The Pain of Pundits

Why? Why, why, why in the name of the nine night demons and the seven Lords of Hell do I listen to political talk on the radio or on television? They are all idiots. The talking heads on the right are pompous, brain dead twits and the ones on the left are worse because they are sanctimonious brain dead twits! I listen to these people on the radio and I end up screaming at them. (It must look real good to people driving by) Tonight I was listening to News and Notes on NPR. I do this all the time, I think I do it for the same reason I read blogs that drive me nuts too; I just want to know what those I disagree with are thinking. I’m not sure I can keep it up much longer though. If I have to listen to one more sanctimonious nitwit declaiming about how the General all say it will take 400,000 troops to pacify Baghdad I’ll scream. (The Generals have said 400,000 troops were what they would have wanted to pacify IRAQ, not Baghdad)

I know what the sides think, one side thinks our military is composed of sweet little children who should be brought home RIGHT NOW and tucked safely into bed lest something bad happen to them (Except when those troops are murderous racists slaughtering and torturing innocents), the other thinks the soldiers are HEROS, nobly striving to carry light to the world. Both sides are full of it. The military is made up of adults who have voluntarily signed up to be there. ADULTS who knew when they signed the paper that going to war, killing people and getting killed in return was part of the bloody job description. There is a reason in basic training that little call and response thing have answers like “Blood! Blood makes the grass grow!” Any one who has served more than one term in the military and then suddenly says, “Oh wait, I’m a conscientious Objector!” is a lying sack of crap who has played the game until he or she is called to really step up and play and then decides to quit. But it is better that they get out than they be sent to serve with real soldiers. NO soldier wants to go to war. (Well, there are a few but there are loons in every profession) But let’s face it, it is their job. It was my job once and I went. If I was asked I’d go again. But this rant is taking me away from my initial rant, talking heads as idiots. People opposed to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan look at statistics that say things like “More people have died in the fighting in Afghanistan this year than any time since the initial invasion.” and use that to say “See, Afghanistan is falling apart!” NO, more people have died because coalition forces are going into places that have always been Taliban strongholds, setting up bases and saying “Here we are, do something about it.” And when the Taliban tries to do something the Coalition forces kick their asses. Yes, there have been more deaths in Afghanistan this year than there have been since the invasion. And MOST of those deaths, the VAST majority, have been Taliban fighters. (a little fact that the Oh My God Things Are Terrible folks don’t mention.)
Let’s not let the heads on the right off the hook here either. They can defend Bush and Rumsfeld all they want but anyone with half a brain can see that the war effort has been seriously mishandled. Military analysts and others who know their business have always, since the idea of invading Iraq and deposing Saddam was first brought up, said that it would take LOTS of troops (that 400,000 number again) and about 10 years to do it. so what does our President do? Invades with less than half that, which works FINE for the invasion and conquest, and then acts like the whole process can be completed in 2 or 3 years. If I hear one more idiot politician or talking head of either side say something about us needing to “stand up the Iraqi army now to fight” I’ll scream. Do these twits not realize how long it takes to make an effective military????? The Iraqi soldiers are getting a basic training that is shorter by far than what American soldiers get, are being thrown into units whose officers and senior NCOs have as little experience as the men and then being sent off to fight a guerilla war which is the worst, most difficult kind of war you can have. It doesn’t work. You cannot make an effective military with out leadership, and developing leaders takes TIME, you can’t do it on some rush schedule. When you try, people die and unit fall apart. This was learned in the Second World War by the US when it sent whole divisions that were raised and trained together over to Europe to fight and they promptly disintegrated in the face of the battle. After that, replacements were sent to established units so that those with experience could teach those without. Why on earth do people on the left and the right think we can establish a functioning representative democracy in Iraq in less than 4 years? We occupied Germany for longer than that. Of course we get the idiots on the left who say it is pointless to try and establish a democracy in a place that has no tradition of democracy and we are doomed to failure. Yet we did it in Japan. It just takes time, which is something that we shortsighted rush rush Americans can’t seem to grasp.

I am not a real big fan of President Bush. I think he screwed things up in Iraq by rushing into the war without having a good plan in place for what to do after the invasion. (if he had a real plan, I have yet to figure out exactly what it involved.) While I never really liked it when he kept saying “Stay the course” I couldn’t argue with him on that issue because to sin an insurgency takes TIME, lots of time. You have to have troops on the ground fighting the insurgents while you are building a real alternative political structure that those insurgents can later become a part of once they realize they can’t win militarily. Rushing the process, cobbling together an unstable and unwieldy government while out an out telling the insurgents that if they hang on long enough we will go away and they can do what they will is no way to win anything. But, that seems to be the route that the US has chosen. WE went in and broke a country, (not a really stable or great country I’ll grant you but…) and now we are going to pull out leaving a burning festering wound that will haunt the region for a LONG time (and come back to bit us on the ass I am sure) And then the pompous twits of the right can say, See, it is all the fault of the Liberal Mainstream Media, and the sanctimonious twits can look at the mess and say, See, we told you it wouldn’t work.

Can anyone sense that I am really frustrated??????