Let's suppose your child doesn't wipe his feet after playing outside and tracks dirt all over the house. You ask him to clean it up. He cleans it up properly. Do you jump up and down with praise, buy him a present, tell him what a great job he did, brag to the nieghbors and put it in the Christmas card? Probably not.

Because the Iraqis are so juvenile as to warrant a parent-to-child analogy, right? Your statement is disgustingly patronizing.

In my analogy, the Iraqi's are not the children. Its not the Iraqi's mess. ITS OURS. Hitch seems to think we should be patting ourselves on the back for cleaning up our own mess.

The United States invaded without forethought for the consequences, without a plan to govern post-Saddam Iraq and thereby destabilized the country. Together with the Iraqi's, after more than five years, we are making modest gainst towards stability. What a cause for celebration- cleaning up our own mess.

Wasn't the child in the analogy the Bush admin.?

Seriously:

Wasn't the child in the analogy the Bush admin.?

Correct.

I'm sorry, I misinterpreted your response. However, know that your example does logically imply that the Iraqis are children. This is because we are not responsible for this economic boon (they are), just as a parent wouldn't be responsible for the child in your analogy wiping their feet.

Um..I think the "good news" is a drop in violence. Are you disagreeing that using violence to solve problems is a childish approach to life?

You seem to be quite hung up on the parent-child, U.S.-Iraq relationship. I didn't think this was necessary, but I'll spell things out further. The child is the bush adminstration who messed things up. The parent would be the media that Hitch thinks should be trumpeting the accomplishments of the child. The use of parent-child in my analogy wasn't meant to imply anything paternalistic. Its just that a parent might trumpet the non-accomplishment of a child. Its has nothing to do with responsibility for a child or whatever the heck you're getting at.

You are correct, we are not responsible for the economic boon. You say the Iraqi's are. I say, the fact that its an oil-rich state is responsible, and the only reason it wasn't previously richer (since the fall of Saddam) was the destabilization caused by our ill-planned invasion. So we go around patting the Kuwaiti's and Saudi's on the back for their tremendous economic achievements? Generally, I don't think so. And let's suppose we invaded Kuwait, unleashed a wave of sectarian violence, destabilized the economic and physical infrastructure of their economy and halted their oil-production for years. Once they got back to full production, I don't think we'd deserve a pat on the back.

Maybe if I change the analogy a bit you'll see what I mean, or what you're missing, or perhaps not missing but over-reading/ Take a football game where one team is beating the other 49-0. Then the team that's on the losing end scores a field goal and its 49-3. That team's cheerleaders will cheer. And they'll look stupid, because 49-3 is nothing to cheer about. An oil-rich state making some money is nothing to cheer about. Lowering violence to a better number of car-bombings per month is nothing to cheer about.

Let's say that at a certain point in time, violene is at a level of something called 10. Then, after certain events happen, it goes up to a level of 100. Then, it goes down to 50, or maybe even 25. Yes, 25 or 50 is better than 100. But cause for celebration, i.e., nice reports in the press, will be when it returns to 10.

It has nothing to do with whether violence is childish. It has to do with what you do and do not take or give credit for.

Let's say you're confusing a few users who replied to your comment as the same one. Then let's say that you're shouting into the wind, because your point was already well understood hours ago.

Based on everything you've posted, my point was not understood by you. If my shouting bothers you, ignore it.