The New controversial talk-of-the-town WeSpeak
Matt Nestler '10's views on Iraq Withdrawal
Excerpt (click on the link to read the whole thing):
"There exists a segment of the global Muslim community that hates the idea of America; they hate the fact that we are free, that we can freely dissent, and that we enjoy vast freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution...The lesson we must take from all this is that we cannot abandon our commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have already seen what would happen if we just packed up and left. The Islamic extremists would most certainly gain control of the country and Iraq would be overrun as a training camp for Islamic terrorism."No comment.
31 comments:
Can we, collectively, opt for ignoring this?
FTA: "right now our troops need our support more than ever."
Here's a question I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to: why do our troops deserve our support? It's a voluntary position, and it's a paid job. Why should I support the troops anymore than I support teachers, doctors, or firefighters?
Why? The first sentence is factually correct. And ignoring that will cause more problems than Bush and Cheney ever did.
@ 11:26
Do you honestly believe that? That somehow America's "freedom" is an existent that just really gets those Muslims' goat? That humans somehow react to abstract ideas with the same kind of intensity one associates with physical, personal attacks?
ok, to everyone who's generically "anti-war" and vaguely liberal and thinks we should just pull out of Iraq because it's a shitty situation for us to be in:
There probably isn't any rational being who is well informed about the situation in Iraq who thinks that we have a right to be there, or that we have been doing a great job. That said, do you seriously think it's a good idea to just pull out of a country torn by war that our country fucked up in the first place?
I don't agree completely with this WeSpeak, but I really don't think there's a valid argument against what Matt Nestler says in the passage quoted here. Yes, there are crazy radical Muslims in the world who virulently hate America for whatever reason (let's not exaggerate the whole freedom-hating thing), but if we just got out of Iraq without making our sincerest effort to stabilize it first, it would go even further down the shithole, probably destabilize the entire geopolitical area, and be a source of endless aggravation in the years to come.
There is an endless supply of historical evidence to back this up. We essentially created the radical regime in Iran today through neglect and ill-advised tampering in their government, paved the way for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and helped Saddam Hussein gain power in Iraq. All our recent problems with radical Islamic terrorism and despotic Middle-Eastern regimes today are directly traceable to American neglect and fuck-ups in the past. It's about time we face up and do what we can to clean up the mess, and unfortunately the situation in Iraq is now part of that.
the logistics and timeline for how and when to leave Iraq isn't the main issue. The problem is the AMERICA: WORLD POLICE attitude that's behind every word of this wespeak.
@ Sheek:
Do you really think a prolonged American presence will actually mean anything though?
Don't buy into the Bush administration's hype. The main reason why they're whipping the success of the 'surge' so hard is so as to be able to show the American people, 'hey look, we're making SO much progress', which will allow them to pass the problem of extricating the United States from Iraq on to Bush's successor in 2009. See, they know that there's no chance in hell that the US can make things work in Iraq, and they know extrication will be messy, so they're trying to shift the problem to whomever is Bush's successor.
As for why the US presence is not working, one has only to realize that, in the Sunni 'Awakening Councils' that we're putting so much faith in, are the same guys who were bombing and killing our troops 2-3 years ago. We're just giving them money and guns and power now; but it's just an alliance of convenience. Once our interests diverge, it's over, and we're back at loggerheads. It's not a lasting solution.
@ the guy who said "Why are troops any more deserving of support than doctors, teachers, etc.?"
I answer, the day you drag your pampered ass off the Wesleyan campus and put yourself in harm's way, when you risk your arms, legs, face, and life to shrapnel from IEDs and bullets, when you've been through all that kind of stuff, I'll respect your opinion. That's why I support our troops, no matter what. And until you've done that kind of shit, I'll maintain the opinion that I do, which is, you're a jackass, a loudmouth, and an ignorant moron.
To take an intentionally pragmatic attitude, I think it's incredibly arrogant, stupid, and untenable to think we can somehow "fix" something as complex as a society. We have absolutely zero idea how societies work in any meaningful sense, less so about others as compared to our own, and disregarding for the moment the argument over whether or not we "broke" Iraq, it is impossible for us to make any meaningful progress toward fixing it, in lieu of any concrete knowledge about how Iraqi (or any) society operates. Social engineering of the kind necessary is simply not possible, and that this essential fact has been ignored by the so-called "conservatives" in our country betrays just what kid of backwards, single-party pseudo-democracy we're living in.
this is just an absorbed and regurgitated party line
Diversity is good only if we agree with it.
Shame on you, XIAOXI for this cut and hatching job you did to this article. The argument about Muslims hating our freedom is NOT the main argument. Please, everyone, read the entire article and not this little segment that leaves out almost the whole thing before commenting.
