Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
I hate sports metaphors applied to real war.
OK, this is a rant. Probably just my mood. Probably because the person for whom I am a care-giver had a rough and restless night, and consequently so did I. Probably because I'm fighting a low-grade migraine, and everything just sort of pisses me off.
But can we fucking quit with the sports metaphors being applied to real war?
OK, it's not your fault. Maybe you, like me, just couldn't give a shit about the Superbowl, and were sick of hearing about it in every possible venue for the last week. Maybe you too heard this on NPR this morning, and wanted to tear your hair out:
"In honor of the Superbowl, it's the Fourth Quarter, we're losing, there's only a few minutes left in the game, we have the ball, and it's a long drive - but we have the chance to make the drive and win the game here."
That's from Col. Heckman, the man in charge of the transition team working with the Iraqi military, about the 'surge' of US forces into Baghdad. (Please note, there's no transcript available on the NPR site, so the spelling of the guy's name and the exact quote are my best guess from listening to the story.)
I wanted to scream at the radio: "Listen, fuckwit, this isn't some gawddamn game!"
But of course he knows that. He's there, probably dodging bullets and IEDs, doing the best he can with the clusterfuck mission he's been handed. And by using this "game" metaphor in trying to explain what is going on to us stupid fucking lemmings, he grabs hold of the one thing which has occupied the country's attention: sports.
Gah. Too many of us think this way. Too many of our leaders think this way. Sports metaphors, as if all we had to do is keep 'playing' for a few more minutes, and then we'll all have a shower and go home to our lives. As though there weren't hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, a regional war brewing that could well bring the whole fucking house of cards down around our heads.
I can forgive Col. Heckman. I can't forgive our leaders who think of our soldiers, of the people of Iraq, as nothing more than their own fucking fantasy football game.
Just bring them home, for fuck's sake.
Jim Downey
Cross posted to dKos.
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If this were a video game,
If this were a video game, we would have long passed the point at which I would have reset to the last save point and started leveling up. You can't do that in real life, so we can only try to find our way out of this.
Unfortunately, I don't think there is a way out, we've stepped into a situation that we cannot escape. If we leave Iraq the violence will get worse. Our soldiers will be safe, but we will be responsible for the situation (we are reguardless of whether or not we leave), a lot of people can't handle causing death on that large a scale, and at this point their only consolation is that being there we perhaps lessen the brunt of the violence on the Iraqi people. If we do the troop surge as Bush wishes, no effect, drop in the bucket. Pretty much the only way we could hope to overwhelm the terrorists with power at this point in time is to reinstate the draft and send even more people to their deaths. And what would be obtained by doing such a thing? Nothing, nothing at all, Iraq would be just another occupied country, it's people just another subjugated people, and America would be just another superpower ruled by a power-hungry man. A superpower in which, for all their talk, the people did nothing to stop this, a country in which the illusion of democracy kept the people from acting on their concienses, because they thought that their voices alone would matter.
Respectfully I disagree
The United States is most certainly not responsible for the intertribal animosity between the shiite and sunni muslims. Such animosity long predates the founding of this country. What the the idiots in the Bush administration are responsible for is not accurately predicting the consequences of removing Saddam's strong central government. Which I and many others did long before a shot was fired. That is provided that you think think this was actually a mistake on their part rather than planned chaos. Anyway. They will kill each other if the U.S. forces stay. They will kill each other if the U.S. forces leave. The only difference is that in the second option the U.S. forces are not dying too. The killing will not stop until another strong man takes power or Balkanization succeeds. Iraq should never have been a country in the first place. British map makers don't dictate reality.
That animosity isn't that deeply rooted
Iraq was for a long time like Yugoslavia, in that people didn't care that much about Sunni-Shi'a distinctions. Saddam started playing on them after the Gulf War in order to gain power and prevent the people from banding together, and even after the 2003 invasion, there was a good chance of rescuing Iraq from civil war. But the US screwed the entire occupation not only in starting an unnecessary war but also in managing it poorly, allowing that denominational difference to escalate to a civil war.
Bingo.
Thameron, I think you hit it right on the nose. But I would go further and say that having US troops there may actually be more of a catalyst for violence than anything - who wants to have their country occupied?
It's Humpty Dumpty time.
Jim Downey
"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
All Metaphors Fail
Jim,
I don’t think your rant has anything to do with late nights, migraines, or anything else. I believe any rational person would be dazed by metaphors for war if they took the time to think about it.
Find me a metaphor:
More than a half-million excess deaths in a country.
More than a million displaced.
Children killed and maimed.
People tortured.
Personal (and public) economies destroyed.
Truth a casualty.
Innocence lost.
There is no metaphor that can capture the above. It is only war. It is also why the greatest philosophers from Cicero to Grotius to Aquinas to Orend have all held “Only as last resort” and then based on evidence “That amounts to moral certitude.”
Tully
P.S. to decrepit: Bread and Circuses. Bread and Circuses.
Bread and Circuses, indeed.
There's truth in that - the inappropriate use of sports metaphors and our obsession with sports has always made my teeth ache. But I don't usually give in to ranting unless there's another trigger.
And 'Boy, Howdy', about the Bread & Circuses comment.
Jim Downey
"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
The skyline of Chicago
The skyline of Chicago the night before "the game" had three buildings with Super Bowl-related patterns on them, spelled out in the carefully managed windowshades. When i think of the coordinative effort it took to put the Bears logo in office window lights on the side of a skyscraper, it makes me want to puke. Not because there's anything wrong with enjoying a game (though i get more fun tossing a kitty toy around with my cat) but because it reveals a cultural fixation on somthing that is of NO IMPORTANCE AT ALL.
It. absolutely. frackking. does. not. matter. at. all. who wins the frackking Super Bowl. How about putting the number of dead soldiers on the side of a skyscraper?