Posted by caraher on January 25, 2007, at 18:39:33
In reply to Re: nephew killed in Iraq, posted by fayeroe on January 25, 2007, at 17:21:45
(((((fayeroe)))))
I'm so sorry. I appreciate your anger and grief, though I cannot pretend to know their full depth. I also feel somewhat ashamed that, however much I did personally to voice my disapproval of this war and occupation, I didn't do more.
Although I opposed the Iraq adventure from well before its start, I've come to believe that the American lives lost were not, in fact, lost completely in vain if the war is a "failure." If the "liberation" of Iraq were the stunning, apparently low-cost success its advocates sold to the American public in 2002-3, it would have emboldened the architects of that policy to expand their dreams for a Pax Americana imposed by military dominance. I view the lost soldiers as giving their lives to restore the use of American military might to a scale more commensurate with genuine US security needs. It's tragic that a cost in blood was required to awaken Americans to the self-defeating character of the neoconservative fantasy. Why honor the sacrifice of our fighting men and women any less simply because those losses may have worked to save lives in a manner rather different from the one some of them and their political leaders envisioned?
poster:caraher
thread:726320
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20061123/msgs/726473.html