Some people on this campus believe that the Middle East today is in shambles purely because of this war that we “started.” However, the reality is that the Middle East has had a tumultuous and dynamic history from its inception with the rule of the Caliphs through European colonization. The clash of civilizations is nothing new; for centuries, and long before 2003, Christians and Muslims have battled in the Crusades, the Spanish Reconquista, and the European/Ottoman struggle over the Mediterranean. The turning point in this rivalry has most certainly been the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, which vindicated the extremists while ousting the moderates. This turning point, coupled with President Carter’s inability to combat the rise of these Islamists, directly led to the current conflict. Iran immediately began to fund terrorist organizations, the most prominent one being Hezbollah, which two summers ago cowardly kidnapped Israeli soldiers, thus starting a devastating war for both countries. What many people do not realize is that this same Hezbollah had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans and Israelis decades before 9/11. To name a few prominent examples, they bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 U.S. Marines as they slept; between 1982 and 1986, suicide attacks by their operatives claimed the lives of hundreds of people, and they bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1992. In addition, have we forgotten about the failed 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center? The mastermind behind the foiled plot was a man named Ramzi Yousef, who was finally arrested in Pakistan in 1995 in an al-Qaeda safe house (yes, the same al-Qaeda). As you can see, Islamic extremists attacking the U.S. did not begin in response to the current war in Iraq, but rather has a long record.
Furthermore, in the mid 1980s, America supported the tribes of Afghanistan in defeating the Soviet Union, an important step in its ultimate destruction. The Afghans fought bravely against the Soviet invaders, and America was loved for helping expel them from their country. However, right after Soviet defeat and withdrawal, the U.S. left Afghanistan because we supposedly had more important things to worry about. We abandoned the Afghan people and look what happened: the Taliban came in and turned the country into a breeding ground of terrorism and extremism, and it was the place where Osama Bin Laden was given a safe haven before 9/11. Had we finished the job in Afghanistan (built infrastructure, foment an intellectual foundation, etc.) history may well have been different.
The lesson we must take from all this is that we cannot abandon our commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have already seen what would happen if we just packed up and left. The Islamic extremists would most certainly gain control of the country and Iraq would be overrun as a training camp for Islamic terrorism.
Thus, we must not forget history when thinking about the war in Iraq. Even though the media won’t report it, conditions are improving, and right now our troops need our support more than ever. It is with this that I implore each and every one of you to reconsider your stance on the war because frankly, the future of our world depends on it.
I have to agree with Anonymous @ 12:18.
Taking one single, only-partially-representative paragraph from an otherwise well-articulated Wespeak and calling that severely truncated clipping someone's "views on Iraq withdrawal," is entirely misleading.
Ok you guys, it's fairly obvious that it's a clip. I couldn't repost the entire thing on this blog. That's what the link is for.
And again, like I said in my earlier comment, what I find most irritating is the neo-imperialist world-policing attitude best represented by this excerpt but is present throughout the wespeak. Obviously this is MY point of view and MY truncating-job. I'm not trying to be unbiased, and I do take full responsibility for my irresponsibility.
Americans are so fucking stupid. Do you asshats actually believe that Muslims hate America because it embodies so much that is grand? Muslims and/or Muslim extremists hate Americans because American has always played a meddlesome role in the Muslim World that has proved to be inimical to political advancement. For a world thus crippled, the rising against America is not unreasonable or ominous, it is perfectly normal. Any undergraduate jackass who urges people to support a failing war should enlist. Of course, that will never happen.
The left have tried to engineer an American defeat in Iraq and turn it into another Vietnam. So far, thankfully, they have failed. As much as Clinton and Obama say they are against the war and will bring the troops home post haste, the dirty little secret is that, if elected,they will not do any such thing; they must avoid at all costs the stain of American defeat on their hands.
Steadyjohn, you're totally wrong. The defeat's inevitable. Your friends currently in the White House know it, and that's why they're trying to maintain that the "surge" is succeeding just long enough until they can get the hell out of there and leave their (presumably Democratic) successor to deal with it. "the stain of an American defeat on their hands" is a burden that, actually, belongs to the Bush administration, which engineered the war and totally botched the 'peace'.
to anonymous @ 3:45
actually, many Muslim extremists DO hate us for our cultural values, not just because the CIA has meddled in the Middle East since the 1950s. Yes, we engineered coups; yes, we were allied with some really bastard dictators; but, on the other hand, we armed al Qaeda and the mujahideen in order to allow them to fight the Soviets, viewed as the bigger evil, and have done a lot of other less-bad things. The fact is, certain Muslims hate us because they have an extremely fundamentalist and conservative view of Islam that compels them to resent a society as technologically advanced, as progressive, and as free as ours. Your denial of that fact, writing off Muslim extremist antipathy towards the US as solely due to our political meddlings, is completely misinterpreting the situation. Yes, clearly that plays a role, but our political meddlings actually have moved the moderates more than the extremists, by an exponential factor; and in case you didn't know, it's the extremists who are the ones flying the planes into buildings full of American civilians, NOT the moderates.
