Do we really question the logic....

[Polemicist]

Of "truisms" we hear regularly quoted in the media? Do we stop to think for a moment and consider the logic of broadly held concepts of policy? Or do we as consumers of mass media, busy with our every day life, tend to accept as true concepts that if we were to ponder the rationality, would seem absurd?

Why is the presence of American troops necessary to "hold Iraq together and prevent civil war"? We hear this over and over again in the media, endlessly on cable news shows, in articles in the newspaper, and in the evening news. But do we ever stop to consider how truly absurd this notion really is?

Consider for a moment all the other places on earth that somehow manage to exist without dependence upon American troops for stability. If we stop and move outside the spin zone, we must acknowledge that almost all the nations in the world, manage somehow to govern themselves without an American military presence. Is there some significant superiority these nations have over the Iraqis that makes this possible?

But Iraq is ethnically divided and might fall apart. When we consider the ethnicity of the people of nations throughout the world, we find that this is true of most nations. Africa is filled with countries who's population is divided by tribal affiliations and somehow these governments manage to balance the desires and demands of their diverse peoples. And they do so without American military assistance.

But we can't allow Iraq to fall into civil war. Well, why not? No one wishes conflict upon the people of a nation and it's a fact that we have worked for over three years (despite some glaring mistakes in judgment) to attempt to act as an impartial arbiter in Iraq to bring together the various ethnic factions into a stable government. Civil war, death and destruction are the penalties for Iraqi inaction and failure in building a fair and stable government. When we insulate Iraq from the consequences of their own failure, we perpetuate that failure. Parents can't eternally chose for their children and all must at some point stand on their own. Iraq must now stand up. For those that self style themselves as the "party of individual responsibility", our political opposition sure embraces the "white man's burden" in Iraq.

But a failed state in Iraq will cause regional instability. Iran will exert dominance over large swaths of Iraq and Kurdish desire for autonomy will be problematic for Turkey, with it's large ethnic Kurd population. Saudi oil reserves and production will be placed at risk. Well, yes. All of this is true. And all are things that must be considered. However, these factors are not new and won't go away tomorrow. They were hid under the veneer of Saddam's totalitarian rule. Should we hide them under the veneer of the American military as well? Solutions are possible for all these issues, but they must be Iraqi and regional solutions, not dictated American solutions.

Aren't we confusing our own responsibility born of toppling the Iraqi government, with the responsibility of Iraqis to form their own government and govern themselves? Is our obligation due to our mistake in invading this nation, holding us hostage to political leadership in Iraq, unwilling to make hard choices and becoming dependent upon American steel and treasure?

We understand our political leadership's unwillingness to confront the realities of the consequences of our unilateral and unnecessary invasion of a sovereign nation. We understand their position, fearing failure and blame commensurate with such failure. We know this fear of failure perpetuates the logical fallacies presented to the American public on our nation's political choices regarding this Iraq war. But our future course can't be decided looking back-wards at mistakes and hiding accountability for errors.

If our current leadership will not question the logic, then we must exchange them for those that will and we must begin real concrete discussions of timetables to extract ourselves from the quicksand of Iraq, for our nation's benefit, as well as the ultimate benefit of the people of Iraq.

[iamahaingttta]

1. "Why is the presence of American troops necessary...

...to 'hold Iraq together and prevent civil war'"?

The presence of American troops is necessay to ENSURE civil war in order to kill off as many people as possible because they are sitting on OUR oil.

That was the agenda all along, and it seems to be working quite well. Oil company profits are at an all time high, and it will only get better once the oil companies can swoop into an Iraq (and Iran?) emptied of people to extract the oil.

They don't, never did and never will give two shits about the "Iraqi" people. Or anyone else for that matter, including you and me.

[The Wielding Truth]

2. As cynical as that seems

I believe events are proving you are right.

[Warpy]

3. I question every word that falls from their lying lips

and that means I scream at them nonstop during the nightly propaganda hour and that's why I stopped watching the news on 11/03/04. It was the lying by omission, the biased language, the silly assumptions that "everybody" thinks a certain thing must be true because that's the official view.

Reading Vance Packard when I was ten and taking a course in symbolic logic in my late teens gave me the tools to deconstruct propaganda. The evening news has sunk thoroughly into propaganda since the late 70s. When Reagan repeatedly killed the Fairness Doctrine in the 80s, the game was over.

The local channel 10 runs the weather precisely at ten past the hour, so I can tune into that and escape the rest, and the weather has a faint chance of being correct. The rest of the blather during the propaganda hour is utterly useless, and I prefer reruns of The Simpsons, on at the same time.

The Simpsons tell me more about the state of country and world than the TV news ever did.

[valerief]

4. Uh, the media is a corporate propaganda machine. They lie.

No believes them, because no listens to them anymore.