The sad thing is that I’ve heard this argument before. I let my Jewish friend listening to something similar from my own youth pastor, thinking it was the right thing to do.
I cannot believe how stupid and ignorant and anti-Semitic that was. I cannot believe that I let myself be so blinded by the good intentions of my church at that time that I allowed myself to miss the negative effects of what I was doing in trying to proselytize my friend.
As with any -ism, it is the EFFECT, not the intent, that matters to the people who you hurt.
I wish Pat Hagee and John McCain could realize this, too.
Bush just asked for $46 billon more fo the Iraq war for 2007. That would be the last two months of this year, not next year. The Iraq war is not costing us, the American taxpayers, $330 million dollars A DAY. This year, it will have cost us $200 billion.
CNN gives us this statistic: $46 billion would pay for all the yearly costs of the Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, and the Treasury combined.
Where is Bush’s soul? War is complicated? Is that the best he can do? Borrow billions a day for foreign countries and patronize us because we don’t understand his logic? What in the Hell is WRONG with this guy?
The choice seems pretty obvious to me, but we all know what Bush does when a vast majority of Americans voice their opposition to his decisions: whatever the hell he wants. The Senate has enough votes to override his veto, but the House doesn’t, so the Democratic leadership has pushed back the deadline for an override for two weeks while they try to scrape together 15 more votes from Republicans. Good luck with that.
The only reason we have out of control spending is because the Bush administration spends it on ALL OF THE WRONG PROGRAMS. It is a sham and a travesty that we are the only developed country ON EARTH that doesn’t have government-funded national health care. Yes, Mr. Bush, these children are uninsured, even if they’re middle class citizens. Private health care is too expensive.
No, I don’t think that asking the nation to pay for everyone’s health care costs is a bad idea. We make taxpayers inhale the foul air of smokers, poison ourselves with pollution from selfish suburban families with inefficient SUVs, and pay for bombs and bullets in the Middle East. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect something back.
Jared Hubbard and Jeremiah Baro were best friends who went to Iraq. They lived together, laughed together, and died together as snipers during the second year of the second Iraq War. Their families thought it fitting that they be buried together as well.
Now their Central California town is mourning the loss of Jared’s younger brother Nathan, only 24, who enlisted after Jared’s death with their older brother Jason. Nathan was one of 14 soldiers to die when his Blackhawk helicopter crashed due to mechanical failure; Jason arrived on the scene as a rescuer in time to discover that he was the last surviving son.
In a harrowing twist not unlike the plot of Saving Private Ryan, the military has ordered Jason to return home to his family to grieve, before some unseen, violent catastrophe takes the eldest Hubbard son from this earth.
It’s hard to imagine the odds of this kind of event happening more than once. I would think losing one son would have been sufficient service to this country, but the Hubbard brothers felt called to serve, and it’s far better to have people serving who want to be in a war than drafting those who don’t. Still, every tragic loss of life in Iraq seems so empty, so damning an indictment. What is it going to take to convince the rest of the country that we can no longer afford to spend people’s lives in this doomed pursuit?
At least if Bush is too stubborn to withdraw troops from the Middle East, he could consider pouring help into Afghanistan. At least there our military protection has some measure of public support. It’s not too late to save Karzai’s fledgling administration from the resurgence of the Taliban.
It’s cognitive dissidence at its worst. You say a story like this is a pointless loss of life, and conservatives jump on you for saying that ‘a soldier’s death was for nothing.’ It’s not so simple as that. Soldiers die serving their country; the administration that send them on a foolhardy assignment have made the specific outcomes of that task a waste of human life.
I wonder about all of the numerous lives the Hubbard brothers could have helped has they served in a mission that didn’t send them off to die.
Normally I don’t just link to interesting articles without saying something of substance about them, but this is Nicholas Kristof, and the title says it all, really.
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