Premonitions of Disaster

[lydy]

So, we got our butts kicked in Fallujah. This can't be good. Nothing like looking weak to encourage an insurgency. It doesn't matter why we lost, the insurgents will claim the glory, and few people will dispute them. Besides, they're probably right. The pictures of Iraqis being tortured is worse, though. Bad enough that there was (ok, may have been, but that's not how it will be seen in Iraq) physical torture. Much, much worse is the evidence of sexual abuse. Pictures of naked men, some of them being forced to act out homosexual acts. Simulated, real? It hardly matters. The tilt-game-over, though, is the women. I am a feminist. I figure, women have the same rights to depraved behavior as men. No reason I can thiink of why, in the type of environment which breeds such sadism, that women should be immune because of their gender. This isn't true in Iraq, though. Women are wrapped up in concealing veils to avoid tempting men into sexual transgression. Our defense is that it's a very few number of cases, and that we'll punish the perpetrators. Guess what? That's not going to matter. Amongst other problems, we have too many Iraqis in custody who are being kept incognito and incommunicado. Absent information, the imagination always provides the worst possibilities. I don't know what happens next, never did, really. What ever was coming, though, is suddenly much worse. Staying in Iraq is now completely untenable. Leaving almost certainly guarantees civil war, and a hard-line theocracy at the end of it. We are, pardon the phrase, well and truly fucked.

God bless America. We really need it.

Comments

You might well be right...

[(Anonymous)]

Lydia,

You might well be right. I have two family members on the ground with the Marines in Iraq right now. They are two well enough motivated young men but in their letters I can see they are frustrated with what is going on. This is not Vietnam, this might be worse than Vietnam...