to post 17.
wombat.
for reasons I don’t fully understand.
Bush did not like the term ‘civil war’.
—>
real civil wars have boundaries, fronts,
and regions are kicked out of the legislature.
In the US civil war, the CSA states were
kicked out( or left) the Congress.
.....................
Kumbaya, Kumbaya,
Bush thinks (or says, not sure)
that Iraq is one big happy family.
no civil war here, .... the
problem are insurgents.
so (Bush contends) that there are no
‘enemy regions’, so all regions
must be supplied with food and other stuff
‘Oh Yes! You are quite right. The days after 9/11 were amazing in terms of national Unity and racial harmony.’
True but what I saw and experienced at an Army MACOM HQ was at first disorienting and then in retrospect very disturbing. The GO’s were lashing out in all directions in an angry disoriented sort of way at the staff both civilian and military. Long time civilian staff who had been involved in operational planning since the ramp up for Panama where treated like potential traitors. The leadership was both actually demoralized because of the surprise attack that caught us flatfoot with such simple technical means, and then really fearful their tickets would get torn up because various really stupid things that they had done mostly during Clintontime to save money and go along with the stupid ideas that poured out of the Pentagon (such as reducing chemical weapons storage sites to the classification of a chemical waste dump so that security could be dramatically cut to save some dollars). Anything like the boiling rage and determination to pay the enemy back that one encounters in account after account of the reactions of US military after Pearl harbor was totally absent. No one seemed really motivated to want to really smash the enemy hard and not be very interested in collateral damage. Then watching the muted almost apologetic way the people at the very top of the US government spoke was another demoralizer. The tone was one of real regret about having to do something that would kill some Muslims along with lots of Religion of Peace crap and demoralizing nagging about how Americans and especially those in the military had to be on so respectful of Islam and all those good Muslims as we tried to fight the few bad ones. These events were the start of a very disturbing and disorienting era in which we fought wars that couldn't be called wars against an enemy that couldn't be called an enemy with a leadership that seemed more interested in not hurting the feelings of Muslims and offending their precious sense of ‘honor’ than in beating the foe to a pulp and unambiguously supporting the people at the sharp end of the spear.