perkyrusalka | (no subject)

I'm getting very tired of b.s.ing my opinion about whether or not we should withdraw from Iraq. I don't have an opinion about it. You know why? Because it doesn't matter what I think. Seriously. All the rantings of a 24 year-old amount to nada. Especially since my opinion is-"well, we're in there now, aren't we? Better do what we said we were going to do in the first place, and the get on out." I'm thinking that's not a very popular opinion. In fact, I know it isn't, but it never is. If you're in a place where you have to say "You agreed to do this, and promised to do that. Now you have to actually do that and this," you aren't going to be the popular one. If you're going to be an idiot, you should at least be an idiot with confidence. This is why one should think things out before one gets committed to doing something.

And it's really hard to express that idea formally, and make it take up a page. Especially since I have a feeling I'm not rolling with the idea of the assignment. And quite frankly, it's one of those things where I could write a paragraph, but if I get past that, I'm going to have to write a friggin' novella.

Never mind that my opinion, is based more or less on ignorance. That's okay, it works for the president. (Cheap shot, I know.) I suppose it comes of a purely academic past-I need to know, at minimum, the complete history of American interactions with Iraq (preferably presented with footnotes) before I can even start to form an idea.

At least I'm fairly secure about my grammar. The passive voice is something which I overuse, but I'm trying to restrain myself.

Edited to prove I know how old I am. Oops.

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Just because your opinion doesn't matter doesn't mean you shouldn't have one.

I agree with you on Iraq: we made a mess, now we have to fix it. But at the same time our very presence is a problem, too. From what little I've read, Gulf War I is what caught Bin Laden et al's attention: American soldiers moving through Saudi Arabia to get to Iraq was enough to do it. And now we're really mucking around over there and leaving a "munafiq" government in our wake.

So, yeah, we're damned either way.

It's just that I have opinions about other things, I just don't like wasting my energy making something up.

Yeah-the rest of my paper went on to basically say "and once we get out, we should stay out, because the Iraqis are grown-ups, and can take care of themselves".