Fresh from his triumphal visit to Baghdad — a place so dangerous he had to sneak in without even telling the Iraqi prime minister — George W. Bush is full of new resolve to stay the course in his open-ended “global war on terror.” That leaves the rest of us to wonder, in sadness and frustration, just what that course might be and where on earth it can possibly lead. This is a “war” in which three men held for years without due process at the Guantanamo Bay prison kill themselves by hanging, and their jailers are so unnerved and self-absorbed that they see the suicides as an attack. Rear Adm. Harry Harris’s all-about-me lament — “I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us” — was worthy of delivery from Oprah’s couch.
During my lifetime, I’ve seen my country go from killing 58,000+ of it’s citizens to prop up a corrupt regime in the name of fighting Communism to killing 2,500 (and counting) of it’s citizens to prop up a regime with no actual authority in the name of fighting terrorism. The names have changed, as have the causes, but the simillarities are more numerous than you might think. Both Vietnam and Iraq were pointless wars that Presidents were hip-deep in before they even considered their position…and if they ever did they were forced to admit to themselves that there was no way out.
Even if they had wanted to pull out, there was no politically-viable way of doing so. The only road available was the path of least resistance- continue doing nothing and allowing increasing numbers of young American lives to be sacrficed to prop up the President’s flagging political fortunes. To say that Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam is no stretch. Those of us who have lived through both wars should be disturbed by our government’s inability to learn from it’s mistakes. War is not, as Napoleon once said, foreign policy by other means. It’s something much more sinister, something unspeakably evil administered by well-fed politicians who never have to sacrifice their own children to “the cause.”
I am so sick and tired of listening to Republican war hawks like Dennis Hastert talk about how the war in Iraq is about “protecting our freedom”- as if we were ever threatened by that was happening in Iraq prior to our invasion. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating again- there was no terrorist threat present in Iraq prior to the American invasion. Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s immoral war created the home-grown insurgency that he is now so resolutely all about “staying the course” to fight. I suppose if you’re a Republican President with no conscience or sense of history, you really CAN have it both ways.
This is a “war” in which the United States drops two 500-pound bombs with the express intent of assassinating Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group that wouldn’t have existed if Bush hadn’t decided to invade. But when the world learns that Zarqawi briefly survived the bombing, and rumors circulate that U.S. forces shot him dead, officials rush to release an autopsy report showing that the butcher with a $25 million bounty on his head died from blast injuries. An American medic, we are told, was about to administer first aid when Zarqawi mumbled something unintelligible and expired.
Why do your best to kill an enemy leader — a bad, bad man, the worst of the worst — and then try to revive him? Didn’t you want him dead?
In this amorphous, open-ended “war” that we’re spending precious lives and billions of dollars to wage, the rules of engagement seem to be shoot first and apologize later.
Iraq is a war with no exit strategy…probably because there was little in the way of an entrance strategy, merely a collection of lies and fudged intelligence. Not only that, but virtually all of the preconceived notions that the neo-con hawks who sold the war to the American sheeple held so tightly have been proven to be horribly wrong. Remember Paul Wolfowitz telling us that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for our war expenses? Remember Dick Cheney telling us that American troops would be welcomed in Baghdad with open arms, and that the insurgency was on it’s last legs? Eh…not so much.
I ‘m tired of being lied to about the war and what it’s supposedly accomplishing. From where I can sit all that’s realy being accomplished is the continued sacrifice of American lives to prop up a failed and immoral policy. I’m tired of being told that this war is protecting our freedom, all while opponents of the war are being branded as cowards and spineless weenies. I’m sick to death of Republicans manipulating what should be a legitimate debate in Congress in order to paint Democrats in the worst light possible so that they have ammunition in their re-election campaigns this fall. While our sons and daughters are being sacrficed for no discernable purpose, Republicans are foremost and primarily concerned with their own political well-being. Then again, their sons and daughters aren’t the ones doing the fighting and dying.
Still glad you voted Republican?? WE DESERVE BETTER.
