Won't get Fooled again?

I oppose the Iraq war. Always have. Not because I think Saddam is a peachy guy, but because I never thought a military expedition to the region could win...I think I was right.

Even though I get to type "I told you so!" it doesn't make me feel better. The cost of this war has been unbelievable to my country. I never ever believed that an American administration could be so incompetent at everything it does...Everything!

I remember Viet Nam and the inability of the Administrations in power to admit their mistakes. Politicians may simply incapable of that, particularly those who cater to an electorate with the functional understanding of an upperclassman at Cherokee Middle School, although with a slightly lower degree of hormonal poisoning. Richard Nixon won election by a combination of dirty tricks and claiming that he had a secret plan to end the war. Americans wanted the war to end. They always do, but Nixon kept the war going for six more years killing as many troops after his secret plan went in to effect than had been killed up til then. Eventually we loaded up and came home...Defeated.

The lack of understanding or arrogance or both has bubbled to the top once again, with the rise of a particularly deadly strain of conservatism. All pathogens mutate when attacked and these have certainly done so with the current Republican leadership seeming to completely lack any personal morale restriction against lying or guilt at sending innocent American Troops to Iraq to get their arms, legs, and brains mutilated. The lessons of Viet Nam are forgotten or worse, arrogantly ignored. It was a "Assymetric" war and we lost it. There was actually nothing to win over there but that didn't stop our leadership. The people knew, though, that we were losing and just wanted it to stop. That is the case right now.

John McCain lied yesterday on the interview circuit when he said that the majority of Americans don't want us to set a time table or begin a phased withdrawal from Iraq. Every poll says he's lying...Americans want us gone from there. We have too much too do at home to waste any more time on a lost cause, while Bush's obedient Generals do as they're told and waste billions more tax dollars and spend thousands more arms legs and lives making more enemies. That's how an assymetric war works.

Years from now there will be several books published on the clinical psychological aspects of the Bush Presidency, but we can see the morbid effects of a losing cause right now. We are not cowards, America, but we cannot be stupid either. WE fought a bad war under bad leadership with bad results...The American Electorate cannot be fooled again into electing any candidates, Republican or Lieberman, who support this war.

This is a long but accurate examination of our lost cause in Iraq:

"Americans have a hard time grasping this basic fact: Right up to the day the occupying power admits defeat and pulls out, it continues to wield overwhelming force. It may never lose a pitched battle. It may - right up to the end - be able to go where it wants, killing and destroying at will.

That doesn't mean it's not losing."


The War


Peace,

Steve