[Peace-discuss] Wrong reasons

[illyes at uiuc.edu]

I don't quite agree, John, that my barber has changed her mind for the wrong reasons. We must all make the best decisions we can given the constraints of what we know and understand. Inside of those constraints, she made the decision for the right reasons.

When I speak to folks on the right, one point I try to make is that, even if one believed that the invasion of Iraq was correct, one must also ask if we had the means to carry out what we intended. Because if we did not, all the death and destruction would be for nothing, and would be an enormous evil. This is a separate argument from whether we were right to invade, and it is valid and important.

Bob

peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net

At 03:26 PM 7/20/2007, Bob Illyes wrote:

>I just had an interesting conversation with my barber that I'd like to 
>relate. She's Republican, a strong supporter of the military, and from a 
>military family. Her son returned safely from Iraq. She has a relative 
>there now. I always talk to her about Iraq and about the corruption 
>surrounding the administration. I try to do it without ideology, since 
>doing otherwise would annoy her so much that it would prevent communication.
>
>She has finally turned against our actions in Iraq. "Too many kids are 
>dying." she said, "too many fathers and mothers." She thinks that our 
>effort in Iraq has been so mismanaged that there is no way to save the 
>situation. She also said that Air Force people were currently being 
>transferred to the Army to bolster it.
>
>This is, of course, the tip of the iceberg. Congress needs to take a 
>closer look at opinion outside of the beltway. There is no hope for the 
>neocons in the administration, of course, so they should continue to study 
>their navels.
>
>We'll have to wait a while for my janitor to come around, but I'm sure he 
>will.


If your janitor does, though, it'll be for the wrong reasons.  It'll be for 
the same reasons that your barber expressed - that the war in Iraq has been 
"mismanaged" and that too many American soldiers are dying.  Not that the 
war was a blasphemous fiasco from the very start, and that too many Iraqis 
are also dying.  Not that our entire foreign policy is founded on lies and 
corruption.

I often imagine where we'd be today if the hundreds of billions of dollars 
spent on destroying lives and property in Iraq had instead been spent on 
research into photovoltaic cells and other forms of alternative energy.

John Wason