I don't think America fully understands that there was a civil war there between Sunni and Shia Iraqis between the years 2006-2008. That's how I learned what modern civil wars look like. It's a militia from one neighborhood going into the next neighborhood and rounding up a bunch of the military-aged males at night, torturing them, execu…
I don't think America fully understands that there was a civil war there between Sunni and Shia Iraqis between the years 2006-2008. That's how I learned what modern civil wars look like. It's a militia from one neighborhood going into the next neighborhood and rounding up a bunch of the military-aged males at night, torturing them, executing them, and then leaving their mutilated bodies in a ditch for their neighbors to find. Violence messaging. Bombing marketplaces to target the other side's innocent families. Mexican cartel war shit. All because we created a power vacuum after removing Saddam and dissolving the Iraqi military. We put thousands of young--mostly Sunni--military men into unemployment in an economy that just got destroyed while the insurgency was offering money to anyone willing to dig holes in the road and/or place explosive devices into said holes. Sometimes those bombs went off against Americans, sometimes they went off against the Iraqi police or politicians, and sometimes they went off against Shia civilians. It was a fucking mess there for at least two years, and that's before we start talking about ISIS and US troops killing people on the road in "escalation of force" incidents.
Americans all over the country have grandfathers who will not talk about world War II because of the horrors of war. Do those grandchildren ever really ponder that?
I do ponder it all. Not even my Grandfather in this case. My father -- half American, half European -- worked for the military in London during the blitz. He had tears in his eyes when he spoke of seeing a child's hand severed in death lying outside a bombed house. The rest of the stories he told me through the years are equally horrendous. I was in London on 9/11 with two small children. The news and images of New York were everywhere, and I could not protect them from seeing these images. They were really scared. My father told them he understood how bad Americans must feel about the loss of life and the two building, but he saw buildings blown up, and death in London night after night after night. They would be okay in the end, he reassured them. One had to carry on. From the stories both my parents told me I think not only are many Americans unaware, but they are spoilt in so many ways. Look at the 51% who now have a lack of willingness to sacrifice -- even a little -- for Ukraine.
I too had a wider view of things, and I found it very odd that the US turned everything upside down over 3000 dead on 9/11, while countries all over the world suffer much greater terrorist casualties on a regular basis. While 9/11 was unique in that planes were used as weapons, right-wing terrorists are the current scourge of the US in terms of the sheer number of incidents, but the right insists that the left is overwhelmingly behind US domestic terrorism.
"The minority that is rock solid for keeping things the way they are [is] clustered efficiently in certain voting districts that then put a lock into the legislative process. It’s not like they’re spread out throughout fifty states: This is a particular regional and political problem that then creates a structural lock on doing anything about it in the legislature. Everything comes back to minority rule." --Tom Nichols
Agree. Most people don’t know what the result of being shot with an AR15 or even a handgun looks like. They don’t understand what dying alone in an ICU looks like. It’s ugly. They don’t get what a trauma from crashing at 90+ MPH looks like. Really, they do not really even get what it’s like to live a full life and become elderly and frail and face death and the mental and physical toll that it takes on the person facing it. People and Americans especially are so insulated from the realities of illness, injury, trauma ,and death. Most certainly from political violence. Kind of crazy when you hear people wanting it all to crash and burn. We barely made it through a pandemic without losing our collective minds.
I don't think America fully understands that there was a civil war there between Sunni and Shia Iraqis between the years 2006-2008. That's how I learned what modern civil wars look like. It's a militia from one neighborhood going into the next neighborhood and rounding up a bunch of the military-aged males at night, torturing them, executing them, and then leaving their mutilated bodies in a ditch for their neighbors to find. Violence messaging. Bombing marketplaces to target the other side's innocent families. Mexican cartel war shit. All because we created a power vacuum after removing Saddam and dissolving the Iraqi military. We put thousands of young--mostly Sunni--military men into unemployment in an economy that just got destroyed while the insurgency was offering money to anyone willing to dig holes in the road and/or place explosive devices into said holes. Sometimes those bombs went off against Americans, sometimes they went off against the Iraqi police or politicians, and sometimes they went off against Shia civilians. It was a fucking mess there for at least two years, and that's before we start talking about ISIS and US troops killing people on the road in "escalation of force" incidents.
Americans all over the country have grandfathers who will not talk about world War II because of the horrors of war. Do those grandchildren ever really ponder that?
I do ponder it all. Not even my Grandfather in this case. My father -- half American, half European -- worked for the military in London during the blitz. He had tears in his eyes when he spoke of seeing a child's hand severed in death lying outside a bombed house. The rest of the stories he told me through the years are equally horrendous. I was in London on 9/11 with two small children. The news and images of New York were everywhere, and I could not protect them from seeing these images. They were really scared. My father told them he understood how bad Americans must feel about the loss of life and the two building, but he saw buildings blown up, and death in London night after night after night. They would be okay in the end, he reassured them. One had to carry on. From the stories both my parents told me I think not only are many Americans unaware, but they are spoilt in so many ways. Look at the 51% who now have a lack of willingness to sacrifice -- even a little -- for Ukraine.
I too had a wider view of things, and I found it very odd that the US turned everything upside down over 3000 dead on 9/11, while countries all over the world suffer much greater terrorist casualties on a regular basis. While 9/11 was unique in that planes were used as weapons, right-wing terrorists are the current scourge of the US in terms of the sheer number of incidents, but the right insists that the left is overwhelmingly behind US domestic terrorism.
"The minority that is rock solid for keeping things the way they are [is] clustered efficiently in certain voting districts that then put a lock into the legislative process. It’s not like they’re spread out throughout fifty states: This is a particular regional and political problem that then creates a structural lock on doing anything about it in the legislature. Everything comes back to minority rule." --Tom Nichols
"I don't think America fully understands..." is the understatement of the century!
It drives me crazy when Americans talk casually about the US falling into a civil war because they have never seen what a real civil war is.
Hopefully your experiences are a lesson for us all!
Agree. Most people don’t know what the result of being shot with an AR15 or even a handgun looks like. They don’t understand what dying alone in an ICU looks like. It’s ugly. They don’t get what a trauma from crashing at 90+ MPH looks like. Really, they do not really even get what it’s like to live a full life and become elderly and frail and face death and the mental and physical toll that it takes on the person facing it. People and Americans especially are so insulated from the realities of illness, injury, trauma ,and death. Most certainly from political violence. Kind of crazy when you hear people wanting it all to crash and burn. We barely made it through a pandemic without losing our collective minds.
A lot of kids or peopke have a fetish with guns think that war is like playing video games, I bet.