The Man, The Myth, The Legend…
…and I have to say that I’m a bit angry.
Michael Moore is right: We live in the wealthiest nation on the planet, and I have to say that I agree with him. We don’t take care of each other.
Too bad I didn’t realize this earlier, like when it still would have made sense for me to live overseas. Now I guess I’ll just need to put my anger to good use by helping do something about it.
I’ve been looking at the candidates who are running for President of the United States of America, in the Democratic Party field, and I am happy to throw my support (and my money) behind Mr. John Edwards, the former Senator from South Carolina.
For quite a while now, I have been under the impression that Ms. Hillary Clinton is beholden to special interests, and, while I don’t see a proverbial “smoking gun,” I would rather not wait for the evidence to come in the form of a proverbial “mushroom cloud.” You see, it’s not that I don’t like her - I just feel that it’s difficult to get a straight answer from her on any questions that are asked. I don’t prefer that in my politicians. I prefer direct answers to direct questions.
As far as Mr. Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, is concerned, I like him. I think he’s the genuine article. I can see why people in his great state would send him to the Senate to get their bidding done for them. However, in reviewing his plans on-line, I find them to be lacking in the substance required in order for me to make a decision in his favor.
I urge those who read this blog to, of course, make their own minds up based on the evidence presented to them. However, before making your choice, ask yourself if this country can survive another four years at the hands of a president who is at the beck-and-call of special interests who only have their pocketbooks in mind.
Since when is letting your staff screw up royally, breaking every rule in the book, and even some national and international laws in the process - oh, and, by the way, injuring and killing some other people - considered a superb job? I want that job in Bush’s cabinet. No, come to think of it, I don’t.
I don’t want Donald Rumsfeld’s job. Especially not in the coming weeks and months, as Congress systematically pulls apart at the President’s confidence the way his troops have systematically pulled apart at the world’s confidence in how we have been treating our prisoners of war. But I hope congress is up to the task of truly policing the group that perpetrated the heinous acts against those same POWs: Bush and His Cronies.
My father, with whom I had the pleasure of visiting over the weekend, told me, literally, that “none of them assholes apologized to us for 9/11, why should we treat them any better?” And that was understandable… it’s understandable because I have felt the same way… but we are Americans.
What, exactly, does that mean? “We are Americans”
It means that we are a proud, if sometimes foolish, people. We live free… we have few true, regulations put on us by our government… and we have the right to pick and choose how we live. Many people… most people… in the world don’t get to live in this freedom. But it - the freedom - comes with a huge price tag. That price tag is having the eyes of the world glued to us, watching for us to mess something up… and, unfortunately, it looks like we have.
Yes… it probably was a few bad apples, but it has given our opposition JUST enough straw to grasp on to to point at us and say: “See, they torture us just like the old regime.” “They treat us as if we were prisoners in our own country.” “They allow dogs to attack our people while they are nude and in prison, and can’t defend themselves.” Make no mistake, the barbarous treatment suffered at the hands of a few may, very well, be the downfall of the whole lot of soldiers, 135,000 of them, who risk their lives on a daily basis to bring peace to a country that has been war torn for the past year.
So… why should we treat them assholes any better when they haven’t apologized for what happened on 9/11?
Because it doesn’t matter. We walk a different path than they do. We know better, and know what true freedom tastes like. We believe that this is the way people should be allowed to live…
And because a few bad apples may spoil the bunch, we have to make sure that every apple that was touching those bad apples gets taken out of the barrel… straight to that last apple on top.
Yes - I firmly believe that what occurred in Iraq is a systematic “softening” of the prisoners. Yes, I believe that Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Richard Meyer should ALL give up their jobs for this… it is the only way that we can truly go back to those Iraqis who have been wronged and say “Yes, we screwed up - and yes, you can rest assured it won’t happen again, because we’ve truly cleaned house.”
And the next time, make sure that we fix problems as soon as we know about them… and not just after the press hears about them.
“Abusive Soldiers Will Pay!”
So, we now know that it takes two months for a report submitted for the eyes of our military elite to reach the ranks where it can have some effect. Unfortunately, for Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Meyer, George W. Bush, and the American People, it takes less time for pictures of the dastardly handling of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad to reach the newspapers.
