Short Critical Blog Summary

Section 1: Major Theme
Over the course of the past few months, there has been quite a few different happening within the borders of Iraq and on Capitol Hill in relation the United States' war in Iraq. However, one significant item seems to stand out the most after writing and analyzing all of the events that have recently happened. Essentially, the United States has gotten into a war that it cannot win. Over the course of the semester, one thing is for sure. The situation in Iraq hasn't improved. That conclusion can be derived off of several aspects of what has happened in and around Baghdad, including the continued bombings and how they are getting more complex, the inability for any progress to be made between the Sunni and Shia populations, and the sheer fact that the Bush administration is spinning the war in Iraq in almost a complete opposite direction than what is actually happening. Around 15 articles in the blog assignment have covered the ever-present bombings and attacks occuring, and around 10 have talked about the Bush White House's inability to get the facts right. In addition, a few posts detailed what the new Democratic congress has done in an attempt to bring the troops home soon. But most importantly, each of the posts done in the past few months have explained one thing -- even if the message was never even written in text. Simply, the War in Iraq is not improving and the United States really has no idea on how to win it. They went in with a plan to strike out the first batter but forgot that there were still 8 and 2/3 innings to play in this baseball game. Instead, the United States has become just another target for the negative emotions directed in the culture war between sects in Iraq. Without a doubt, this theme will continue to develop, even if in the shadows, because the progress in Iraq on a social level is not going anywhere to stop the violence on a physical level.

Section 2: Prediction
Oddly enough, the theme and prediction in this summary seem to run into each other very, very well. It's very easy to fall into the trap of what the Bush administration is saying about progress by giving whimsical numbers and questioning the loyalty of the folks who think we should leave Iraq. Propaganda aside, the fact is that Iraq is not a war that can be won, and within a year the US will have a plan to leave Iraq -- if they aren't already pulling out. It's pretty interesting to know that this war has now gone on longer than the US's involvement in WW2, and even more alarming to realize that this is turning into this generation's Vietnam. We have grossly underestimated many parts of the war -- except the drive to Baghdad -- and forgotten that the insurgents in Iraq will consider a victory by simply stalemating US forces. I think all of this is easily backed up by the fact that insurgent attacks continue to happen with a regularity that causes the American population to be very casual about what is happening and that the Democratic congress is not going to be standing behind Bush on every word that comes from his mouth.

Section 3: Commenting Process
I'd have to say that this project overall was a tremendous idea. Instead of saying "read the newspaper everyday", it forces students to interact with the media especially and also be able to analyze what is going to happen. This was especially important to me because it seems so easy to get lost in what is happening in Iraq, but now I was able to keep track. However, I felt that the commenting process was indeed flawed. Sometimes, people would not write nearly enough in their summaries to even follow what they were saying, and other times there just would not be much to comment about. People can't make outlandish or large statements about everything everyday to get the commenting going, and its tough to track who had new articles up and who was commenting. A more central system would be nice that alerted people in the whole class what was going on other blogs. But that is obviously very complex and probably not suitable for this type of class.