK! Have your little laugh at our expense, ha ha, yes thank you, and fucking LEND A FUCKING HAND ALREADY if we ask for it, why not?
God, I hope we don't need to ask for it.
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Two things: First, I think we
Two things: First, I think we should all just shut the fuck up and let the troops bitch about whatever they want. God knows they've earned the right. If some Corporal wants to get on TV and rant about the fact that they had to clean up for Rumsfeld who didn't even bother to show up, I say let the man speak.
Second, I grow somewhat tired of the constant American refrain of "maybe we suck but dammit we're the best thing out there". By what objective standard, exactly? Careful, your American superiority complex is showing. This is exactly why the rest of the world is pissed off at the moment. There are a whole lot of people out there in the world who think there's more to life than a Starbucks on every corner and an SUV in every garage. They are pissed off at the automatic superiority attitude of some dumb fucker from Texas who's never been outside of his own backyard, but has a bullet-munching _attitude_ about the "graces" of his Dr. Phil and a pickup truck life.
You are petulant, petulant children. American is ADD personified. Wonderful potential, but in need of a little therapy.
What superiority complex were
What superiority complex were you talking about, Ross? The one where we continually refer to other nations as children in need of guidance?
Ross:
Ross:
On your first point, agreed, wholeheartedly.
On your second:
You're damn right my American superiority complex is showing. It's not the Starbucks and the SUV that I'm so proud of. It's the underlying system of representative government, enumerated rights, and prosperity that in my American arrogance I prefer over the other options, whether it be the (usually) genial chaos of Italian politics, the well-meaning bureaucracy of the EU, or the post-Marxist powermongering of China or Russia.
There are massive problems with the American system, some tractable and some not so tractable. The incarceration rate is shameful, as are some of our interventionist policies in Latin America. The death penalty is debatable, or at least it gets debated.
Some days, like today, it boggles my mind that other systems that share our core values-- the EU, notably-- and the US cannot find more common ground on which to come to accord. Some of it our fault? Arguably. Our President can be kind of a moron. But don't put it all on us. It takes two to come to mutual misunderstanding.
There ARE no objective standards for judging things like this. Morality, ethics, law, political philosophy, these are all by nature objective. And by the objective standard of placing a premium on individual liberties, (mostly) free markets, and dedication to the rights and freedoms enumerated at the end of the eighteenth century, the US is pretty great.
There is of course plenty of room to disagree. I only ask you then:
What's better, with examples?
Petulant? Not quite. Children, perhaps.