Naah - of course the marines don't bulldoze them - they blow them up with ordinance. That's what they're trained to do. And not just schools, but homes and mosques. Ask your Marine friend who is going to teach in the school he built? And what takes precedence when the fighting blows up? If he can't take a reporter on a tour of his area of operations, he doesn't really have time to be building schools. We're not spending all this money on the wired and wireless battlefield to put computers with Ubuntu in libraries and schools. As in Viet Nam - we don't speak the language - so we're not much good at schools.
Today's CNN report on the fighting in Ramadi is a case in point. The marines will drop their hammers, pick up their weapons and wondrous webgear and go blow up some more infrastructure and probably kill and arrest a lot of innocent people. The "insurgents" are seen by Iraqis as patriots fighting off the occupier - just as the Viet Cong were. And just as Americans patriots would be if the U.S. were occupied. They want us out - just as the majority of the Vietnamese wanted us out. It is the nature of warfare that you destroy much more than you have time to build.
When was the last time you heard a story like this in the media? Ever?
We said it (and heard it) all the time during the Viet Nam war. It was true, too - but only part of the story. The rest of the story was that we were spending much more, and working harder to defoliate and destroy the county's infrastructure. For every school we built, we bombed and strafed 10. No reason that it should be any different in Iraq. We spend most of our money (1600% more according to another post) on sophisticated firepower (see the original article) that is completely inappropriate for doing anything constructive.
My thought is that the United States isn't doing a good enough job conveying the message that life sucks mainly due to the insurgents.
Same thing we said about the Viet Cong. Same Song, Second Verse.
Interesting suggestion. And one Libraries are working on (I work at one). But licensing contracts are the rub. Publishing houses won't license print-on-demand at a price that beats buying a bound copy. And why should they?
Of course - there's much in the public domain that we CAN print on demand. And should. But at libraries that have tried it, there is relatively little demand. Probably because we haven't gotten the inventory right yet. One promising product is Newspapers on Demand -instead of newspaper reading rooms: we set up terminals and allow patrons to buy a copy - then it is available for the next patron.
Slashdot Mirror
Naah - of course the marines don't bulldoze them - they blow them up with ordinance. That's what they're trained to do. And not just schools, but homes and mosques. Ask your Marine friend who is going to teach in the school he built? And what takes precedence when the fighting blows up? If he can't take a reporter on a tour of his area of operations, he doesn't really have time to be building schools. We're not spending all this money on the wired and wireless battlefield to put computers with Ubuntu in libraries and schools. As in Viet Nam - we don't speak the language - so we're not much good at schools.
Today's CNN report on the fighting in Ramadi is a case in point. The marines will drop their hammers, pick up their weapons and wondrous webgear and go blow up some more infrastructure and probably kill and arrest a lot of innocent people. The "insurgents" are seen by Iraqis as patriots fighting off the occupier - just as the Viet Cong were. And just as Americans patriots would be if the U.S. were occupied. They want us out - just as the majority of the Vietnamese wanted us out. It is the nature of warfare that you destroy much more than you have time to build.
When was the last time you heard a story like this in the media? Ever?
We said it (and heard it) all the time during the Viet Nam war. It was true, too - but only part of the story. The rest of the story was that we were spending much more, and working harder to defoliate and destroy the county's infrastructure. For every school we built, we bombed and strafed 10. No reason that it should be any different in Iraq. We spend most of our money (1600% more according to another post) on sophisticated firepower (see the original article) that is completely inappropriate for doing anything constructive.
My thought is that the United States isn't doing a good enough job conveying the message that life sucks mainly due to the insurgents.
Same thing we said about the Viet Cong. Same Song, Second Verse.
Interesting suggestion. And one Libraries are working on (I work at one). But licensing contracts are the rub. Publishing houses won't license print-on-demand at a price that beats buying a bound copy. And why should they? Of course - there's much in the public domain that we CAN print on demand. And should. But at libraries that have tried it, there is relatively little demand. Probably because we haven't gotten the inventory right yet. One promising product is Newspapers on Demand -instead of newspaper reading rooms: we set up terminals and allow patrons to buy a copy - then it is available for the next patron.