The extremists hate us for who we are. No amount of cuddly Wesleyan <3 is going to change the fact.
@ anon 12:27 & 8:
Anonymous, you're advocating a brand of imperialism that's been completely disproved by history. Your comments about Afghanistan are either chilling, or just prove that you got your shallow knowledge of the conflict from 'Charlie Wilson's War.' We need to help "build them an intellectual foundation"? What, they'll like us for imposing a Christian Eurocentric technicalistic worldview on their incredibly backward, primitive, tribalistic, non-technological society? No. They'd do the exact same thing that they're doing now in Iraq, which is, resent us for what we are. AS OCCUPIERS. AS AN OCCUPYING POWER. Most Iraqis hate us now precisely because the bullshit that we've been responsible for allowing to happen (not necessarily all of or even most of which is our fault, mind you) is more fresh in their memories than Saddam Hussein's undeniably brutal and despotic rule. It's a sad fact of history that we, who were initially greeted with flowers, are now being resented as crusading imperialists and are being shot at and bombed. People's historical memory is, unfortunately, short.
There is no way we can "solve" Iraq, at least not in the short term. I am not advocating a total immediate withdrawal "kthxbye guyz hav a gud lyfe mkay?" but something along the lines of a strategic retreat, managed much better than our exit from Vietnam. We need to cede REAL authority to Iraqi governing bodies, in order to force them to work with each other. If they don't, well, it's their problem. Our alliance with the Sunni neighborhood patrols and Awakening Councils and what have you is analogous to our relationship with the anti-Soviet mujahideen in the 1980s; once we're no longer needed, we're again the enemy. It was 5 short years from when Osama bin Laden and suchlike triumphed in Afghanistan vs. the Soviets until he came out and bombed the World Trade Center.
Who were the heroes to the Afghans and al Qaeda in Afghanistan? The US.
Why? We gave them guns and $$$, allowing them to achieve their ends and, importantly, to seize power.
Who are we working with now in Iraq?
Former anti-US Sunni extremists.
Why are they cooperating with us? We're giving them guns, $$$, and power.
first if all samuel hunnington's a clash of civilizations was in response to the political climate post cold war and has been discredited due to the fact that it stems inherently racist and problematic ideas that two cultures because they are different they cant get a long. Im pretty sure most people know someone from another culture or civilization and are still capable of having a conversation or debate with them without calling a jihad.
There are fundamentalists of every religion out there who do in fact want to harm the "american" way, but to assume that the entire region is like that is a stretch and these fundamentalist extremists represent a minority of the worlds population. There is no clash of civilizations, rather it is a clash of ideas as to how the world should look as modernity takes affect.
Secondly, the war in iraq was a failure due to poor planning. If the war had been properly planned and had succeeded in removing sadam quickly and efficiently, the war would have done great things. It would have boosted the economy from the recession post iraq war 2 as well as place the US in good world standing for removing a man who killed a million of his own people.
Also i am disgusted at those who think we should not support our troops. I am not a man who believes in war, but i believe in every human being having a value. And just because u dont agree with some politician in washington's war, doesn't mean you shouldn't value the life of an american solider just as much as the lives in an iraqi family. We dont agree with the war, but its still here and we have to deal with it the best way possible.
The resurgence of american troops worked very well recently in both lowering the amount of american and iraqi deaths. People have said that nothing has political has been done but he resurgence but iraqi people feel more confertable leaving there homes to vote and preform the basic duties of life that we take for granted.
In the end, Matt Nestler's article, though intense and seemingly misguided is reflecting more on our community than the world. The blind liberalism of Wesleyan now has us attacking one of our own. I dont understand those who wrote above claiming to be against war, could attack a fellow student's ideas so harshly.
EVERYBODY NEEDS TO READ some BOOKs and lets figure this all out.
- ONE
"the day you drag your pampered ass off the Wesleyan campus and put yourself in harm's way, when you risk your arms, legs, face, and life to shrapnel from IEDs and bullets, when you've been through all that kind of stuff, I'll respect your opinion."
