Posted on 12/24/2004 7:00:22 AM PST by Chi-townChief
One reads in the papers that the Pentagon expects the war in Iraq to continue till 2010. Donald Rumsfeld will not guarantee that it will be over by 2009. How many dead and maimed Americans by then? How many sad obituaries? How many full pages in the papers with pictures of all the casualties?
Why?
The reasons change: weapons of mass destruction, war on terror, freedom and democracy for the people of Iraq, American credibility. All are deceptions. This cockamamie and criminally immoral war was planned before the Sept. 11 attack in which Iraq was not involved. It has nothing to do with the war on terror. American-style freedom and democracy in Arab countries are hallucinations by men and women like Paul Wolfowitz and Condi Rice whose contribution to the war is writing long memos -- Republican intellectuals with pointy heads.
One must support the troops, I am told. I certainly support the troops the best way possible: Bring them home, get them out of a war for which the planning was inadequate, the training nonexistent, the goal obscure, and the equipment and especially the armor for their vehicles inferior. They are brave men and women who believe they are fighting to defend their country and have become sitting ducks for fanatics. Those who die are the victims of the big lie. They believe that they are fighting to prevent another terror attack on the United States. They are not the war criminals. The ''Vulcans,'' as the Bush foreign policy team calls itself, are the criminals, and they ought to face indictment as war criminals.
There is an irony in the promise of a prolonged war. The Vulcans believed that, as the world's only superpower, the military might of the United States was overwhelming, irresistible, beyond challenge. In fact, the war into which they tricked us has become a quagmire, 130,000 American troops are at the mercy of perhaps 5,000 true-believer guerrillas and an Iraqi population that doesn't like Americans any more than it liked Saddam Hussein. It is a war in which there is no possibility of victory -- whether it ends in June 2005 or June 2010, whether there are 2,000 American battle deaths or 50,000, whether there are 10,000 wounded Americans or 500,000, whether those with post-traumatic stress are 10 percent of the returning troops or 30 percent.
One of the criteria for a just war is that there be a reasonable chance of victory. Where is that reasonable chance? Each extra day of the war makes it more unjust, more criminal. The guilty people are not only the Vulcans but those Americans who in the November election endorsed the war.
They are also responsible for the Iraqi deaths, especially the men who join the police or the army because they need the money to support their families -- their jobs eaten up in the maw of the American ''liberation.'' Iraqi deaths don't trouble many Americans. Their attitude is not unlike the e-mail writer who said he rejoices every time a Muslim kills another Muslim. ''Let Allah sort them out.''
This time of the year we celebrate ''peace on Earth to men of good will.'' Americans must face the fact that they can no longer claim to be men and women of good will, not as long as they support an unnecessary, foolish, ill-conceived, badly executed and, finally, unwinnable war. If most people in other countries blame the war on Americans, we earned that blame in the November election -- not that there is any serious reason to believe that Sen. John Kerry would have had the courage to end the war. Perhaps if he had changed his mind, as he did about the war in Vietnam, and opposed the Iraqi war, he might have won. Too late now. Too late till 2010 -- or 2020.
Note: Some conservative Catholics -- Republicans, I assume -- are spreading the word on the Internet that I am an ''unfrocked'' (sic) priest. That is false witness. I am and have been for 50 years a priest in good standing of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Call (312) 751-8220 if you don't believe me. False witness is a grave sin and must be confessed before Christmas communion. Moreover, those who commit it are bound to restore the reputation of the one about whom they've lied.
Is that how you feel, Father Greeley? That Arabs are an inferior breed that can't grasp our high liberal ideals? How very enlightened.
Maybe you were happier letting the Iraqi people starve under the cruel sanctions and tyrannical oppression, Father. Maybe you slept better at night letting children in poverty wither and die under our 'peaceful containment' policy. Maybe you'd be happier to let those people perish rather than let them be saved by the force of arms, because that runs counter to your personal beliefs.
Maybe you're just a sadistic, socialist dilletante. I don't really care which it is. You're opinion is noted, and you can work out the merits of said opinion with the Almighty.
perhaps not defroked but definitly a disgrace.
80 people dead, mass graves, a dictator who unquestioningly was preparing to build an a-bomb to kill americans, and giving comfort to all the enemies of the USA is no just to this crackpot.
Just put him next to moore in the looney left club.
As is violating the Sixth Commandment, Andy. Wonder if you've ever confessed that sin.
"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke
Is there peace on earth during a just war?
Where was Greeley when Saddamn was slaughtering his fellow human beings by the hundreds of thousands?
"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to simplify complex issues and events to a platitude; mere action is no substitute for prudence and moral virtue." -St. Chuck
Greeley just doesn't get it. Were these 130,000 soldiers not in Iraq . . . we would be fighting the "5,000 true-believer guerrillas" on American streets.
I don't particularly care if this war ends in 2005 or 2010 or 2999 . . . OR if there are 2,000 or 50,000 American battle deaths . . . OR if there are 10,000 or 500,000 wounded Americans . . . it takes no General Patton-like military background to see it's best to fight in your enemy's sandbox rather than your own. American and Israeli buses would be blowing up. Blood would be flowing in American gutters . . . every day, every hour, and every minute of every day.
Our enemies have made the choice for us . . . kill or be killed, there is no middle ground with Islamic terrorists.
THAT is why I staunchly support this war -- the decision to fight the war was made by our enemies, they declared the war and fired the first shots . . . we only had a choice as to where the war would be fought. History will prove us conservatives right . . . President Bush will be remembered as a great President and as Churchill said . . . "This will be our finest hour."
Well said. I can't think anything to add to that except how vile of him to air this rant, as the Catholic priest poser that he is, on Christmas Eve. And I wonder if he is as concerned about the good people of Sudan who have suffered for more than a decade under the slaughter, oppression, tyranny, and outright genocide by the militant rebels fueled by the Islamo-fascists. A war directed specifically at the peaceful predominantly Christian South Sudanese. Hmmmm. Oh, wait, nothing from him for 10 years on that? No, Mr. Greeley is only concerned with leftist, commie concerns.
Not tonight, lady; Merry Christmas!
You contradict yourself.
Note: Some conservative Catholics -- Republicans, I assume -- are spreading the word on the Internet that I am an ''unfrocked'' (sic) priest. That is false witness. I am and have been for 50 years a priest in good standing of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Call (312) 751-8220 if you don't believe me.
We can't help we have a coward for a cardinal.
BTW, I Googled "Andrew Greeley" and unfrocked and only found one article -- one in which it did not say he was unfrocked.
So Mr. Webb is really not one of the smarter guys you'd want to meet, is he?
Merry Christmas !!!
Hmm, Father Greeley neglected to mention his obvious belief that Arabs and Iraqis in particular are incapable of running a democracy. Surely this is racist thinking. Surely hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were worth saving from that madman Hussein. Surely they're worth a candle. (Evidently not.)
He should be drug through the streets till skinned.
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