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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 21-Nov-05
Vitriolic Iraq war politics erupts in Washington

Web Log - November, 2005

Vitriolic Iraq war politics erupts in Washington

But the basics of the Iraq war haven't changed a bit.

I turned on CNN on Friday morning and heard news anchor Miles O'Brien say that the civil war had already begun. I saw Pat Buchanan on MSNBC predict "a real disaster" in Iraq a Vietnam-like defeat. Pat Buchanan was in the Nixon administration when they lost Vietnam. Now he thinks that there'll be a debate on "who lost Iraq?"

The vitriol reached a peak on Thursday when Democratic Congressman John Murtha made an anti-war speech with rhetoric straight out the Vietnam era, calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, followed up by a really nasty remark about people who sat behind during the Vietnam war shouldn't be sending soldiers to Iraq now. This drew an equally nasty remark from Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, quoting a Marine colonel sending "Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

This is the nature of the times, as happens during "generational crisis" periods. The nation's leaders are from the arrogant, narcissistic Boomer generation, born after WW II. They spent their youth as hippies in anti-war demonstrations in the 1960s, and now they're in trying the same thing as aging hippies in 2005. But they have no skills at accomplishing anything except political arguments, so nothing really ever gets done. So we see arguments over Karl Rove, the Iraq war, Scooter Libby, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, and the Iraq war again. The country is on cruise control.

Pundits are calling this a pivotal moment of change, but in fact nothing has changed. Let's list some things that haven't changed:

As I've said many times before, the Iraqi people are not in any mood for war, having lost hundreds of thousands of young men in the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s. The Iraqi people will not participate in a war unless they're forced to, although Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is doing his best to trigger one. As the world heads for a "clash of civilizations" world war, al-Zarqawi may yet bring full scale war to Iraq, but it will be from the outside, not from civil war. (21-Nov-05) Permanent Link
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