In hearing the commentary on the President's speech, it almost seemed to be typical Republican denial. The Democrats are surely not blameless by any stretch of the imagination but we have to operate from where we are NOW and change has to be the order of the day. I have no arguments to counter many, like say John McCain and let's "stay in Iraq forever." To be perfectly honest, it goes a little beyond agreeing to disagree. And, I surely hope that we are never in a position on Iraq in particular where it is an "I told you so" scenario. There is no satisfaction, even if we are going into our fifth year. Things are less violent, although this week, there's been at least 300 plus civilians killed or wounded and five GIs killed and for the parents and loved ones, "violence is down" probably is very little comfort.
After watching the State of the Union speech the other night, I was almost nauseous--the pandering and accepting of what is, Democrats as well as all those other hypocrites. I wish we had a British system and someone like the President had to face a Congress that would raise hell and ask raucous questions. But, no, we have a system where the President is glad handing and signing autographs, acting like things are great.
And, let's fault all of us Americans too: suddenly, we think that Iraq is about 3d down in priorities behind the economy and health care, as important as they are; but, here we are acting like the war is won, next case. When the fact is, any military type with a platform says we have eight to ten more years. And, instead of denying, let's face up--we went into something with a whole bunch of wrong assumptions and messed it up royally. Now, we are stuck and cannot get out. A mess and we let the President just skate on.
Vietnam should have been our thermometer to the next war, if we had seen one coming. The conventional wisdom of Vietnam is that had not we simply left, then we could have altered the course of what happened, i.e., the Domino Theory. At this stage, I think we have to look at the big picture and what has happened to Vietnam. They are essentially a capitalist country; ask anyone who has been there in the last ten years. The vast majority of Vietnamese weren't even born during the Vietnam war and there are almost no signs we were ever around. We don't know what or how things would have been had we not "cut and run." Would we have prevented the "killing fields, etc.?" Who knows? What we do know is that more young Americans would have died had we stayed. I still think it is unconscionable with Nixon promising to get us out of Vietnam but once elected, changed his mind and we lost 20,000 more Americans. We couldn't beat Ho over the long haul. So, what can we say today about "cutting and running?"
From a soldier standpoint, the military has to be exhausted and getting more so. The very real difference in the Iraqi war and with Vietnam, we had more "bodies" that were deployable to war (the existence of the draft) but many of us, went only once; but, in the present Army, soldiers are redeploying over and over and this has to take a gigantic toll. God bless them.
The big difference is that for Muslims of all shades, the presence of our military in Iraq will constantly be a source for justification of terrorism. We are in this fight forever anyway and will never be able to declare victory and move on. But, from my view, we must reduce the conventional troops, as others have said before me, station Special Ops in the desert, whatever. And, hope and pray that the Iraqis can assume the vacuum left by us in terms of an active keeping of the peace. LET US PRAY.
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