Lest we forget.

[tim]

Seven years ago, about 3000 people died in a terrorist attack in the United States. Ever since, at least 87,000 civilians have died in Iraq in a war that the US started as a misguided attempt at retaliation or a cleverly calculated use of pretext. The war has met with little domestic protest, and in 2004, those who thought it was at least a little bit important to stop it failed to gather enough of a majority to elect a president who cared at least a little about ending the killing.

But let us put aside our past failures. This year, we have a chance to redeem ourselves. It would be wrong to say that anyone has absolute confidence that Barack Obama can or will end the war, but he is at least unbeholden to the corporate interests that keep the war going. And thus, we have no reason to believe he won't make a good-faith effort to stop the killing.

This is an area of moral certainty. If you're American, are you going to do everything you can to elect a leader who will shift our resources away from killing foreigners and back to healing our sick, employing our unemployed, cleaning our environment? Or are you going to assume that history is something that other people make and politics is other people's problem?

This is not the year for namby-pamby platitudes about how you should support whichever candidate makes you feel the warmest and fuzziest inside. If you're American, and you're not giving your time to talk to your fellow Americans about why they should support Barack Obama, then -- in a far inferior tack, but one suitable for those with crippling social anxiety or without physical energy -- you can at least write a check. If you can't write a check, and can't talk to people, then [nondenominational-deity] bless you. I'm guessing that's not so for most people reading this.

If you were going to tell me I should leave my politics out of this day, then don't. Leaving my politics out of it means leaving my politics out of it so that there's more room for your politics to fit into it.

To those of you who are eligible to vote in the United States: Nonvoters, McCain voters, I'm not asking you to defend yourselves and so I don't need to hear your defenses. Please, just go sit in the corner for a while and think about why you hate your country so much.

Comments

[anemone.livejournal.com]

This is an area of moral certainty. If you're American, are you going to do everything you can to elect a leader who will shift our resources away from killing foreigners and back to healing our sick, employing our unemployed, cleaning our environment?

I lack moral certainty. I fear that leaving Iraq will result in more civilian deaths than staying there. (We shouldn't have gone in in the first place, but that's a done deal.)

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

People say this. I don't understand it. We fucked up their country. How are we going to do anything by staying there other than continuing to fuck it up? The definition of insanity comes to mind.

[arisrabkin.livejournal.com]

My brother is actually over there. He thinks that in his limited corner, we're accomplishing useful things that the Iraqis couldn't. Like training the Iraqis.

[sethg]

IIRC Obama's Iraq plan allows for troops to remain in Iraq for training the Iraqis. It's just the combat troops that are going to be (gradually) withdrawn.

[arisrabkin.livejournal.com]

*nod* Remember that if you're going to have a lot of trainers, you're going to need a lot of troops to protect the trainers and their logistical tail. You might get down to 50,000 troops, over a year or two.

But that looks suspiciously like the McCain/Bush plan. Which is fine and dandy, but makes it much less of a salient issue for voting purposes.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

...the difference, if nothing else, being that Bush has never acted in good faith before, so we have no reason to think he's planning otherwise. And to the extent that McCain hasn't differentiated himself from Bush, the same applies to him.

[anemone.livejournal.com]

(1) Their country was fucked to start with.

(2) It was only kept from being more fucked by brutality that kept everything organized and understandable.

It's superfucked now largely because there's disorder. No one knows who the ultimate "winner" is going to be, and they are making plays to be that winner. We have imposed some sort of order on the country, and our troops do some stuff there. When we leave, there will be more frantic clamoring for whatever empty spots we leave behind. Maybe when the dust settles, all will be better than now, but the dust won't settle for a while.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, I guess I'm just saying (and you can see this as me revising my point ex post facto if you want) that the area of moral certainty is this: One candidate will not, as far as anyone can tell, make a good-faith effort to promote long-term peace in Iraq (or anywhere). The other will, as far as anyone can tell, and whether that means pulling the troops out immediately or not, I don't know.

[karenbynight.livejournal.com]

It's also superfucked because, while ousting the brutality and creating the disorder, we also bombed the hell out of their infrastructure. Which was rather inevitable if you accept the premise that we should be in there bombing for regime change. But civilization is really hard to do without water, electricity, roads, and schools, and we promised them a Marshall Plan. I heard McCain say this week that the U.S. has enough financial problems, that we need to make the Iraqis pay for their own reconstruction. I can't disagree with the premise, but given our previous promises combined with how much we've destroyed their civilization in the name of helping them, the conclusion is really unethical.

I don't consider myself a democrat or a republican, but I'm voting for Obama because I believe that the people holding the two highest offices in our land should be people I wouldn't snub at a party because I don't approve of their ethics.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

People say this. I don't understand it. We fucked up their country. How are we going to do anything by staying there other than continuing to fuck it up?

That doesn't logically follow. Conquering a country usually involved "fucking it up." You seem to be arguing that a conqueror should never reconstruct, which would be a rather nihilistic way of war, to say the least!