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i wouldn't normally do this, but there is a more productive way to manage this discussion than falling directly into this republicans-versus-everybody else kinda thing or it's inverse.
i tried to outline why above--i'll just repeat it here:
a. from a vertically organized military viewpoint, this is an "unconventional war" so the traditional ways of measuring what happened and why are not operative--no more in iraq than in vietnam (remember the daily body count?) despite the self-evident differences between the situations.
b. the article in the op makes NO judgements as to WHY things are calm for this particular batallion. so it provides NO basis for making stuff up about why the situation obtains. seaver at least brought up the obvious next move--try to find a way to generalize from this--but it's not terribly informative as an index. it just isn't. think about it.
c. then there is the problem of information management, marketing war, etc etc etc.
d. then there is the problem of where and how you might get information that might actually BE informative about the general situation.
e. but because the information is so scattered and comes from a wide range of sources, any of us can fall into the game of projection with a few arbitrary references draped around it. you know, politics as 'just my opinion man"--this shows why that's worthless yet again.
this last point is a **problem** and we are all wasting our time talking about iraq right now unless we acknowledge it. but doing that would make it less easy to take facile shots at each other. so maybe it's a good idea to head that way.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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