NT Times Select.
With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year-old history major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, said: "I definitely don't know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don't even think about the war. They're more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday's test."
His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. "No, definitely not," he said. "None of my friends even really care about what's going on in Iraq."
While shoppers here are scrambling to put the perfect touch to their holidays with the purchase of a giant flat-screen TV or a PlayStation 3, the news out of Baghdad is of a society in the midst of a meltdown.
--- NY Times
This is the epitome of the mindset of the average American that has achieved a complete and total disconnect from the Civil War going on in Iraq. What war? Gotta study! 'Tis the season and all that crap.
Meanwhile Mr. Bush told his few remaining cheerleaders to "Clap harder!" about the fabled connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq because many of the regulars in the GOP talking point brigade can no longer carry bush and the GOP's water. Even while some in the MSM still ignore reporting what they know is the truth.
“Tinkerbell is going to die because not enough people believe in fairies. But if all of you clap your hands real hard to show that you do believe in fairies, maybe she won’t die.” --- Peter Pan
Clap all you want... It is still a Civil War, and US soldiers can no longer do anything to fix it.
The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in Anbar province.
The Marines recently filed an updated version of that assessment that stood by its conclusions and stated that, as of mid-November, the problems in troubled Anbar province have not improved, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday. "The fundamental questions of lack of control, growth of the insurgency and criminality" remain the same, the official said.
...snip...
"the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point" that U.S. and Iraqi troops "are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar," the assessment found.
There is the problem in one of many little corners of Iraq, but we have all read about the fact that neither US nor Iraqi soldiers have been able to keep Baghdad - By far the most secured part of Iraq - safe from bombings and mass kidnappings. Clapping harder and SCREAMING LOUDER will not change the reality on the ground in Iraq... It is a Civil War.
In the United States, the debate over the term rages because many politicians, especially those who support the war, believe there would be domestic political implications to declaring it a civil war. They fear that an acknowledgment by the White House and its allies would be seen as an admission of a failure of President Bush’s Iraq policy.
They also worry that the American people might not see a role for American troops in an Iraqi civil war and would more loudly demand a withdrawal.
But in fact, many scholars say the bloodshed here already puts Iraq in the top ranks of the civil wars of the last half-century. The carnage of recent days — beginning with bombings on Thursday in a Shiite district of Baghdad that killed more than 200 people — reinforces their assertion.
--- NY Times
The only reason that bush is demanding everyone "clap harder!" with him is because he is politically motivated to keep his unrealistic war alive and is desperate to avoid the label of failure that bush has so oft' had bestowed upon him.
The sad reality:
Bush would rather play politics with soldiers' lives than admit he was wrong and redeploy from the ongoing Civil War in Iraq. Even those that seem to be disconnected from what is really going on in Iraq should, at the very least, be able to understand the deadly results of this most recent bush failure.
Every day we stay in Iraq is another day that American soldiers die uneccessarily for bush's vanity.
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