Pay taxes and donate books.

That'll show that so-called "greatest generation" with their victory gardens and tin recycling efforts and food and fuel rationing and their total conversion of the civilian industry over to producing materials for the war and their draft.

Yep, pay your taxes, even though the war is being financed on the backs of the next generation thanks to Bush's deficit spending. We know what a hardship that is to neocons. Oh, and donate a book. Yep. Great sacrifices there.

Good Lord, how much longer do we have to suffer these tools being in power?

Regardless of your feelings about neocons, Bushies, or how and why we went to Iraq, what's wrong with donating books to a fledgling university in a shattered country desperate for books? Why aren't liberals jumping all over this opportunity, rather than mocking it?

I intend to do both. I will send books (and check to see if women can matriculate), and I will mock the idea of this being a sacrifice.

EarlyBird:

Regardless of your feelings about neocons, Bushies, or how and why we went to Iraq, what's wrong with donating books to a fledgling university in a shattered country desperate for books? Why aren't liberals jumping all over this opportunity, rather than mocking it?

It's not the idea of donating books that I'm mocking. It's Htich's treating it like it's some great sacrifice that I'm mocking.

Hitch was stating that Americans have sacrificed in general by paying their taxes and sending soldiers off to war. Other than than actual soldiers and their families, that is mockable.

He wasn't calling the donation of books a sacrifice.

If that were the case, why would he lead the article with a discussion about what "sacrifices" the average American has been called upon to do before going into the book drive.

Face it. This was just another in a long line of essays that Hitch banged out after too many shots of JD.

Sending the books is a fine idea. I see no reason to be opposed to it beyond the messenger.

However, the notion that Hitchens puts forward at the beginning that the taxes we pay somehow fulfills the notion of a nation sacrificing everything needed to win the war is frankly risible. Thus far, the average American has not been called on to support the war in any way (although our added debt will certainly cause sacrifice down the line).

If paying taxes for the Iraq war is a "sacrifice", then any government program is a sacrifice. If someone buys a toy for their child instead of buying a beer for themselves, that too is a sacrifice. That sets the bar rather low.

Regarding how proud we are that volunteers gave their lives in Iraq, then why is there so little coverage of the Iraq war on ABC, CNN, Fox, etc? If Iraq were a TV drama, it would be cancelled for lack of interest. This would hardly be the case if we still had a draft. It is a bit different if it's your son or daughter or your spouse that is being killed, instead of some volunteer that you don't know ( Bush would certainly have more credibility if the twins were engaged in patrolling the streets of Baghdad). If we had a non-volunteer army, I submit there would be a lot of coverage, widespread protests, and that Bush would have lost in a landslide in 2004. In fact, since for this administration (and many others), since getting re-elected is considered most important, there would never have been an invasion of Iraq in the first place.

"Why aren't liberals jumping all over this opportunity, rather than mocking it?" Because, as I mentioned so clearly in another post, George Bush and Dick Cheney are still breathing. When that stops, then perhaps we can talk about the books....

Or because it's a stupid idea in the first place.

I understand, Hunter. You mean to say that you want Iraq to suffer as much as possible so as to forever have a bloody shirt to wave. If, for instance, there is a famine there, you would not want to contribute to aiding the Iraqi people, because some how that could be construed as support of Bush-Cheney or their war.

You're a real humanitarian.

EarlyBird, these "antiwar" imbeciles are the biggest, most cowardly hypocrites this side of Walter Durante- they don't give a shit about humanitarian endeavors... everything with them is posture and sneer. but i'm sure you know this by now; i just don't see how you're going to change them. you do have a nice way of calling them on their hypocrisy and stupidity, tho.

The sacrifices we were asked to make were to accept multiple tax cuts, to run up a huge deficit for future generations to pay, to go out shopping and take vacations, and to go to war under a new theory that tried to justify sending much fewer soldiers than was remotely sufficient. Sure, this war is costing the nation very much in many ways, but the Bush administration has made every effort to delay, defer or hide that cost, so that voting Americans wouldn't realize what they truly were. That is worth mocking.

EarlyBird:

I understand, Hunter. You mean to say that you want Iraq to suffer as much as possible so as to forever have a bloody shirt to wave. If, for instance, there is a famine there, you would not want to contribute to aiding the Iraqi people, because some how that could be construed as support of Bush-Cheney or their war.

You're a real humanitarian.

I didn't see in his other recent posts anything remotely resembling this. Did you just put a large pile of words in another poster's mouth?

LOL.... Let's recap, shall we? George Bush invaded and occupied a country that didn't threaten the United States, didn't have the means to threaten the United States, didn't possess WMDs, wasn't connected to al Qaeda, wasn't involved in the 9/11 attacks, didn't ask us to destroy its infrastructure and economy, didn't ask us to "spread democracy" to Iraq and the greater Middle East, and didn't ask us to create a chaotic situation that has resulted in the deaths of roughly half a million innocent Iraqis. Invading and occupying Iraq after 9/11 was akin to FDR invading and occupying Bolivia after Pearl Harbor. What don't you morons get? You were DUPED. Your boy is a war criminal, and everyone knows it. You don't have a TOE to stand on, let alone a leg. And that's not going to change tomorrow, or next year, or five years from now, or five hundred years from now. The victim of a crime may very well recover from the injuries suffered during the commission of that crime, but that doesn't make it any less of a crime, and the police still go after the criminal. I don't care if the Iraqis start building picket fences, putting apple pies on their windowsills, and driving Chevys: George Bush is a lying traitor who should be arrested, tried and punished for his crimes. Then we can start "moving on"--and even sending books to the Iraqis....