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[spyder13]

I am a fan of long runs and long rides because it is where I tend to do my best thinking and reflecting. During the Ironman’s marathon and the blasted four and a half hours it took me, I thought a lot about endurance.  A training program that I'm interested in (and is horribly brutal, which probably accounts for my budding love of it), claims that

Comments

[dicedork]

I suspect, like Vietnam, it will be a bipartisan issue for decades, and blame will get thrown around in a typically predicable pattern of "I'm not saying we were right, but 'THEY' sure were wrong..." tactics. And like Vietnam, we may be the only thing holding together the democratic forces against their enemies.

Unfortunately our country, more and more, is fueled by political will. A four year old "war," with no sign of ending, that we appear to kind of be losing, severely tests that will--no matter what the morality. The premise that we stay there until the "job is done" is unacceptable to someone seeing us in the same position ten years from now. We've come a long way from WMD's and it's been a tangled path. Part of the problem is all the lies have left a bitter taste and high suspicion in the minds of others. The claim that "Okay now we REALLY need to be there," is a little wearing on most.

And have the dem's turned that into political capital? You bet your ass. Politicians of every stripe do all sorts of things no less slimy every day.

I can't say I know where our responsiblity ends as a nation. Democracy? Stability? (We could probably install a new dictator and at least have the region stable.) Do we stay there forever, bleeding lives and debt into a cause that is all but lost? When do we pull the plug? When do we announce victory? They're not easy questions, and it's the problem with moral absolutes in a situation like this.

There is one premise that I can't say I agree with you on, and that is that because of Iraq, that Americans have no "endurance." Very few Americans wouldn't want to see us in ANY war ever. Show us a war we are behind, and we'd probably fight for thirty years. The fact that politicians have to return to increasingly frustrated voters and explain their actions is a side effect of a democracy, and blaming the people for weakness is not a step I'm willing to take as a definative. To me that's just as bad as blaming the whole thing on the CIA or Bush.

[spyder13]

Interesting point - perhaps that is a question worth pursuing: "a war we are behind." Had this war been started and led with different talking points, or maybe even more honesty once things began to unravel, would we support it differently? Or, if the politicians approached the war in a completely different manner at the beginning, what effects would we then see? Who is leading who in this polarized bi-partisanship - the elected or the electors?

My point about endurance is this - an extreme minority in this country is being affected in their day to day life, and yet everyone has a bitter taste in their mouth (as you correctly wrote): is it the taste from the politics or the war itself? Perhaps it does go back to Vietnam and the rush of a quick win during the first Gulf war...no one was really set up for the long haul of a counterinsurgency. And you may be right - maybe we do have the spine to hold out when "we are all behind" a war - I would suspect a lot of countries do - but is that spine going to be easier or harder to find when everyone has to actually sacrifice in order for victory?

Very few wars that take this little of a toll, but go on this long are around to cite as examples, but I'll use Afghanistan (a war I would think the majority of us were behind, and with good reason): In 2001 88% supported the war. About a month ago it was 53%.

[dicedork]

Well, I don't think "the American public" is quite so sheepishly dumb or gullible as some people would claim they are (when not, of course, invoking authority of majority fallacy--true or not). The flip-flopped support for Afghanistan likely has a lot to do with who we never managed to find, and what we did with the country afterward. A question so oblique as "do you support the war in Afghanistan" may require a complicated range of response, that are denied on a "Yes/No" questionnaire.

As for your first paragraph, I agree with you almost completely--or at least that those are many of the most important questions.

[spyder13]

I forgot to add that this part...

"I can't say I know where our responsiblity ends as a nation. Democracy? Stability? (We could probably install a new dictator and at least have the region stable.) Do we stay there forever, bleeding lives and debt into a cause that is all but lost? When do we pull the plug? When do we announce victory? They're not easy questions, and it's the problem with moral absolutes in a situation like this."

...of your reply was well said. I suppose I'm just optimistic and believe that the cause isn't lost, that things can be done and fixed, but with the number of ropes we've tied ourselves down with, it won't be. Of course, if you believe that all hope really is lost and that we've straight-up lost with no chance of recovery, then yeah, come on home. The logic at that point is quite clear.