Nov 27, 2006
1350th Day
Today we’ve been in Iraq longer than the United States was in World War II. In the over three and a half years after the Americans finally entered World War 2, the allies defeated Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese Empire, suicide bombers and all.
How friggen great were our grandparents (my grandfather is mentioned in this)? And how much, exactly, do we suck?
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QR Code DVD 
It’s a very different type of war. WW II was about overwhelming force. The US Military is good at flattening things – then and now. The Russians were pretty good at that too, and by the time they had both finished, there wasn’t much of Germany left. Iraq is more subtle. It’s about winning friends, setting a shining example of justice and fairness, giving people security to live in their homes, sorting out who is friend and foe in a confusing situation… unfortunately the US Army isn’t trained to do this. It’s the wrong tool for the job. The British are more the right sort of army, but woefully undermanned, underequipped and overstretched. In the end, it’s probably an impossible task anyway, however wonderful the force might be.
You are right, the British Army are considerably better at that kind of thing than the Americans…
Has there ever been an example of an invasion into country that “we” decided to “liberate” which was a success?
The British army has had a lot more practice in the kind of tactics needed in Iraq. I’m so glad you didn’t re-affirm one American news source that said the war in Iraq had “…now gone on longer than World War II!” (!) My wife had to resuscitate me from a fit of apoplexy!
By the way, “Sparrow Chat” has moved nest. I followed your lead and moved into ‘K2′. Couldn’t tolerate Blogger any longer. New address: http://sparrowchat.com
Still needs a bit of work. Some of the furniture has got in the wrong place, but it’s just about habitable.
Heh RJ! The perfect opportunity to roll out the (very) old “Not the Nine O’Clock News” sketch in which they claimed that the US was determined to make up for being rather late to the last two World Wars by being *really early* for the next one…
well if it keeps going that nob Bush will die die die soon. And he’ll never get a heros welcome. It’s over for him soon. But I’m glad that I’m not in his country so I don’t have to see his lying face. Can wait for the movie about him being so horrible.
I would argue that the whole thing was a complete mistake. Actually, the US involvement in the second world war was pretty much wrong, too, coming three years later than it ought to have. In fact, if the USA had become involved in 1939 when they ought to have done, the Bush family would not have had time to make a huge wadge of money dealing with Nazi Germany and we probably wouldn’t be in this situation now, since it’s basically impossible for a normal family to produce a US president- you seem to need to be rich.
The Iraq war was, as we all know, justified on a pretext. They looked for that pretext from the first moment that they had the first excuse to. I suspect, in fact, that the Saudis orchestrated the entire rise of the Taliban and that jazz purely so that the USA could attack Iraq and prevent Saddam Hussein from destabilizing OPEC’s currency balance…