Oh Britain, Where Art Thou?
Today British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that a further reduction of British troops in Iraq will take place. Half of the current 5,000 troops there will be removed, to the disappointment of ever-growing appeals for a full withdrawal of British troops.
To me, this just affirms my theory that Britain is just plain embarrassed to even be associated with this ordeal any more. Think about it: last week the prime minister withdrew 1,000 troops from Baghdad. The current troops there are responsible for "training and mentoring" Iraqi forces. Training and mentoring? Yes, I can clearly visualize the British troops handing out orders and then discretely tiptoeing away, hoping no one saw them. And now they're planning to take out another 2,500 troops to transition into what they're calling an "overwatch" state in Iraq.
Before anyone gets critical, can we really blame them? I'm really wondering why any nation would want to provide indefinite aid in the midst of an indefinitely long war led by an indefinitely indecisive president (say that 10 times fast). What Brown is doing seems to be sensible: at least now it appears they're hoping to quietly disengage without damaging Iraq (or what's left of it). The tentative goal is a full withdrawal by the end of 2008.
October 9th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
hey.. this isn't about the post but i just want you to know that what i said on vanlaw's xanga was very credible. i don't feel the need to prove myself because i think that you can trust me. i wouldn't have just said that to make myself or him feel better, it was sincere. so no matter what you thought my motives may have been, all they were consisted of was encouraging him not to get down on all the little things going wrong when over all this was so incredibly smooth. thank you.
October 12th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Okay, I think I've got it figured out now...See, this is why responding to posts on different blogs doesn't really work out. The "unrepentant stupidity" comment had absolutely nothing to do with you, it was about that other guy's website. You made a comment about my intolerance of him, and that's where my other response came from. I guess you thought I was talking about you...I'm not really sure.
What's that one line from T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
That's it. (In other words, the internet has left me in despair.)