War crimes, previously limited to the likes of Slobodan Milosevic, will now, hopefully, be visited on the military personnel responsible for the atrocities being suffered by (mostly) innocent Iraqis in the aforementioned military prison. Do I dare wish this kind of war crimes trial on my fellow citizens? Yes… if they broke the law, they must pay if the US is to maintain ANY semblance of credibility in the eyes of the world.
If President Bush was so concerned about this abuse before this week, then why did he not immediately investigate it as soon as he heard about it? It would seem that Bush heard about this before the reporters started getting info on it - but he didn’t seem to see fit to investigate it before the pictures were released. Ahhh… therein lies the answer. Bush is not upset about the TORTURE… he’s upset about the PICTURES… and their release.
So, we’re to believe, from these reports, that the soldiers at the bottom - the Military Police guarding these prisoners - are to blame. Hmmm… blame the front-line worker. It’s what happens consistently in my business, customer support. Well, guys, we’re there with you - certain that you were just following orders, treating your fellow human beings to some nice, inhumane, sexual treatment. Too bad those same officers that ordered you to do this are no longer standing behind you, or well, rather, they are - but now it’s more akin to some of the poses you made those Iraqi prisoners stand in - you know the ones - behind each other, in some quirky homosexual pose, faking anal sex.
As an American Citizen, all I want to say to all who took part in this is: “Thanks. Thanks for giving the world another excuse to call us on the carpet. Thanks for giving the Arab world in general, and the Iraqi people specifically, another reason to distrust us. Thank you for allowing your pranks to upset the sensibilities of the world while you had your fun. And thanks go, in no small part, to the military bureaucracy that was set up to prevent the info from percolating to the top in a timely fashion to stop the bullshit.”
I hope that ALL of the military personnel involved in this and who knew about it, all the way up the chain, serve their due time in some brig somewhere… but you know what? I don’t know that sodomy occurs there… so maybe in one of our “regular” prisons, with the guy named “Chip” in the shower who just waits for you to drop the soap… yeah - I think that’s more appropriate.
At least the world might let us police our mess ourselves…
I support my troops. I support my country. Saddam Hussein was an evil, bad, man. I support our activities in Afghanistan against the Taliban. Thank you, Armed Forces, for preserving, protecting, and fostering the democracy that allows me to say:
The time has come for us to get the hell out of Dodge.
With the revelation of the pictures of Abu Ghraib, a president and vice president who look like Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber as they appear - together - before the 9/11 committee (because they can’t get their stories straight separately), and a nation increasingly asking what the REAL reason is we were in Iraq in the first place, the time has come to finish the job. Let’s install a real Iraqi government, and pull our troops out of harm’s way.
Do we want to leave a power vacuum in Iraq to let another dictator who may be worse than Saddam up to bat? No… for then we would have wasted our opportunity to force Democracy on a country that has no real interest in practicing our form of government. But which is worse?
1) Allowing a country to determine its own course freely? or
2) Staying our course, even though it’s not as clearly defined as crystal?
You can’t force democracy on a people. No true democracy has ever been brought to a people at the end of a gun. It didn’t work in Viet Nam, it won’t work in Iraq.
Do I dare directly make the comparison? Yes… I do. This war will fail for the exact same reasons Viet Nam did. We didn’t listen to the people for whose rights we were fighting.
Will it fail in exactly the same way? No. Our troops will come home heroes this time, with the “exceptions” such as those soldiers who so offended our guests at prisons like Abu Ghraib. I truly believe that those are exceptions… but they DO exist. But yes, our troops will come home heroes.
While there are parallels between the war in Iraq and the Viet Nam war, there are distinct differences. This country has grown up and realized that, just as I’m doing here, I can support my troops while openly bashing their chain of command… or, should I say, the lout at the top’s lack of true support for his underlings.
“Huh?” you ask? Dare I say that George W. Bush doesn’t support his troops? Yes. I say exactly that. The lip service of “Yes, I support our troops,” needs to be backed up with a clear vision of what will bring our troops home… what is the endgame? What will make us win?
I challenge our “leader” in the White House to truly define for us what will make us a winner, not only in Iraq, but in the global war on Terror. Otherwise, do the right thing, and just admit we made a mistake, and start our withdrawal.
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