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About Me
- Sarah Beth Jones
- Floyd, VA
- Just watching the cows and thinking about life. Read more at www.sarahbethjones.com.
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2007
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July
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- Christopher Walken in someone else's kitchen
- Family entertainment every Wednesday
- SCotSish games
- Christians United for Israel's annual Washington-I...
- Conversion in the mail
- Nudes in trees
- Finally, an anti-war leader I can follow
- Sleeping pup
- How are your representatives voting?
- In case you're not angry enough
- New Big Bang Boom tracks
- Linking Greensboro
- An urban bedroom renovation
- Blood sucking spider at our door
- Vote to Impeach
- Cindy Sheehan, back in Greensboro
- Poll: Why aren't people actively opposing the war?
- My career path sort of meanders
- Make you feel better about Chinese products?
- A warning from the stars
- Jewish/Muslim relations in Greensboro
- Rehab for GoodReads?
- Celebrating independence
- Impeach Bush/Cheney Contingent at the parade
- Cutting up a whole chicken
- Devoted to the headlines?
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July
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2 comments:
Sarah Beth,
I suppose any one of those reasons could enter in, but I would suggest a couple of additional reasons. Apart from principled pacifists, who ought to be out in the streets if their principles mean anything to them, I think it is hard now to know what to support as a replacement for what one opposes. To oppose one thing is, or should be, to support another thing. Right now it is simply very difficult, given the mess on the ground, and the consequences of leaving, to know what to support in replace of what we have now. Total pull out? Well, that means deeper civil war and widened regional war. It probably means, in the end, us being sucked back in one way or another, maybe war between Israel and Iran. Partial pull out? I personally think this won't be effective. Things will just spiral downhill anyway. In some ways, this mess is worse than Vietnam. Not only is there the likelihood of hundreds of thousands of people dying, as happened in Vietnam post pull out, but there is the added danger of a broader conflict that will involve and impact us very directly. I suppose we could just sit back and let all the powers that be in the region fight it out until they are dead or exhausted, and there would be some satisfaction with Iran being burdened by the mess, but that is a gruesome scenario to support. Many many more people will die, just not our people. So, I contend that many people thinking about the options just aren't sure what policy to replace the current situation with, which sort of takes the wind out of the sails of the protest movement. It's a messy messy business.
You make some excellent points, Joel. I think people are concerned about the chaos we have created. But I don't think we can fix it at this point - and, from al Maliki's recent invitation to leave, it seems as though they don't want us to try. We've stirred up the hornet's nest but the hornets were already there. I think if we really wanted to help the people of the Middle East, we'd offer aid and open our borders so that more than a measly 7,000 could take refuge in America.
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