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This Is What Democracy Looks Like
Today's Note From a Madman
April 10, 2008
Stay the Course, Again
If you will, imagine being in a platoon on patrol and all of a sudden, you're
nearly surrounded by the enemy. You look towards your commanding officer for
leadership and guidance, but instead you get delay and confusion. You look at
your buddies and see a strange combination of fear, tension and readiness.
There's a way out of the predicament. You have the opportunity for a safe and
orderly retreat. You can also choose to allow some of your buddies the
opportunity to get away while you and some others stay and fight.
When you and your buddies were deployed to this far off land, you weren't given
any mission other than the rhetoric to "keep the peace", whatever that means.
Those who made the decision to send you and your buddies to fight a war without
a goal decided that an "overwhelming force" wasn't necessary and that you - and
your buddies - would stay in this far off land and be the guardians of whatever
cause they deem needs guarding that day.
Your platoon leader forces you to stay and fight, but with restraints. You can't
shoot until your shot at; you can't fight back until the first, second and third
punches are thrown at you; and you can't defend yourself or your buddies to the
fullest extent of your power because it might be misconstrued as aggression.
And if you do not fight with the restraints handed to you by those who sent you
there; and if one of those on the side of the enemy gets hurt without all of the
conditions above not being met in their entirety, the fault and the blame will
all be pinned on you.
This must be what it's like to fight President Bush's war in Iraq. No direction;
no goal; no end game; and little hope that your tours of duty will have an
eventual end.
General David Petraeus, the leader of the US forces in Iraq, has asked that a
freeze of troop withdrawals be put in place. The "Surge" is working according to
him and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, so well that removing any of the troops would
be like removing a stick in a game of "Ker-Plunk" and watching all of the
marbles fall to the floor (okay - I'm dating myself).
Judging by the statements made by Petraeus and Crocker, we apparently have the
exact right number of troops on the ground in Iraq. We can't remove a single
one, and don't need even one more.
It's the Bush formula for war.
"Those of us who have been at this a long time obviously want the war to end as
much as anybody else, perhaps maybe more. What we want to do is come home the
right way without jeopardizing the gains we fought to achieve."
-Petraeus
In a war of follies such as this Bush war in Iraq, what are the gains we have
made so far? What has the troop Surge done to make Iraq a better place? The
Iraqi troops aren't ready to do this by themselves yet, so that can't be a gain.
The Iraqi government, purple fingers and all, still can't decide on how to split
up the oil revenues of the second largest oil producing nation in the world. And
there are militias running around controlling major parts of the nation with no
one to stop them unless some of the surge troops happen to be put in their
target zone.
One wonders what General Petraeus will say of a new President comes in and asks
what we need to do to get the troops out in a year.
"We will have troops in Iraq after 2009, after he leaves office, and what the
president is working to do is to make sure that he makes tough decisions now
that can help make for a smooth transition when the next president takes over."
-White House Press secretary Dana Perino
President Bush is trying to make it so the next president has no other choice
but to keep his war going even after his administration heads on back to
Crawford or Wyoming or whatever hole they will retreat into. Most presidents
would look towards ending any messes they had made before leaving office.
Abraham Lincoln lamented losing his bid for re-election against his former
General George McClellan without having the Civil War come to a close. Bush is
looking forward to keeping his war going as a lasting legacy.
And that's a pity.
-Noah Greenberg
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-Noah Greenberg