Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Sunday, February 26, 2006
A Very Cunning Realist
From the Cunning Realist. And remember, this fella is a conservative - centrist blogger, really more libertarian. He's discussing the announcement by U.S. officials that Americans would help rebuild the golden mosque recently blown up:
So this is what it's come to. Ponder it for a moment. We are now in the mosque-rebuilding business in the Middle East, smack-dab in the middle of a civil war. (And yes, it is a civil war. For the past week, the phrases "on the brink" and "possibly leading to" have preceded that term. Those waiting for an American style stand-up fight with skirmish line battles a la Antietam will be waiting for a long time.) We are asking 20-year olds from Tulsa and Des Moines and Gary and Fresno to navigate hundreds of years of religious and ethnic hate and to sacrifice their feet, legs, hands, arms, eyes, and lives in the process. We asked them to remove Saddam and his regime, and they did that. We asked them to guard infrastructure, and they did that. We asked them to rebuild an entire nation's military from scratch, and they are doing it. We asked them to find WMD's, and they tried. Now, we're rebuilding mosques.
It seems to me that having the U.S. help in rebuilding Mosques is not a smart idea. First is smacks of having some responsibility for it having been blown up. Second, given how radioactive the U.S. is in the Arab world, I would guess they'll not want our help.

But never fear, in our unending clumsy handling of the Arab world, we'll blast our way into being able to help in the rebuilding.
Written at 2:30 PM by Greyhair.
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