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There was a thread here yesterday -- a long one -- from a returning soldier who complained that people on DU were bashing the troops. Although most on that long thread categorically denied that there was any such bashing -- or that it only came from a tiny portion of DUers -- I suspect that this is the kind of post he was referring to.
And I think it is very difficult for anyone with a functioning intellect to believe that the troops are TOTALLY innocent any more than they are totally to blame for the horrors that happen in war.
The point regarding hate radio is well taken. Early in the invasion, there was someone interviewed on a radio show -- probably on NPR because that's all that's ever on in our vehicle -- who said he didn't care if there was any link between Saddam and bin laden, only that he was there in Iraq to kill in revenge for 9/11 and then go home.
At the time, too, we here on DU debated with a poster I'm sure many of us will remember (and not miss at all) who insisted U.S. troops would NEVER, EVER, EVER under any circumstances do anything "bad." Yet we have seen too many times that under suitable circumstances, people will behave badly. If they are stressed out enough, pressured enough, are told inaccurate information, or have no information at all, they will do things they would not do under "normal" circumstances. I have personally seen this kind of mob psychology in action on two separate occasions. Fortunately, the results were not tragic; the participants afterward were nothing more than embarrassed and a little bemused at what silliness they'd been induced to commit, and they had learned a valuable lesson (I hope they did, anyway) in how to keep themselves under control when all around them is becoming chaos.
I think we have chaos in Iraq right now, not necessarily on a large scale but on a whole bunch of small scales. And I think we're going to see more and more and more of this kind of easily avoidable small catastrophe. And I think we, on the home front and the peace front, need to keep our wits about us and not fall into either trap -- that of blaming the troops for everything bad -or- exonerating them completely.
And at the same time, I think we have to look beyond the individual events, as one poster above has said, and look to see what other motives, opportunities, and benefits may be intertwined in these actiobns. is it so inconceivable that parties known or unknown might indeed want to protect looted antiquities? Is it so inconceivable that parties known or unknown might want to make Iraq so unattractive to "foreign" diplomats that they put their troops in place but ask for no responsibility?
I'm not usually a tinfoil hatter, but I think policy is its own kind of conspiracy, and I think -- gee, I'm doin' an awful lotta thinkin' this early in the morning! :smile: -- we need to keep that notion very clearly in sight.
Tansy Gold
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