Sdgla, re: "I know we are on offense as opposed to sitting on our collective arses and doing nothing while being attacked."
Yes, we are on offense. That may make you feel good. If it does, however, try analyzing how well our offensive game plan is working.
We're busy firing very expensive cannon balls at no-see-ems. The fact that no-see-ems can't be effectively killed with cannon balls doesn't seem to register with you.
Some things to consider:
Running your head into a brick wall trying to solve a problem is "doing something." People who do such things themselves are often admired for their grit and determination, even as they cause themselves injury and pain. If they ram other people's heads into the wall then that's another thing altogether, and if they keep ramming their own heads into the wall we don't call them determined; we call them stoooopid.
We are at war..... and not because of our Iraq operation."
You've got it backwards. We are at war, because of our Iraq operation.
The "war" on terrorism is not a war at all at least not in the conventional way that Bush/Cheney want you to view it.
Of course when you have the "war" on drugs, the "war" on cancer, or a "war of words" then it gets confused. Bush/Cheney deliberately pinned the "war" on terror on the struggle against terrorism in order to support giving Bush constitutional war powers to invade Iraq and create obscenities such as Gitmo.
But 9/11 wasn't an act of war, it was a deadly crime committed by a cell of international terrorists with a political agenda. They had no national allegiance, no army, no navy, no air force, no manufacturing base and no face. They were so small and so hidden that 5 years later we still haven't killed or captured the two main leaders of that cell.
But that didn't stop us from, as you so aptly stated, "doing something." When we attacked Iraq we actually started a war that, with respect to fighting terrorism, has one inevitable ending; triumph for all of those who want to see more terror, a less effective American response to terrorism, more hatred directed against and more death to Americans.
Do you prefer to live with your eyes closed ?
No, I'm OK with living with my eyes open. I'm OK with living with the knowledge that there are groups of people who want to kill us and will, at times, succeed. I'm OK living that way without becoming so frightened that I want to "kill em all" who might support them, or look different, or believe in the same religion as those who want to kill us, or who even support them "in their hearts." I'm OK with doing the kinds of things that will, eventually, allow other cultures to mature and choose to either change or wither and die. I'm OK with taking a chance that someday we might have to actually go to war and kill millions of people if nations truly do threaten us....but not till then.
I'm not OK with swallowing slogans like "A democratic Iraq will not be a threat to its neighbors."
A "democratic" Iraq whose leaders and policies mirror the barbaric, old testament wants and desires of the majority Shiites is a nightmare, and not just for the Sunnis and Iraqi women.
We need to pull our hand out of the Iraqi mixer and start focusing on doing things to effectively diminish the number and severity of terrorist attacks.
As for Iraq, sometimes the best cure for a nation of people who think they want radical, Islamic rule is to let them have what they want. We did that in Iran and, until we invaded Iraq, Iran was the Muslim country whose young people were the most pro-western, pro-democratic and anti theological rule.
The thought of radical Islamic rulers in Iraq doesn't scare me. Experience is a great teacher and with our possession of the world's greatest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and the most efficient means of delivering them across the globe, do you really think that people who've come out of the shadows into the light and assumed leadership will really want to "attack" the US?
If people would get past all the "democracy is the God-given right of all people" and "we have to win in Iraq because losing isn't an option," crap then maybe we can figure out what we can, and cannot, do and start moving ahead. In the meantime we just keep ramming our bloody heads into that brick wall sending our children half a world away and telling them they're dying fighting for freedom when they're dying for nothing, actually less than nothing. Ed |
