Anodyne
Monday, September 05, 2005
 
Informed Comment's Juan Cole upbraids unlikely Iraq hawk Christopher Hitchens:

"Hitchens argues that a benefit of the war is the 'training and hardening' of many thousands of American servicemen and women, which he says will be of use in 'future combat.' Large numbers of the servicemen and women in Iraq are in the National Guard or the Reserves, and very large numbers are not going to renew their service when they finally get out of Iraq, so their war experience is unlikely to do anyone much good later on. Many will suffer severe trauma, psychological problems and alcoholism as a result of horrific wartime experiences. Some number will end up on the street begging. Thousands of U.S. troops have been 'hardened' right into wheelchairs, with lost limbs, faces blown away, and little prospect of productive lives. We had a right to ask them to sacrifice themselves to defend our country against aggression. We did not have a right to ask them to give their bloody forearms, tattered eyeballs, shattered tibias, oozing brain mass, and crushed pelvises to achieve the petty foreign-policy aims that Hitchens lists in his article, even if the Iraq war had accomplished most of those aims, which it has not."
- posted by cjb @ 9:50 AM


<< Home

Powered by Blogger

.post-title { display: none!important; }