Reply #64: I'll say it again: the US military is not a police force, a peacekeeping [View All]

force or a winning-hearts-and-minds force. It is a lethal weapon. It is designed to kill people and break things. The current mission in Iraq is untenable, and cannot reasonably be sustained without the expectation that atrocities against civilians will occur--repeatedly. We should have learned all we need to know about fighting an insurgency in Vietnam (turns out you have to negotiate. Imagine that!), but the neocon fuckwits-in-charge are ideologically bound by the notion that the media and not the military lost that war and so our guys and gals in uniform are doomed to repeat history. It's a tragic situation all the way around, and one in which, yes, we're all implicated to some degree. Mostly, though, I blame the neocon fuckwits who lied their way into a war they were not competent to fight. May an eternity of hot tar enemas await them in hell.