The Illogic of Iraq: 12 Questions...

[marmar]

THE ILLOGIC OF IRAQ: A DOZEN QUESTIONS
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2006-07-21 13:04. Media
By Neil Wollman and Daniel Jordan

As the civil war in Iraq has become more overt this past week, the administration would still tell us that we invaded a country three years ago and continue to fight, kill and die there, for good, sound reasons. But somehow those reasons oddly seem not to add up to anything that makes much sense. The illogic seems to permeate the war and the rhetoric surrounding it in so many ways. We offer but a few questions about the illogic of our invasion of Iraq and continued killing of its citizens, and our own Americans.

1. Why is it that when insurgency attacks go down we are winning the war; but when they go up, the insurgency is desperate?

2. Why is it that if Iraqis are so pleased by their new democracy that we are so generally disliked there?

3. Why is it that in a country with so much oil in the ground that Iraqis cannot buy gasoline at any price and must fill their gas tanks after we do--- even when it's their oil?

4. Why do we say when insurgents bomb mosques that it is “intended to foment sectarian violence and civil war” -- when it already is sectarian violence and civil war?

5. Why is it that we are to honor those who died in Iraq, but our government and our media will not allow us to see those being honored in their flag-draped coffins?

6. Why do we support the Iraqi government and praise them as saviors and bastions of freedom, when they allow their country to be dominated by a foreign invader?

7. Why is the future U.S. Embassy in Iraq the only major construction project that is going well there?

8. Why does the Administration oppose religious control in Iraq but embraces it in our country?

9. Why is freedom to vote and have public discourse more important than freedom from crime, hunger, and disease?

10. Why when “they” kill innocent women and children, it is a matter for outrage, but when we do it, it is “collateral damage” or just part of the price of “liberty?”

11. Why do many U.S. citizens want to end the war because about 2,600 Americans have been killed, rather than because many thousands of Iraqis have been killed?

12. Why do we send more soldiers to be wrongly killed so that previous soldiers did not "die in vain."? Do we honor those killed by drunk drivers by sending more drunk drivers on the road to kill further?
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Neil Wollman; Ph. D.; Senior Fellow, Peace Studies Institute; Professor of Psychology; Manchester College, North Manchester, IN 46962; [e-mail]

Daniel Jordan, PhD; Research consultant and Dean, College of Social and Political Justice, International University for Graduate Studies, St. Kitts & Nevis, BWI. [e-mail]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/13159