(1) All right, many journals are self-centered. This could be solely because self-centered people tend to write journals, and the non-journallers are un-self-centered; a sample by definition biased toward people who want to write about themselves can say very little about America as a whole, which contains a great many people who don't write journals (and they may be self-centered, but that can't be shown by meditating on journal-writing). Furthermore, even if it were to be assumed that American journal-writers are self-centered, it could be that journallers from the rest of the world are just as self-centered, so condemning Americans still seems unjustified.
(2) Iraq = Vietnam? Oppose the war if you want, but if fought -- and it's hardly an "if" anymore, I agree there -- it will be fought in response to the death and destruction Saddam Hussein has wrought, not on less-defensible ideological grounds. The terrain in Iraq is also more favorable than the Vietnamese jungle, Iraqi troops motivated only by fear and money are likely to be less staunch opponents of the U.S. Army than the Viet Cong were, and Iraq suffers from a greater gap in technology than the Viet Cong did, with no chance of continual resupply from a patron such as the U.S.S.R.
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sforzinda
Two responses
Date: 2002-10-08 02:07 pm (UTC)(2) Iraq = Vietnam? Oppose the war if you want, but if fought -- and it's hardly an "if" anymore, I agree there -- it will be fought in response to the death and destruction Saddam Hussein has wrought, not on less-defensible ideological grounds. The terrain in Iraq is also more favorable than the Vietnamese jungle, Iraqi troops motivated only by fear and money are likely to be less staunch opponents of the U.S. Army than the Viet Cong were, and Iraq suffers from a greater gap in technology than the Viet Cong did, with no chance of continual resupply from a patron such as the U.S.S.R.