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January 10, 2007
Escalation
So it's come to this. Tonight, the Commander in Chief, that ol' fucker, is gonna do it. Yes, tonight, President Bush is gonna hork a loogie in the face of American democracy, ignore the advice of the whole damn country, save a few pointy-headed thinktank neocons, and pour more humanity on the raging fire of a civil war we've unleashed in Iraq.
Bush is bucking the advice of his generals, says the WaPo, even when he said a month ago that he wouldn't. Back where I'm from, we call that a flip-flop. Or worse.
Needless to say, reports the Chicago Tribune, the public - that's you and me - is "dubious." To put it mildly.
According to the latest Gallup poll, only ten percent - ten percent! - of Americans support the surge, given a choice of options. And I'll bet most Americans thought they made it pretty damn clear in November what they thought of Bush's handling - and the Congress's inept "oversight" - of the war.
Of course I support the troops; these are my peers. I watch the news every night, and I am consistently moved to tears by the stories of the sacrifice, bravery and unimaginable perserverance of our young men and women. I am no proponent of underfunding, cutting funding, or any such alternative that puts our soldiers at a greater risk of harm. I just want them to come home. They've done their job. But it's a job that I don't think they should ever have been asked to do.
Any war - be it considered "just" or otherwise - is awful, bloody, and represents the worst of the human experience. Putting young adults out there is horrible enough by itself - let alone without adequate protection, as if such a thing could really exist.
Point is, we've seen the obvious and predictable pain and suffering that results from trying to wage war on the cheap from the tales of the under-equipped and insufficiently armored troops Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld sent over there in the beginning. In fact, according to the Baltimore Sun, the "surge" troops, when they get over there, "will join the fight largely without the protection of the latest armored vehicles that withstand bomb blasts far better than the Humvees in wide use, military officers said." And don't even get me started on the underfunded veteran support programs Bush shamefully ignores back home.
To my mind, the Iraq war should never have happened. I opposed the war in 2003, and I oppose it now. But what's done is, sadly, done. That said, if we had sent in the "overwhelming force" the Powell doctrine called for in the beginning, we wouldn't be in this mess now. That would have been supporting the troops - asking them to do a military job, with more than adequate support. Instead, we turned over the reins to Rumsfeld, that madman, and now we've got more blood on our hands than any of us ever imagined. The Brownsville Herald (TX) nails it in an editorial today.
Well, goddamn. Here we go.
Posted by caps at January 10, 2007 09:48 AM