If YOUR Homeland was occupied, like Iraq...

[Dem Agog]

What will it take for the Iraq debacle to actually affect *'s popularity? Will the entire country have to be under the control of rebel insurgents before the U.S. media cares?

They ran the military out of Fallujah... How far will they have to go? How close is Iraq to tipping over and becoming an evident failure?

We are up against a completely different culture. And they have nothing to lose.

Say some unknown emerging power came to overthrow our current resident dictator, claiming the * was a danger to the world at large.... Sure, they'd be right, we would agree that he is a danger. Say they took DC and took out the White House, capturing Chimpy, Condi, Ashcroft, Cheney. Say they put all of our administration on playing cards and ticked them off one by one as they played poker in the now defaced and pillaged building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Sure, we'd be elated that the thief was out of the White House... but the country stayed here forming an "interim government" peopled with members of the same party they'd just toppled, setting up military bases in all of our major cities - telling us what to do and how to do it.

And they'd take over most decent sized towns, in suburbia and down your street their trucks rolled with their flags waving. They wouldn't trust you if you hung out your American flag. Perhaps they'd break down your door in the middle of the night, in Gatlinburg, or Fairfax, or Lilburn, or Tucson, or Peoria... All because of that flag, all because you were suspect. Your little brother who just a short year ago was going to soccer practice is killed in the street because he "rushed" the foreign occupiers, furious that they would not leave the streets.

Those of you who fought back would be labelled "rebel insurgents". Maybe we'd have a spokesperson, say a Howard Dean type who called on us to fight for America, fight for our homeland... How far would you go to save your home from occupation by a foreign power that came in and trampled all over your government? Would the bombing and fighting necessary to retake your home, your street, your life, your country back be considered right or wrong, then?

And would you quit until they are gone?

This is what our military is up against in Iraq. That is what is happening over there. And that is why this is an unwinnable war.

[hobbit709]

1. Damn Right!

I'd be shooting too, learning how to make IEDs, etc.
My mother lived through Hitler in Austria and she taught me well.

[Dem Agog]

3. Well, then am I alone when I see the insurgents on the news...

... In feeling torn? I hear they took Fallujah and part of me wonders if these aren't just people taking their homes back, we'd be cheering such a coup if it were us against a occupying force.

[Medical Speaking]

2. Homeland

It was almost the same when I was in Viet-Nam, The people didnt want us there. The same will happen. History will repeat itself in Irag
The goverment didnt learn a thing from Viet-Nam. Maybe idiot George/Channy should go oveer there and be at point.

Semper Fi

[Warpy]

4. Thank you for summarizing why this mess is unwinnable

Perhaps if they'd hired Iraqi contractors to do the rebuilding and put Iraqis back to work it might have been salvageable. However, 70% unemployment while foreign occupiers grow rich over the past year and a half have taken their toll. Even if Bush is thrown out decisively and Kerry gets a majority in Congress, it will be very difficult for him to quit that country. The hubris of Vietnam, that more men, bombs, bullets, and money will win the war is alive and well in DC.

This will be a war just like Vietnam and for much the same reason. There, we replaced the French as the hated colonizer. In Iraq, we're replacing a hated regime installed by the CIA by a military occupation. Neither had a chance of succeeding, especially when the only reaction to Iraqi rage and desperation has been more force, with nothing to sweeten the pot at all.

The very best thing we could do now would be to pull out, period. These folks have a long history of glorious civilizations, and would likely sort themselves back out after a period of turmoil (one that would be far less deadly than leaving the US military in place for years). Since we waged an illegal war against that country, we do owe them rebuilding, and should be prepared to deliver materials to whatever government presents itself, whether we like it or not.

That's a pipe dream, of course. Likely we'll be there for years, with the US death toll rising steadily and 10 Iraqis dying for every US soldier, until they finally become organized enough to throw us out. I can see no other outcome. Bush's idiocy has gone too far.

[coalition_unwilling]

8. BushCo's principal mistake was assuming

that Iraqi people were just as stupid as American people and that Iraqi people could be played for chumps the way BushCo played American people for chumps.

Sorry, Iraqis are very well-educated and they could see right through the rhetoric of "liberation" and "reconstruction".

Amidst all the sadness, one has to admire a people who refused to let themselves be "spun", aka "chumped", the way Americans were.

[elehhhhna]

5. Joe Sixpack doesn't care. He's usually drunk and those people are brown.

[Dem Agog]

6. That's partly my point...

What will it take for Joe Sixpack to care about what's going over there in that foreign country with its "brown people"? When will it occur to that NASCAR fan that * fucked us by invading Iraq, and exactly how? How do you get him to empathize with the situation, to realize that if it were his son gunned down in the streets, he'd be fighting back too?

Why does no one get that? Why does no one care?

[sandersadu]

7. You're right

I've been saying this for a while. You can never win this war because you can never take away the one thing that almost every human being has - Pride.

If someone broke into your house, raped your mother and killed your father, you'd be mad, and would never give up. Similarly if Chinese tanks rolled through the streets of Chicago. We'd never give up.

That's what we're facing in Iraq. That's why we can't win.