Adding To The List Of Those To Honor On Memorial Day
This post isn’t about Rosie O’Donnell; but, it necessarily starts with her.
Rosie said there were 655,000 Iraqi dead and then said "Who would you call the terrorist?" She then got embroiled in attacks on her for not "supporting the troops" and attacking Bush.
First, in the international legal sense, the United States is not acting illegally or criminally. The United States is not a terrorist state. There have been incidents of all of those things in Iraq. Abu Graib springs to mind.
There are people on “the Left” that call Bush a war criminal; but, the greater point is that he isn’t. He is stupid, bullheaded, incompetent, complete the list of his negative attributes at your leisure. And that, is worse.
On this Memorial Day weekend we are left with the President’s counsel during a press conference on Thursday that “[w]e're going to expect heavy fighting in the weeks and months [ahead]. We can expect more American and Iraqi casualties. We must provide our troops with the funds and resources they need to prevail.”
“Our new strategy is designed to help Iraq's leaders provide security for their people and get control of their capital, so they can move forward with reconciliation and reconstruction. Our new strategy is designed to take advantage of new opportunities to partner with local tribes, to go after al Qaeda in places like Anbar, which has been the home base of al Qaeda in Iraq.”
No mention in the “new strategy” that the Shiites are still killing Sunnis and the Sunnis are still killing Shiites (and that both are killing our troops) or that they will be doing the same on some distant, hypothetical date when the last al Qaeda fighter is killed, or driven over the boarder to regroup with his fellows. No mention that Bush’s continuing stupidity, bullheadedness and incompetency, now blessed by the Democrats in Congress, will do no more than to add to the list of those we will honor next Memorial Day.
3 comments:
I won't say whether I agree or disagree with your assessment of President Bush, or the extent to which I agree or disagree. These are essentially matters of opinion anyway and I support your right to express opinions.
I agree with your conclusion that Mr. Bush is not a "war criminal."
But I strongly disagree with your apparent conclusion that Mr. Bush's list of negative attributes makes him "worse" than a war criminal.
I don't think that's exactly what you really meant to say, although I may be wrong. But if it is what you meant to say, it's just plain wrong.
There will be more Americans to remember next Memorial Day, and that's a shame. But the primary responsibility for these casualties will be on of all the small-time war criminals planting bombs in the roads... or strapping them to the torsos of individuals (not all of them willing, you know)... or hiding them in the cars of Iraqis (sometimes without the driver's knowledge)... and picking at scabs that have existed in that part of the world since the Prophet's estate was inadequately probated....
We may agree or disagree about whether we should have gone in there in the first place. In a prior post you called it "meddling." And if that's what it was, you know you can't un-meddle. The neo-cons are thoroughly discredited (I hope); most are gone or in hiding. It's left for the grown-ups to pick up the mess.
For the grown-ups and a lot of American kids.
We're not going to solve Iraq's problems. We're (with any luck at all) going to be able to make the situation stable enough to march out with flags flying. And maybe the new government we helped get started there will survive, though the odds are against it.
Or al-Sadr exert enough influence over the Iraqi government that they'll ask us to leave.
And because (with the exception of a few neo-cons who never studied American history... see the Philippines) we're Americans and Americans aren't imperialists... we will.
You're right. I embellished, though that's not the right word.
Maybe better put, were what Bush is doing criminal, there'd be more consensus, and a mechanism to stop it.
I was neutral on going over there. Sadaam, WMD's, al Queda all were bad things. We got one out of three.
My current strident position has evolved from the neutrality at the start. Maybe there's some hindsight involved; but, we don't know what we are doing over there and we have no goals other than those that do not appear to be even remotely obtainable.
In the meantime, we have kids on both sides dying. For no good reason.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
I do not believe Bush is a terrorist. I know our troops are NOT terrorists. I don't watch The View because I find it ridiculous to watch grown women acting like two year olds and I'm particular about my daughter's role models. (Her main one is ME.)
I do believe if he had gone after Bin Laden with the force he went into Iraq, he would have gone down in history as one of our greatest presidents. But he was wrong when he said the major conflict was over on May 1, 2003, and he is wrong when he says there will be heavy fighting in the weeks and months ahead. There's been heavy fighting all along.
When I don't sleep at night, it's because I'm worrying about one of my kids...literally in a war zone or out running around with friends. That's what I do as a mom. But I can't imagine having the job that Bush has and I do often wonder how he sleeps.
I wouldn't call him a war criminal, either, but he most definitely is not one of our smartest presidents.
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