Progressives had high hopes when Jim Webb was elected. Surely this upright man would help end the war, even if he had to use military swagger to win the election. But the reality of Jim Webb’s politics has been a cruel disappointment. Jim Webb’s idea of responding to the agony of Iraq is to work relentlessly to make American soldiers more comfortable.
You see, for Jim Webb, Iraq is all about the suffering of Americans. But it is the Iraqis who are dying of cholera. It is the Iraqis who are being gunned down by Blackwater cowboys. It is the Iraqis who lack electricity. It is the Iraqis whose cultural legacy is being crushed and looted. It is the Iraqis who are being ethnically “cleansed.”
So what is Jim Webb’s solution? We need to make sure that US troops are adequately rested between tours in Iraq. This is Jim Webb’s courageous response to the agony of the Iraqi people.
Jim Webb is ridiculous, because he thinks the comfort of American troops is more important than the condition of an entire occupied nation. All the people of the Earth are human beings deserving of civilized treatment and compassion. For Senator Webb to put the American Soldier on a pedestal of special treatment is to accept the worst principles of American Xenophobia.
For the benefit of Senator Webb, I shall paraphrase Shylock’s speech from “The Merchant of Venice”
>>
I am an Iraqi. Hath not an Iraqi eyes? Hath not an Iraqi hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the
same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed
and cooled by the same winter and summer, as an American is? If you prick us,
do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we
not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the
rest, we will resemble you in that.
<<
There will be no rest for the Iraqis, Senator Webb, until this evil war is ended. Your solicitude for our troops is an absurd distraction from America’s criminal neglect of the victims of our brutal occupation.
8 comments
Skip to comment form
The idea behind…
…was a sneaky way to force reduction of the number of US troops in Iraq. Lenghten the rest time = troops can’t rotate back in as fast = no choice but to reduce the overall troop presence = beginning of withdrawl.
But as for the larger point of Iraqi suffering, I agree. This is why I was arguing yesterday that the true best way to fix this friggin mess is to Impeach.
Anything else, and GB is still running the show as CIC. With GB running the show, I’m afraid the suffering will not be reduced.
…I think you’re kind of missing the Senator’s point. By a rather wide margin, one might add.
I snow the time to point out that Jim Webb is actually on our side?
Author
Is it courage to use troop rest as a subterfuge? Why do we have to sneak our way out of Iraq? How long do we have to wait for the truth from Jim Webb?
I’m not disappointed in Web.
I expected him to be this way. I am disappointed in those bloggers that trashed those of us saying he would be this way… and I also note that the glorious healing power of a majority, which was why Webb was cast as progressive… it wasn’t supposed to matter, all those Ds were supposed to add up to something other than the sum of their parts… lol, never manifested.