Wow, I’ve been back in the States a couple of days now, and I haven’t posted anything on Iraq.<\/p>\n
To be honest, having taken an enforce break from it, I was kind of hesitant to pick up that banner again. It’s such a tiring effort in the face of what feels <\/i>like short-sighted, misguided, or (on occasion) plain evil blather, over and over and over again. The same things have been said, back and forth, so frequently, to so little effect, that I’d rather just let events take their course and t’hell with it.<\/p>\n
Well, fortunately, some folks <\/a>don’t feel the same way, so I feel obliged to post this article<\/a> which, I think, sums up the present case as well as anything else.<\/p>\n The answer is that it’s about all of those things together. What makes Iraq unique is not that it’s a brutal dictatorship, that it has terrorist ties, that it sits on gobs of oil, that it’s invaded its neighbors, or that it’s used weapons of mass destruction to wipe out people whenever it saw fit — no, what makes it unique is that all these things apply.<\/i><\/p>\n It’s called the big picture — and picking apart just one part of it, even if possible, does little to dismiss the whole. To some degree, this as been abetted by the Bush administration not talking about the big picture side of it, either because it keeps getting dragged back into the particulars, as though each one must suffice for war, or because it raises some implications (discussed in the comments to the article) that would themselves raise some irrelevant but difficult arguments.<\/p>\n It’s time to get on with it, and shift the argument to how best to clean up the mess afterwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wow, I’ve been back in the States a couple of days now, and I haven’t posted anything on Iraq. To be honest, having taken an enforce break from it, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":23146,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/21\/unblogged-bits-fri-21-oct-11-2330.html","url_meta":{"origin":4060,"position":0},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Fri. 21-Oct-11 2330)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 21-Oct-11 11:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... Superhero Shows: Space Ghost and Batman Join Forces! - Wow. That was ... awesome. Goofy, but awesome. (I was SUCH a Space Ghost fan as a kid.) Massive 15-year study finds no link between\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Animation \/ Cartoons"","block_context":{"text":"Animation \/ Cartoons","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-cartoons"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":22745,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/22\/unblogged-bits-thu-22-sep-11-2330.html","url_meta":{"origin":4060,"position":1},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Thu. 22-Sep-11 2330)","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 22-Sep-11 11:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... Bachmann Proposes to Eliminate All Taxes - Wow. Incoherent, much? So we're going to eliminate the income tax, maybe the sales tax ... perhaps we'll just go to excise fees, like in the pre-income\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17061,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/04\/07\/unblogged-bits-for-thu-8-apr-2010-200am.html","url_meta":{"origin":4060,"position":2},"title":"Unblogged Bits for Thu, 8 Apr 2010, 2:00AM","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 7-Apr-10 11:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... An evening in the heart of humanity Eating eggs for breakfast helps reduce calorie consumption throughout the day by 18 percent - Eggs for the Win! (Especially with bacon!) DOS Walkout - Why do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51469,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/15\/rt-lolgop-jeb-bush-my-father-invaded-iraq-too-little.html","url_meta":{"origin":4060,"position":3},"title":"RT @LOLGOP Jeb Bush: My father invaded Iraq too little","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 15-Jun-15 3:27pm","format":false,"excerpt":"RT @LOLGOP Jeb Bush: My father invaded Iraq too little My brother invaded Iraq too much. I'll invade Iraq just right! View on Twitter","rel":"","context":"In "~Tweets"","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4160,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/01\/27\/breach_load_ii.html","url_meta":{"origin":4060,"position":4},"title":"Breach load II","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 27-Jan-03 10:22am","format":false,"excerpt":"To quote from that pesky UN Resolution again (emphasis mine): 3. Decides that, in order to begin to comply with its disarmament obligations, in addition to submitting the required biannual...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27286,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/04\/01\/top-10-lessons-from-iraq.html","url_meta":{"origin":4060,"position":5},"title":"Top 10 Lessons from Iraq","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 1-Apr-12 11:45am","format":false,"excerpt":"As someone who supported the Iraq invasion (in part because of my own \"faulty intelligence\"), In the end, the Iraq invasion and war and counter-insurgency and nationbuilding effort really only accomplished one positive thing: it got rid of Saddam Hussein. That's not a bad thing, but it's hardly worth the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}