Karen, I give up on trying to engage you on the important issues regarding Iraq. Every time we start to engage and I ask you to answer a tough question it seems you move to another question.
In answer to your last post, however, you're right, one soldier's life sacrificed in an unjust or futile effort is one life too many. And "volunteer" doesn't change that at all. It doesn't matter if it's the life of someone who was patriotic enough, poor enough or adventurous enough to volunteer because implicit in the contract we have with our soldiers is that we will not send them to kill and die for unjust or undoable causes. We owe them that and we owe that to their children, spouses, mothers, fathers, family and friends.
With regard to why the "left" never talks about terrorists or has suggestions on how to deal with them, you're wrong. I don't know who you consider the "left" but there have been many discussions of alternatives among those opposed to our current "strategy" of using the war in Iraq to deal with the dangers of terrorism.
Those discussions generally address the long term solutions in terms of law enforcement, politics and, to a much lesser extent than Bush, military power. I think you must have dismissed their ideas based on dismissive comments about weak-kneed responses from the left, but you'll notice that more and more we're hearing in Iraq itself that there is NO military solution to the terrorist/insurgent problem there. Our most senior military leaders now say that the only workable solution must be found in a political solution.
They're right and that's smart. The use of conventional military power to effect change in another country's culture or to "capture and kill" terrorists is tiny. Those are political and law enforcement matters and the use of a slow and crushing club to try to kill that mosquito on your knee is just silly, no matter what you felt and were told when you were scared angry after 9/11.
It's time for cooler, brighter heads to prevail. I wish someone would make a bumper sticker that said; "Proud to be a THINKING American." I'd sport THAT sticker. Ed |
