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Learning to Let Go

By Tom Paine | August 21, 2006 |

Today our “wartime president” reiterated for the umpteenth time that we are not getting out of Iraq while he is president. He tells us that the result of withdrawal would be catastrophic, would result in a failed state in Iraq. Well, I have news for our fearless leader, Iraq was a failed state from the day we invaded it. It was inevitable that it would fail, given the incompetence of this administration. Aside from billions in no-bid contracts for Haliburton, our invasion of that troubled nation has done nothing for either the Iraqis or for us -aside from getting over 2,500 of our troops killed and thousands more maimed for life (and we won’t mention the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and maimed).

But we are told we must “stay the course”. Funny, they told us the same thing during the Vietnam conflict (war was never declared). Well, we “cut and ran” then and the world did not come to an end. I can guarantee, however, that had we not ended that conflict, we might well still be there and with casualties in the hundreds of thousands rather than the paltry 45,000 or so it cost us (and the hundreds of thousands it cost the Vietnamese).

I do not wish in any of this to imply in any of this any criticism of our troops. I served in the Vietnam conflict myself, and I have nothing but admiration for the bravery and professionalism of our present day military men and women. If anything, it breaks my heart that so many of them have been sacrificed to the stupidity and perfidy of our present political “leaders”. We are rapidly reaching the point where our troops are going to be trapped in the midst of a full scale civil war. And when that happens it is going to get very ugly and we are going to lose a lot of good people.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Mr. Bush has no solution to offer beyond “stay the course”, and he has told us that he is not going to change his mind. History may very well change it for him, but only after much more suffering on both sides. We need to demand that our representatives stop dithering and begin to seriously consider how we can extricate ourselves from this debacle the present administration has gotten us into. Personally, the idea of impeachment appeals to me, given the misbehavior and crimes committed by this president, but that does not appear likely. So we’ll just have to settle for trying to clean up his mess.

* Bush’s Foreign Policy, Cartoon courtesy of Brian Narelle from http://www.narellecreative.com/

About Tom Paine

Systems Administrator for ASP for hospitals/med surg facilities. Politics mostly socialist/populist. Anti-corporate, pro working class. Student of history who fervently believes that "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it".

Email: tompaine@clarksvilleonline.com

Sections: Issues, Politics
Topics: Bush, Commentary, Iraq, Politics, Stay the Course

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