I respect this completely, but I'll repeat: It's a job, a voluntary job. There are others just as dangerous, These men and women made that choice to take it, knowing full well what it entailed. Furthermore, I personally don't always agree with the actions the military takes in accomplishing its goals. So while I see the need for somebody to do it, I still don't see why they're more deserving of our support than anybody working another important and dangerous job. The next time I read an article about cutting, say, healthcare funding that ends "Of course, we all still support the doctors" then I might start saying that I support the troops.
im not sure you know how the army works. You see you sit here in you comfy dorm room because you have the academic merit to be at a university. Not everyone has that oppurtunity. As much as you think being in the army is a choice, for a lot of family's in america it isnt about choice. The army in america isnt full of warriors from the movie 300. The american army is filled with kids just like us. Its filled with that kid who you sat next to in 9th grade math, who dropped out, got his girl freind pregnant and now is in the army to feed his family and hopefully make a enough money to go to school later. the army is filled with kids who cant afford college, so they fight because they can either do that or work at mcdonalds all day. If you cannot understand that than you need to re think how you could ever critique someone for trying to provide a better life for their family. If you think the army is a clear decision of americanism you are wrong.
tommy bahama, I think I agree with most of what you've said, especially the guns, money, and power thing. I certainly don't want our country to try and glue together Iraq by force for a prolonged period of time, I just think it's ridiculous to pull out of the country while it's still such a big mess.
A "strategic retreat" like the kind you suggest is what I had in mind, but it's not just the Iraqi factions' problem if they can't work it out with each other. It would inevitably become our problem somewhere again down the line, (I think we all agree that Afghanistan is enough of a lesson on that point) and we can't fully let go of what has become our commitment there until there's some kind of governing body that can handle the country on its own.
ballin_over_terrorism is GC 2010
Sanity, it seems, is a very rare thing.
Sanity, it seems, is a very rare thing.
Let me make one thing clear here: none of this was meant as an attack on the military or those in it. I have several close friends and relatives who have served and one who is serving, right now, in Iraq. My problem is more with the politicization, and what I see as the abuse, of these people for whatever purpose someone wants, and I also question the ideology behind it. Is every soldier who dies in Iraq a hero? Possibly, but then, why not every reporter (someone else doing an undoubtedly important and dangerous job). Hell, why not every contractor?
@ballin_over_terrorism:
"Its filled with that kid who you sat next to in 9th grade math, who dropped out, got his girl freind pregnant and now is in the army to feed his family and hopefully make a enough money to go to school later."
I know a kid like this, exactly like this in fact. He's 18, married, with 2 kids. He's working as a carpenter. I also know a guy who went to college for 4 years, and went on to join the Marines. True, the military does target those in difficult circumstances, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still an all-volunteer army.
Fact is, while I recognize the need for a military, and I admire these people for doing a job I personally have no desire to do, the same could be said for, say, firefighters or cops. In fact, according to Forbes, fishing is actually the most dangerous job there is, and I don't think anyone can argue that it's not an important service for our country (well, anyone who eats fish, anyway).
So there you go. The first time someone says "I disagree with the overfishing of the seas, but we've got to still support our brave fishermen", or sticks a sea-green magnetic ribbon on the back of their SUV, then I might be persuaded to change my mind about the troops.
In response to the anonymous who said: "We need to help "build them an intellectual foundation"? What, they'll like us for imposing a Christian Eurocentric technicalistic worldview on their incredibly backward, primitive, tribalistic, non-technological society?"
Personally, I think that's a shallow, extreme left twist on what the original poster was trying to say. Many societies are a function of their education, of having an intellectual cadre of young people who have the education and resources necessary to bring their own people out of their present social situation. You're right, they wouldn't appreciate Americans coming along: "Here's the RIGHT way to do things." But I'm sure they'd be much more amenable to someone of their race, their religion, their social status, but with a better education...to come along and present new innovations to create a more stable sociopolitical status.
And as for the anonymous who said the war would have been successful had there been better planning. I'd like to think that's weak, wishful thinking. Yes, Saddam Husein was an awful despot, a murderer and all-around Bad Guy. But even bad guys are integral to the fabric of society both within that country and the surrounding areas. To remove such a high-ranking official was to throw that entire arena into a flux, regardless of the relief it provided to the typical citizen. I'm not going to be arrogant enough to propose a "better" method; removing tyrannical despots isn't exactly in my resume, I know. But to say that everything would've been Jim-dandy had there been better planning is a rather pathetic dream.
ian:
The next time I read an article about cutting, say, healthcare funding that ends "Of course, we all still support the doctors" then I might start saying that I support the troops.
??? Doctors don't make decisions regarding healthcare funding. It's not their fault if insurance companies or medicare doesn't cover something. Just like soldiers don't make decisions about what missions to go on.
It's not really important but that type of logic is kind of flawed.
i love the first sentence: "when walking around campus, i feel there is a sentiment to end the war in iraq."
jesus christ.
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