The most recent ad featuring a US General self-righteously denouncing the president for not listening to warnings he was given about the possible consequences of invading Iraq, specifically the probability that the military would get bogged down in a drawn-out campaign of terrorism and suicide bombings, has really gotten me fired up.
I respect the fact that these retired military leaders are just doing what they consider honorable, they are soldiers and I would expect nothing less, but they are offering nothing to the solution, but only adding their name to the list of respectfully dissenting American citizens. I believe they are being exploited to convey a political message, and I do not understand how it tells us anything about what Iraq means to America and the rest of the world from today forward.
Tim Russert insisted tonight that the most important task facing our government today is determining what went wrong in the run-up to war that led us to mistakenly think Saddam had WMD. I hope he was not serious, because if he really thinks assigning blame for how we have arrived in our current situation is a more pressing concern than how to solve our current problems, then he clearly could care less about anything except promoting his own personal political agenda and not securing the interests of the United States. But when you watch him interview
Senator John McCain for the full hour on
Meet the Press, and he spends the first half of the show pointing out the dissatisfaction with the president and his handling of the Iraq War with total disregard for the fact that McCain is essentially agreeing with every point he makes, he looks like a hack.
Clearly the
White House made miscalculations in the early stages of the occupation, but it was operating with the support of the American electorate and with the world and without changing US policy one bit from that under the
Clinton Administration. Lets not forget, when the decision to invade
Iraq was made, it came on the heels of a resounding US victory in Afghanistan which defied conventional wisdom based upon the experiences of the Soviet Union, which spent years fighting a US financed resistance to no avail. How can we fault the president for being confident after defying history once, and why is there rarely any mention of this remarkable accomplishment as a counterpoint to the naysayers who like to brand the president a failure on cable news shows every night?
As far as I am concerned, Bush has had both great victories and great defeats in the war against
Islamic fundamentalism. But I believe it is clear that the victories have been almost entirely of a military nature, while the defeats have been almost exclusively in the political arena, or rather in the battle for public opinion. I consider any pundit or politician who insists that our military has lost anything to be repulsive, and they should be exposed for the disingenuous opportunists that they are.
Everyday we hear the
Democratic Party talking point, which I admit they borrowed from
General Petraeus, that there is "no military solution to the conflict as it now exists, only a political solution." I would like to believe that General Patraeus would take those words back if he knew at the time they would be used to rally support behind legislation that specifically undermines the very strategy he was outlining before the Congress when he made that statement. Interestingly, the General was confirmed with an unanimous vote in the
Senate, which is the very same institution that has done everything in their power, including using his own words against him, since that vote of confidence to undermine him and the troops under his command. When did the General say that he wanted benchmarks, or a timetable, or his funding cut off or stalled by partisan vitriol?
It is completely illogical to insist that there is no military solution to a civil war, but rather only a political compromise can achieve peace, and somehow our withdrawal/redeployment will be the impetus that brings this diplomatic solution about. First of all, to assert that it is a civil war implies that our troops are not targeted by non-Iraqi elements, which is absolutely not the case.
Al-Qaeda and its network operates openly in Baghdad, and if they happen to get
C-SPAN in the
Sunni Triangle or the Pakistani hinterlands, moral is probably much higher amongst it ranks after hearing the Democratic Majority Leader declare them victorious in the battle against the infidel in Iraq. Regardless of our presence the war will continue, and it is hard to imagine a more effective recruiting tool for our enemies and the forces of Islamic fascism than a public acknowledgment of their victory straight from the leader of the ruling party in the US Congress.
I do not understand why it is ignored that we have an enemy in Iraq too, and no it is not the Iraqi people who are trying to sort out their lives, it is the radical Islamic fascists that send their soldiers to die with belts or in trucks packed with C-4. So often I hear the Democratic presidential candidates insisting that they would refocus American military resources on the fight in
Afghanistan and the hunt for bin-Laden, but never to you hear them assert that we are losing in Afghanistan. Why abandon the effort that is in dire straits to focus on more successful campaigns?
How can it be reasonably argued that our presence or absence will affect the current situation in any substantial way, except to provide the government we have heretofore supported and largely financed with every excuse to adopt Saddam-styled suppression tactics, thus completely undermining any sense of principle we have impressed upon the fledgling Iraqi government and society? This is quite simply immoral and unjust, and it is remarkable that the media has embraced this position as wise and in our interests to pursue. I know that a lot of you instinctively want to lash out at me and denounce Bush as immoral and unjust, and claim that if it weren't for him we wouldn't have had this problem to in the first place. To all of you I say simply- DEAL WITH IT!
It is reasonable to argue that Bush was wrong, or that he failed to grasp the implications of his preemption policy, but if there is anything he was not it is immoral and unjust. He inherited a US policy of regime change, and as
George Tenet has made perfectly clear, they did not manipulate the intelligence at all, but in fact shared the belief that Saddam possessed WMD with the intelligence services of everyone of our allies. It is entirely unreasonable to insist that pointing fingers and assigning blame is the most important task we are faced with as we continue to fight against clearly hate-filled fundamentalists.
I have posed a lot of questions in this rant, and I hope to get some straight answers, NO TALKING POINTS ALLOWED! Just a heads up to all those bleeding heart Bush bashers out there, when you repeat
Harry Reid and
Nancy Pelosi, you sound just as retarded as Bush. I want to hear some nuance, because if withdrawal is all you can muster then the threat you pose to Republicans in the post-9/11 world is way over-hyped.
Tags:
American Politics, George W. Bush, Iraq, Iraqi Politics, Senate, Meet the Press, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, General Patreaus, Middle East, 2008 Elections, Democrats, Partisan Journalism
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