The toll mounts.......

The emperor continues his litany of "stay the course" as we throw our young men at a problem we created and only the Iraqi people can solve. 20 soldiers, reservists no less, in two days, have been fed to this monster. Imagine the mindset these men must greet each new day with knowing there's a very good chance there's a roadside bomb waiting with their names on it and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. Yet, they soldier on, for they are warriors, and warriors attend to their duties with a fatalism and detachment that a civilian could not possibly function under, nor understand. What they do will have precious little effect in the grand scheme of things because ten years from now, we will have hopefully regained our sanity and pulled out our troops, and then the natives will clean up the mess in their own way, just like the Vietnamese did.
What becomes of Irag will be determined by the forces that have shaped that culture long before we ever got there, and it will not be the democratic nirvana we so naively are paying such a high price to shove down the throats of people who wouldn't know democracy or rule of law from their assholes. When you kill people for their own good they tend behave in ways diametrically opposite to your intentions, even if it's to their own detriment, just to spite you. The people of Irag do not possess the same ferocity of will to bring peace and freedom to their country that the terrorists have to bring it down, for they have never known that kind of life, and are not willing to die for some ethereal concept. Yes, you see them die standing in line to join the National Guard and Police, but in a country so torn apart economically, it's the paycheck that makes them risk it, not some sense of patriotism. As an idealist, I would say stick with it, get the job done, don't turn and run like we did before. As a realist, I can only hope we get rid of the most idiotic president this country ever, and arguably, elected, and with the swearing in of a president who can pronounce "Nuclear", get our act together and stop killing our brave young men and women in the name of stubborn ignorance.