Military Progress Doesn’t Make War More Popular
The debate at home over the Iraq war has shifted significantly in the two months since Gen. David H. Petraeus testified to Congress and President Bush ordered the first troop withdrawals, with more Americans now concluding that the situation on the ground is improving. A new poll released yesterday underscored the changing political environment, finding the public more positive about the military effort in Iraq than at any point in 14 months as a surge of optimism follows the rapid decline in violence. Yet Bush remains as unpopular as ever in the survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, and the public remains just as committed to bringing U.S. troops home.
I can’t pretend to speak for anyone but myself, but I have a strong suspicion that my feelings are shared by a growing number of Americans. Those feelings can be simply summarized in three words: enough is enough. It’s time for the travesty that is the war in Iraq to end. It’s time for our sons and daughters to come home- alive and not in boxes. To borrow a phrase from the late Yitzhak Rabin, we’ve shed enough blood and tears over an immoral and unjust war that was purchased from the outset by lies and propaganda.
I’m tired of Americans coming home in flag-draped boxes. I’m tired of memorial services and touching tributes to lives cut short. More than anything, though, I’m sick of young Americans dying in a war that has NOTHING to do with our security or national interest. This is not about protecting our freedom, or protecting the Homeland from terrorism, or fighting terrorists there so we don’t have to fight them here. At this point in time, it’s about ego, politics, and the legacy of The Worst President EVER © who, rather than admitting that his Excellent Adventure in Iraq has been a horrible mistake and a clusterf—k of the first order, is content with allowing the carnage to continue- no doubt so he can hand it off to his successor, and then blame that President for his mess.
How much more of our blood and treasure should we be expected to sacrifice in the name of criminal negligence, incompetence, and inept planning? How many more must die for no acceptable, much less discernible, reason? How many times could these resources have rebuilt New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita? I’d daresay that the French Quarter could have been paved in gold filigree with the money that’s been poured down the rathole that Iraq has turned into. We could have rebuilt the Ninth Ward and other destroyed areas…and then some.
We’ve allowed a cabal of authoritarian Evangelical Right-wing thugs to hijack our democracy and use the lives and futures of our sons and daughters as the price of admission to their personal political playground. I’m sick to death of the continuing waste of young American lives- and I’m not just talking about those who come home in boxes. There are thousands more who’ve come home scarred, both physically and psychologically, and maimed. These brave souls will carry the war in Iraq with them for the rest of their lives…and they have Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © to thank for it.
If a President can be impeached for getting his helmet polished in the Oval Office by a zaftig intern, why is it so difficult to impeach one responsible for the senseless murder (for, really, what else could it be called) of so many young Americans? Which is the bigger crime- adultery or mass murder? If you have to think about that one for more than a nanosecond, you’re probably one of the 26% who still think George W. Bush is a godly and resolute leader…and you ought to be sent up the river with him.
Enough is enough. NOW CAN WE IMPEACH THE LYING BASTARD?
