Long Past Lost?
Wow, I know there's more than a few on the left, and even a healthy number in the middle who hold varying degrees of antiwar sentiment, but this?????
This war is long past lost. Time to pack it in ...
That's a pretty peculiar sentiment to take the day before Iraqis cast their first meaningful vote. Some, it should probably be expected, will lose their lives in the process of doing so from the hands of people who seek to keep democracy from taking root.
But no, let's just declare this a lost cause right now, shall we? Sheesh.
Yes, there's a cost that's been paid and a high one at that. And Bush's shifting logic has been duly documented on this site. But at the end of the day, it's our incoherent President against a nation and its now former decrepit despot that wanted us to think it a danger to our well being that paid a far larger price. This war has long since been won. The peace, on the other hand, is an ongoing struggle that has its setbacks, victories, and mistakes. But by and large, even that is making progress.
When the footage of Iraqis headed to the polls start hitting the airwaves, we can only wonder how this will be spun as another of the setbacks for such an endeavor.
Comments
Not to be disrespectful (as I do link to your site) but,
Is that what you call it - "their first meaningful vote"? And what do you mean by "at the end of the day, it's our incoherent President against a nation and its now former decrepit despot that wanted us to think it a danger to our well being that paid a far larger price." Are you really saying that somehow Saddam was a threat to the US? That theory, which never really had much behind it, was discredited a week into the war. Iraq is a country with a population similar to Texas, a GNP slightly more than Puerto Rico, that has been occupied to a large degree since 1991, and has had debilitating UN sanctions on it since before then. They could have been a threat had they had serious WMD's (and here I mean nukes). But of course they didn't. And we (the Federal government) knew that.
This war is a disaster on so many levels. My kids will be paying for it for a long time. Some families will be paying forever, since they lost loved ones. Our country will be paying in terms of goodwill around the world. It has split our country down the middle. Most of all the Iraqi people will be paying. But FREEDOM is HARD WORK, if FREEDOM is what you call the violent anarchy that exists in Iraq now.
Posted by: bubba | January 29, 2005 05:27 PM
I wouldn't say it's lost till its lost.
But I will say this -- after tomorrow, I think we might as well just all agree that our presence in Iraq is pretty pointless, if not outright counterproductive.
Saddam is gone. The threat(?) to America is gone. There is a nominally democratic regime in power.
No peace, but that's not going to happen for a long, long, long time. And I think that there's a case that we're making things worse by being there, because we're dividing the Iraqi people and perpetuating the impression of imperialist agression.
To the extent our presence is a net negative, then I suppose it's a no-win scenario, and by extension we've lost. Again, I wouldn't say it's over till it's over.
At any rate, I think we may be well advised to cut our losses, declare victory, and bring the troops home now.
Posted by: Jim D | January 30, 2005 06:34 AM