Iraqi policemen in Najaf, Iraq on Monday, Feb. 7, 2005, living it up.
(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Iraqi policemen in Baghdad, Iraq on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2005, dying it up.
(AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
US soldiers at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, Iraq on Monday, Feb. 7, 2005, eating it up.
(AP Photo/Chris Tomlinson)
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14 replies on “Scenes from a newly democratic Iraq”
Do you mean to infer that American soldiers aren’t in danger or doing their share of the work? Because it’s not altogether true. After they eat that Burger King, they’ll probably go on patrol, where they will be threatened by some IEDs and other various inrugent treats.
this is probably the most offensive entry on this site to date.
low culture indeed
no, jp is right on target there. fat, lazy soldiers are losing this war just like they lost nam.
I thought it was just a tableau of wartime absurdities. That our allies must hide their faces while we live in isolated little Americas. Demonstrating not who fights and who doesn’t (because our burger shacks have been hit and hit hard as we sadly know) but the cultural gap between Americans who think Iraq is an America-in-Training and even our Iraqi allies who know, know like shrapnel through kevlar, that things are so far from being all right they have to hide their faces just to have a job. At least that’s the way I saw it.
didi, i’m sure that is how it was intended. and it’s effective. it’s all mind-boggling, but the burger king thing is just eerie. what’s next, selling ad rights on the soldier’s uniforms? perhaps each operation can have a corporate sponsor.
‘this nightime raid brought to you by…Beef!’
Didi, i can’t help but notice an absurd contradiction in your opinions. you rush to criticize the tactic of self preservation used by Iraqi guardsen when they cover their faces, yet in another thread you state:
“In politics and history there is no consolation of ‘well, they played fair and didn’t stoop.’ The stakes are too high.”
nowhere have i seen an instance where that view is more fitting than the battle against those who want to prevent a free Iraq with elections.
Frankly, I think the whole post is absurd. The implication is clearly that while Iraqis die, American soldiers eat at Burger King. I know people in Iraq, and that’s not the case, at least as far as I know. I mean, Iraqis do die, and there are Burger Kings, but Americans are dying too. And I’m sure that more than one of the American soldiers that has died joined because he thought he would fight al-Qaeda. To be honest, I don’t really even have words to describe the way that this post upsets me. Maybe I’m just taking it to personal, I don’t know, but you can criticise almost everything about the Iraq war and I won’t stop you, in fact I might very well join you, but don’t criticize the soldiers, because they are doing their best. Soldiers didn’t do this to Iraq, misguided policy did.
You guys are really cool. I wish I could think up cool stuff like that. And you even sneaked in US troop hatred in the mix. You guys are awsome. Keep on fighting the power. It worked really well last November.
pictures + snarky nihilistic sayings = cutting edge political commentary!
Hornsy, you dope, I’m not criticizing them for covering their faces, I’m criticizing the facile notion that all Iraq needs is for men of good will to stand up and be counted. These policemen, presumably men of good will, know it is more complicated and dangerous. I know enough about the third world to know that covering your face is often not as it is in the Anglo-Saxon world a way of concealing identity for wrongdoing (the ‘Black Laws’ of English Common Law consider covering one’s face in public to itself be a sign of wrongdoing and are used in this country to force klansmen to show their faces at rallies). It is a way of concealing your identity for do-goodery because you are operating in an area in which the authorities cannot guarantee your safety or that of your family. Anti-mafia cops do it in Sicily and below the mezzogiorno in Italy. So, Hornsy, I can safely assume you don’t know enough about the history and politics of face-covering to have anything approaching a valid opinion of my post. You are ignorant and as such while you may have things like ‘feelings’ about things you do not have ‘opinions.’ This is why children should be seen and not heard. Or, in your case, offline and not read.
hi there, nameless soldier: i wanted to clarify one thing….there was no intention of saying or implying that US soldiers were lazy or sloppy or standign by while the trained iraqi police force perishes….it was more just a very very very simple juxtaposition of things we’ve brought to the country in the past two years, that’s all. no elaborate “American troops suck!” agenda.
Didi, i’m sorry to call you out on your double standard. the litany of insults you spewed in that last post show that i caught you flat. i must have really hit a nerve.
i appreciate youre long post about how much you know, but the issue was about the stakes being too risky to take a high ground in Iraq.
not the election you lost.
boo hoo.
Sorry, Hornsy, I won my election. I’m the Prime Minister of Iraq! Yay!
Still no double standard, I never criticised those guys. I insult you because I like to, douchebag! Now run along and have a snack and take your nap so you can get up in time for ‘Postcrads from Buster.’
my favorite thing about this site is that posts can’t be edited.
Didi, i simply proposed a double standard that i saw in your comments. there was no animosity.
but you felt compelled to let loose with such vitriol that i can only conclude you are angry about something – and not someone.
that something is that you don’t want to admit your double standard. and the insults keep coming like this is 4th grade recess.
the notion that the people of iraq can govern themselves and work towards providing security for themselve is not a “facile notion”. that statement of yours actually borders on racist. do you count the people of that nation as rubes?
do you think they are not capable of doing what countless other nations in the world have done?
like most die hard defeatists, your views are simplistic, myopic and trite.
you have no vision for the world, just the sad shattered view of a broken optimist. i’m sorry things didn’t work out for you in life.
Hornsy, you’re making things up out of whole cloth. Now, please, the grown ups are talking. I will continue to insult you until your behavior improves. Dorkenstein.