I think the war adds an extreme emotional edge to this time-to an extent not seen since Viet nam. My secretary had a boyfriend who has been fighting in Fallujah return home today. The joy she felt was hard to describe as he had a combat position and killed Iraqis and saw comrades killed. On the other hand today very likely somewhere else in this country a woman will recieve her husband home in a pine box and have to tell their children daddy is never coming back again.Mills75 wrote: have we not yet learned that violence does not change hearts or minds but makes them stand only firmer in opposition?.......but we never have the right to harm others who seek to do us no harm .....Jeff
Many Americans think that we "attacked" Iraq - they do not feel we "defended" ourselves since Iraq posed no threat, had no weapons of mass destruction, and as a country had no single link to Al Qaeda . Al Qaeda was behind 9/11 attacks, attacks on the USS Cole, the Embassy's in Mozambique and Tanzania, and most other terrorist attacks against the USA for over a decade.
Others however feel justified fighting in Iraq since cells of Al Qaeda operatives were found there - but other people talk about how such cells were found in many other countries including European countries such as France. In fact there were Al Qaeda cells in the USA as many of them trained for their fateful flights on 9/11 in Arizona and elsewhere. Such conflicting positions....
And so many reason if we are the attackers, and not defending ourselves - our military position is not only NOT honorable, but in fact just like the terrorists we assume to fight.
I think a large number of Americans feel the Iraq war was a mistake - one we will not fix by killing more Iraqis ,.... kind of like "oops, our mistake, no WMD - well let us stick around for a few more years and kill more bad guys to fix our social faux pas".
Others feel our intervention is necessary, like a big brother who needs to fix the little brothers of the world's problems - that extreme Islamics will spread Muslim-ism (if there is such a word) everywhere. That our military efforts will stop the spread of Muslims - much like the "domino theory" of the 60's hoping that the Viet Nam war would stop the spread of communism.
Sure elections have always been fueled by the economy. And with unemployment hitting hard, jobs going overseas, the deficit skyrocketing, gas prices soaring, job benefits disappearing, fears of a real estate collapse, and other financial concerns seem pressing as they are immediate - but perhaps they are no more serious than they were 20 years ago.
The reality of the war magnifies all the normal concerns of the election - and many who lived through the 60's fear the dead end conflict that was Viet Nam, where the best the average man can hope for is that they, their children, their loved ones return home for the mostly physically and emotionally intact. All while the average working joe watches major companies grow richer and richer from the military machine.
I think it is no wonder that emotions are so volatile - people feel so much. Some have a sense of patriotism, a sense of following a president who is said to be lead directly by god who is helping the world stop the spread of Muslims through war, and whose personal political crusade spreads the "chosen and right" way both by legal actions here and the war abroad. These people feel the president is a real John Wayne gunslinger type who has the guts to stop terrorism in its tracks, who is one of the common people and speaks with a southwestern/country drawl while executing murderers in Texas and Muslims in the middle east.
Others feel the loss of thousands of American and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives over a war that was all about "WMD", the escalating debt from an administration that was left a budgest surplus by the previous administration and who fear a national debt that cannot be repaid by future generations, and who feel offended by a leader they feel is arrogantly pushing his personal religious opinions on Americans and the world with no regard to others sensibilities.
With such strong and differing feelings, about real life and death matters - its hard to expect anything else.
The person I quote says we cannot expect violence to change anyones mind, and that we have no right to attack someone who has done us no harm. So how can we expect the war in Iraq to do anything positive? Iraq did not attack us, in fact on 9/11 they were one of the only Muslim countries to send us a regret letter condemning the actions of those flying the planes - they had no WMD - how could we justify attacking them, and if not how can we justify a continued war on them? And how can we expect our war on them to change anyones opinions - to win the hearts of the Iraqi people as they watch their friends, children and grandparents die at our hands? Unless we plan on killing every Muslim in the world, can anyone expect this war to change anything?
With a war like this - this is not the Faulkland Islands - and what it means to both sides - can anyone not expect heavy emotions? Can we expect a Jerry Springer watching country to act with logic?
