Small town bucks the trend in backing war that took its sons

[funkybutt]

By Tim Reid in Houma, Louisiana
Tragedy in Iraq has increased support for President Bush in the bayous

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-10889-1659019,00.html

(snip)
January 6 was Houma’s darkest day. In one instant, a roadside bomb killed six soldiers from the town’s National Guard unit as they patrolled in their Bradley Fighting Vehicle outside Baghdad. Two more were killed several days later.
It was a shattering blow for such a close-knit community. Few other small American towns have lost so many sons and husbands in Iraq.

None has buried so many in one week. The deaths represented the biggest single loss by a National Guard unit in Iraq.

(snip)
But in Houma, National Guard recruitment is steady, in a state that has lost more soldiers per capita than any other in the US.

Dr Sorley said: “In a place like Houma, when you have a stake in it, even to the point of losing life, the commitment is such that thinking the cause is reckless would make the loss unbearable. That’s the psychology.”

[FlemingsGhost]

1. Take that, "Intelligent Designers"... Darwin was right!

Mother Nature always finds a way to thin the herd.

If you are dumb enough to join up now, you are just smart enough to know how to die.

[pocket]

2. exactly

and I support our troops decision to leave the gene pool and avoid a lifetime of voting repub.

[Straight Shooter]

3. thinking the cause is reckless would make the loss unbearable

In other words, let's sacrifice a few more so the initial sacrifice will appear to be worth it.

OMG. :banghead:

[warrens]

4. If a deluded town like that ever wakes up

They'll make those contractors in Fallujah look like child's play. That psychologist is right. They can't face facts because it would be too painful, so they just make up a bearable reality.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

9. How do you know the article isn't some propaganda ploy...

...maybe they actually know what's going on, but they're being used by the NeoCons as another set of "heroes".

[funkybutt]

11. The writer of this article was at the anti-war march I attended yesterday

Cindy Sheehan was there and she spoke. Some friends of mine who spoke to him said that most of the people in Houma wouldnt even talk to him and that he got the impression that he wasn't welcome there if he was writing a story about greiving families' doubt about the war. I suspect he just made the best out of what he had to work with.

I didn't get the impression from the article that he was calling them "heroes' at all. Although I can see how someone might want to spin it that way. I saw it as somewhat of a psychological assessment of this town and how they seem to be in denial.

[Gay Green]

5. These same stupid heads helped put David Vitter in the US Senate...

...because he said he would be able to get more money from Shrub to save the Louisiana coastal wetlands which surround their town.

And Shrub this week announced this week that he decided against sharing revenues from oil and gas drilling with the coastal states. Sen. Vitter was shocked by this.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/washington/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1119162758284450.xml

Much as I don't want the the most ecologically productive set of coastal marshes in the US to simply disappear, it would be poetic justice if their little rotten borough were to wash into the sea. :grr:

[Ysolde]

16. That's a tough one, isn't it?

Kind of like the Alaskans crying for ANWAR to be opened. Kind of like so many poor and working class voting for Shrub. Sometimes the dark side of me just wants to scream, "Serves you right! I'll be fine, but you won't! You idiot are getting what you deserve!"

AAGGHH! The problem with the loss of the wilds is that, in the end, we all suffer.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

6. Umm... throwing good money after bad, anyone? Or in this case,

flesh and blood...

[cliss]

7. The reason why people are losing faith in this "adventure"

is because things are not getting better in Iraq. In fact, they are steadily spiraling into Dante's Inferno.

I think Americans were willing to trust in their "leader's" hare-brained schemes to bring "democracy" and God knows whatever other reasons he used for going in.

They were willing to give it a certain amount of time for things to get better.

But they're not, and now predictably, people are starting to change their minds.

"It's the RESULTS, stupid" (secret message to Bush):smoke:

[dArKeR]

13. This war, these people, all have made me lose faith in religion!

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. Perhaps recruitment has held steady because there are no other jobs.....

...to be had. Perhaps more people should have been interviewed to find out what those people REALLY think about Iraq and the losses they've sustained.

This smacks of a propaganda job, IMHO.

[funkybutt]

12. sounds like ripe grounds for an anit-recruitment operation

Someone needs to wake this town up.

[MADem]

10. Vietnam mentality, writ small

How many will it take before they finally realize that it's a black hole, an untenable proposition?

This is the same attitude we saw in Vietnam, that to leave would obviate the sacrifice of others. It was only when the numbers got too great, and the "progress" nonexistant, that the only option was getting the fuck out of there.

One nation's war on terra (or communism) is another nation's civil war--and the two do not jive. When will we figure that shit out?

[Wright Patman]

14. The people in the Deep South

never will.

This is the ancestral home of "lost causes" going back hundreds and even thousands of years.

[MADem]

15. Thousands???

Hmmm.

I think they are like any other bunch, myself. They are personally invested through career choices and culture in this misadventure, and they don't yet realize, or refuse to acknowledge, that denial is not a river in Egypt.

When it cuts too close to the bone, they will wake up...a lot like Tricky Dick's "silent majority" eventually did. It just has to get personal to the point of deep, abiding pain. Someone they respect will finally hoist the horseshit flag, and the rest will follow along. They just need that "someone" to step forward.

Hopefully, it will happen sooner, rather than later.

[daleo]

17. It is a bit like losing money on an investment

Lives and money are obviously very different, but the tendency to keep sinking resources into a losing investment is what keeps a lot of confidence artists in clover. It is hard to admit that you have been burnt. That is one of the things Bush and the war party count on.

[confludemocrat]

18. Nobody likes that loved ones died in vain (for lies); Sorry, they have.

And whose fault is that?

[GetTheRightVote]

19. I have to go along with you, I have email these same thoughts myself

It is time the truth been published to the American People as to whether we were lied to concerning the reasons for war against another nation such as Iraq. This nation's decision to go to war has lost us many American soldiers/children.

If we are to bleed for you then at least let it be based on the truth and not lies for otherwise our children have dead in vain and this can not and will never be acceptable for the love ones they leave behind or to the American people for which they fought.

I ask, " As their life spirit left their bodies has the spirit of this great nation lost it's conscienous as well ?? " If it has lost it then no child of mine will ever serve it.

This nation and it's governing Elected has no choose but that of the obvious, defend our right as American Citizens who bleed for you to know the truth which began the conflict so far from home in the sands of a foreign nation where the light in their eyes faded away, lost in the grains which are endless.

[funkybutt]

20. It's obviously DENIAL....

which is a stage in the greiving process. Just give them time. They'll realize what happened.