They died for nothing. Ten years from now it's going to be apparent to everybody that more than two thousand - at last count - American servicemen and women perished for no reason at all. Somebody is probably going to blast back at me for saying that, with the usual "They volunteered!" or "They are defending our freedoms!" or the standard canned answer. Someone is likely to say that I'm "a bitter person" for even saying all of this.
Yeah, I am bitter. Bitter at the old men - the chief among whom never saw real military service to begin with - who send young men to die for their own flights of fantasy. And yeah, those young Americans did volunteer: to do professionally what every American is supposed to be doing anyway, namely upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States of America. They did not volunteer to be pawns and cannon fodder for the twisted games of damaged little madmen. And despite word to the contrary, they are not over there "defending our freedom". For one thing, we don't have that much freedom over here left to begin with (hell, even blogs like this one are now being threatened by Congress). For another, they are NOT being used in a way that defends our freedom and sovereignty here. I could think of any number of ways that they could be doing that: putting them on our border with Mexico would be the biggest among them.
Iraq is a doomed country, no matter what the pundits are saying. It only even really stayed one united country because the government or dictator that was running the place at any given time used military force to keep everyone in line. Without someone like Saddam Hussein threatening everybody to keep the peace, Iraq will go the way of Yugoslavia: another country that was cobbled together from several other nations and cultures. That's not a defense of Saddam by any stretch, just a statement of historical evidence. In fact, I would say that if you want a clear picture of what we have in store for us in a post-Saddam Iraq, study what happened in Yugoslavia after Tito died. Then you'll understand why imposing a democracy in Iraq is going to ultimately fail miserably. Any "good news" coming out of Iraq right now is not much more than a panacea. The only way the place is going to maintain even a semblance of order is if another strong military presence is occupying the country. And that's the United States. We have become like Tito and Saddam, and if we pull out - either now or later - the resulting chaos is going to be on our own heads. It would have been a far better thing if we had not gotten involved at all, and let the Iraqi people solve their own problem, as best as they can, without any outside intervention.
But, we're stuck with it. And there's only going to be more meaningless deaths like these to report. Not out of some "grim satisfaction" no matter what the warhawks might say, but out of horrid loathing as to what's happening to our own. America wasn't intended to be an empire... so why are we wasting lives trying to be one now?
