[Paleopsych] Right or wrong, not winning or losing

[Steve Hovland]

Those who counsel patience and persistence
in Iraq never suggest that succeeding
in Iraq would be morally right.

Even they know that it would not be.

And that is the real problem with persisting.

If we "won" it would be at the cost of the
complete destruction of our moral soul,
which is already seriously damaged.

"Winning" will require nothing less than the
genocide of the Iraqi people- destroying them
to "save" them from the "terrorists."

Baghdad, Falluja, and Basra have become the 
death camps of the "New American Century."

Even the goal of achieving "stability" seems
suspect, because that is often used as a code
word for "under our control."

It will be years before we can calculate the
total cost of this disaster, but we know that
it will be high.

It will include a generous measure of self-loathing, 
a crushing debt load, and the loss of access to the
vital resources we were trying to conquer.

We will have to struggle on, humbled but wiser,
to rebuild a nation that is part of the community
of nations, and not a would-be global tyrant.



Steve Hovland