More about Iraq

Jim Henley sums up: Everything is worse than predicted, and when we find out facts, it turns out the real facts are often worse still. Additional paragraph breaks added for clarity:

The pattern is clear: everything dubious turns out to be much worse than initially reported. Oh, and there's always someone telling you it's actually much better. By the time the truth comes out they're busy defending something else. ...

We're told today that some colonel fired a gun in the air near a prisoner to scare him and next month that he had the prisoner beaten and put a bullet into the ground by his head.

We learn that arresting relatives of suspects "to pressure them to surrender" is a routine policy in Iraq.

We're told one month that most of Iraq is not just quiet but friendly and the next month, in one of those quiet friendly parts, crowds drag American bodies through the street.

We're told that there's no guerrilla war, then that there is a guerrilla war but we've turned the corner, then we notice that fatal casualties among our soldiers have grown exponentially for seven months and more (but we're turning the corner again).

That power will soon be back to normal in Baghdad, then that power will soon be back to normal in Baghdad and then, that power will soon be back to normal in Baghdad.

We're told that Iraq's oil will pay for the reconstruction, then that we must spend billions on Iraq's oil industry itself.

We preen about our national virtue, then pause to contemplate "politically propitious times" to release the innocent [from Guantanamo Bay].

We excuse sins in ourselves we punish in others.

Back to me:

I just reviewed all of my r.a.s.f.f posts in the months leading up to the invasion, and am amazed to discover that there were things I predicted going wrong which didn't. I was expecting a long, nasty siege of Baghdad which didn't happen, and I was expecting the deliberate destruction of Iraq's civilian infrastructure which didn't happen to nearly as great a degree as the government itself claimed would happen. For that matter, I expected that when the Iraqis actually fought, they would fight, not brilliantly, but at least not incredibly stupidly; it's unmistakable that they fought very badly indeed. The Turks have not, so far, apparently taken advantage of the war to invade Northern Iraq to slaughter Kurds. The Red Cross managed to keep cholera from breaking out nation-wide; there were only scattered cases of it in Baghdad and Basra.

On the other hand, I didn't predict the complete destruction of every Iraqi government office building except the Ministry of Oil, the looting of the unguarded museums and libraries (which was enormous even if not the total catastrophe originally reported). I didn't expect that same orgy of looting would destroy parts of the infrastructure untouched by the American bombing, such as the phone system and the hospitals. I didn't predict a months-long guerrilla campaign conducted by all the soldiers who didn't die in the siege of Baghdad, using the weapons they didn't expend then. I didn't predict that nine months after the start of the war, Saddam Hussein would still be directing the war against the Americans. And I most certainly didn't predict that the US would be so ill-prepared for the post-war occupation that they would allow Iraqi citizens unimpeded looting of the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Facility.

I opposed--oppose--the War on Iraq for a variety of reasons. Foremost among them was that I didn't trust the Current Regime in Washington to conduct the post-war occupation in a way that would meet even minimal standards of competence or decency. So far, nothing has proven me wrong.

Not the carol I would have expected

( Take a guess )

Santanalia

A comment from daedala to my last post inspired me to dig up this post I made to rec.arts.sf.fandom last year:

I believe that in the United States, there are two holidays which are celebrated on December 25th. One of them is a religous holiday involving the birth of the Christ; one of them is a secular holiday celebrating Santa. Much of the interreligous friction which arises around December 25th comes from a tension between the two holidays--people who treat Christmas as not a religious holiday, and don't understand why other people don't recognize it as such; people who recognize that Christmas is a religious holiday and resent having it pushed at them; and other frictions. These are not trivial differences of opinion, but I believe that the frictions will be reduced if people recognize the tensions between the two holidays.

I propose that the secular holiday be officially recognized and referred to as "Santamas", a celebration of the fact that people should, you know, be nice to each other and string up pretty lights when the nights are long and give each other gifts because gifts are good.

(The above two paragraphs are not completely accurate, because I also feel that Santamas *is* a religious holiday, but it's not a Christian holiday; it's the high holy day of the god Santa. But I believe that it's more possible to view Santamas as a secular holiday than it is to view Christmas as a secular holiday.)

A later post in that thread inspired me to change the name of the holiday to Santanalia.

Another responded suggested "Cashmas", but, I replied,

I feel that calling the non-Christian portions of "Christmas" "Cashmas" is unfair to the people for whom Santamas really is about giving rather than spending. The ideal of Santamas is not getting lots of loot; it's about making the world a nicer place for everyone, even if you can only manage it for one frickin' day a year. "Make the world a nicer place for everyone" is an idea which is compatable with, as far as I can tell, every terrestrial religion and most secular philosophies.

So.