Americans are shopping while Iraq burns.
The competing television news images on the morning after Thanksgiving were of the unspeakable carnage in Sadr City — where more than 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by a series of coordinated car bombs — and the long lines of cars filled with holiday shopping zealots that jammed the highway approaches to American malls that had opened for business at midnight.
A Wal-Mart in Union, N.J., was besieged by customers even before it opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday. “All I can tell you,” said a Wal-Mart employee, “is that they were fired up and ready to spend money.” There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it. Representative Charles Rangel recently proposed that the draft be reinstated, suggesting that politicians would be more reluctant to take the country to war if they understood that their constituents might be called up to fight. What struck me was not the uniform opposition to the congressman’s proposal — it has long been clear that there is zero sentiment in favor of a draft in the U.S. — but the fact that it never provoked even the briefest discussion of the responsibilities and obligations of ordinary Americans in a time of war. With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year- old history major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, said: “I definitely don’t know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don’t even think about the war. They’re more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday’s test.” His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. “No, definitely not,” he said. “None of my friends even really care about what’s going on in Iraq.”
This indifference is widespread. It enables most Americans to go about their daily lives completely unconcerned about the atrocities resulting from a war being waged in their name. While shoppers here are scrambling to put the perfect touch to their holidays with the purchase of a giant flat-screen TV or a PlayStation 3, the news out of Baghdad is of a society in the midst of a meltdown.
According to the United Nations, more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October. Nearly 5,000 of those killings occurred in Baghdad, a staggering figure.
In a demoralizing reprise of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the U.N. reported that in Iraq: “The situation of women has continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of women were recorded to be either victims of religious extremists or ‘honor killings.’ Some non-Muslim women are forced to wear a headscarf and to be accompanied by spouses or male relatives.”
Journalists in Iraq are being “assassinated with utmost impunity,” the U.N. report said, with 18 murdered in the last two months.
Iraq burns. We shop. The Americans dying in Iraq are barely mentioned in the press anymore. They warrant maybe one sentence in a long roundup article out of Baghdad, or a passing reference — no longer than a few seconds — in a television news account of the latest political ditherings. Since the vast majority of Americans do not want anything to do with the military or the war, the burden of fighting has fallen on a small cadre of volunteers who are being sent into the war zone again and again. Nearly 3,000 have been killed, and many thousands more have been maimed. The war has now lasted as long as the American involvement in World War II. But there is no sense of collective sacrifice in this war, no shared burden of responsibility. The soldiers in Iraq are fighting, suffering and dying in a war in which there are no clear objectives and no end in sight, and which a majority of Americans do not support. They are dying anonymously and pointlessly, while the rest of us are free to buckle ourselves into the family vehicle and head off to the malls and shop.

There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis -- not the Americans.
Say it in leaves photo above Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and terrorism. There will be no military victory or military solution for Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this point last weekend.
The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose.

10 Ways to Support the Troops by deselby ( thanks to deselby at DailyKOS)
Sat Nov 18, 2006 at 05:37:10 PM PST I was inspired to post this by thereisnospoon's diary. Some of these were mentioned in the comments to that diary, but I figured it might be helpful to put them all in one diary. Last week, I printed up copies of the following list of 10 Ways to Support the Troops and went and stood outside the local mall to hand them out, before going by the local VA to visit with and thank some vets. Anyway, here's the list, which I compiled from the resources offered on the website of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which everyone should check out.
10 WAYS TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS
1. Any Soldier Sergeant Brian Horn from LaPlata, Maryland, was an Army Infantry Soldier with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Kirkuk when he started AnySoldier to help care for his soldiers. He agreed to distribute packages that came to him with "Attn: Any Soldier" in the address to the soldiers who were not getting mail. Sgt. Horn is no longer in Iraq but AnySoldier continues and has expanded to include all branches of the Armed Services in harms way.
2. Books for Soldiers Books For Soldiers is a soldier support site that ships books, DVDs and supplies to deployed soldiers and soldiers in VA hospitals.
3. Adopt a Platoon The AdoptaPlatoon Soldier Support EffortTM is a nonprofit 501C-3 organization managed nationwide by volunteer mothers to ensure that deployed United States Service members in all branches of the military are not forgotten by providing needed mail support.
4. Soldiers' Angels Soldiers' Angels is dedicated to making sure no troop goes unloved. It was started by a mother whose son requested letters for fellow Soldiers while oversees. You adopt a Soldier, make personal visits, send needed items, or other needed things. The organization also provides support to families of military personnel who are oversees.
5. Operation Helmet Operation Helmet provides helmet upgrade kits free of charge to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to those ordered to deploy in the near future. In addition to providing enhanced blast protection, the helmet upgrades are much more comfortable and stable than the 'strap/sling' suspensions that generally come with standard helmets.
6. Operation Comfort Operation Comfort's mission is to create a nationwide network of mental health providers and agencies to donate their services, free of charge, to family members who have a loved one serving in the Middle East.
7. Homes for Our Troops Homes for Our Troops, Inc., is a Massachusetts nonprofit corporation that builds specially adapted homes for our disabled veterans of war.
8. Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund More than half of the brave men and women who have given their lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have left behind a spouse or children. These families must now face their future without a husband or wife or father or mother. In addition to their grief, many of them must also address the questions of finding work, where to live, how to raise their children, how to provide for their education, and even how to get food on the table.
9. Operation Uplink Operation Uplink is a program that keeps military personnel and hospitalized veterans in touch with their families and loved ones by providing them with a free phone card. Operation Uplink uses contributions to purchase phone cards and distribute them to servicemen and women who are separated from those they care about.
10. Operation Homefront Operation Homefront was created to channel volunteer support to help the families of deployed military personnel. With hundreds of thousands of service members deployed for war with Iraq, and countless others around the world fighting the war on terrorism, thousands of spouses and children are left behind, many in need. Operation Homefront is there to support military families while their loved ones are deployed.

After the Thanksgiving Day Massacre of Shiites by Sunnis, President Bush should go on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and give an interview headlined: "If I did it, here's how the civil war in Iraq happened."
He could describe, hypothetically, a series of naïve, arrogant and self-defeating blunders, including his team's failure to comprehend that in the Arab world, revenge and religious zealotry can be stronger compulsions than democracy and prosperity.
But W. is not yet able to view his actions in subjunctive terms, much less objective ones. Bush family retainers are working to deprogram him, but the president is loath to strip off his delusions of adequacy.
W. declined to tear himself away from his free- range turkey and pumpkin mousse trifle at Camp David and reassure Americans about the deadliest sectarian attack in Baghdad since the U.S. invaded. More than 200 Shiites were killed and hundreds more wounded by car bombs and a mortar attack in Sadr City. October was the bloodiest month yet for civilians, and in the last four months, some 13,000 men, women and children have died.