The Idiot

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Cut this guy out of office and run someone who isn't a moron.

Gordon

on June 19, 2006

I blogged about this already, but it bears repeating.

The Iraq War is over. We won. It happened a few years ago.

What is going on right now is an occupation. They're still calling it a war because it's easy to convince the gullible that withdrawing from a war is "cutting and running" and that in doing so we'd either be admitting to losing or tieing the war.

The people of the United States don't like ties and they loathe losing. (This is the main reason they don't like soccer, by the way. Too many ties.)

But if you call the Iraq situation an occupation, then you have to admit that we are occupiers. The people of the United States are mostly uncomfortable with the idea of our soldiers acting as the occupiers of a sovreign nation. We are, allegedly, a democracy, and we are, allegedly, not an empire.

The idea that we're losing soldiers because we're occupying a country is just not as appealing as the idea that we're fighting the war.

Maybe you don't believe the war is over. If you're right then explain what country we're fighting. It's not Iraq because they have a government and we're always being told that we're doing all of this for the Iraqis.

Ah, you say, It's a war against terror.

Why did you say that?

A war on terror? or terrorism? First of all, that's just nuts. You can't fight a tactic, you can only fight an organization. Terrorism has been around for millenia, and terrorism will be around as long as we are unfortunately.

A war on Al Queda? Well, why is Al Queda in Iraq? Because our troops are there. So in theory we could pull out the troops and Al Queda wouldn't be killing people any more, right? Anyway, Al Queda accounts for much fewer people than the "insurgents".

So what about these "insurgents?" Well, many military analysts think that a U.S. troop withdrawal would decrease the amount of insurgent attacks AND cause the Iraqi people to lose sympathy for them. After all, if the insurgents kept attacking Iraqis after the U.S. was gone, then the divide between Iraqi and enemy becomes a lot more obvious.

Sorry, the war ended when we took over the government. Or, if you must, once we pulled Saddam out of his spider-hole.

What we have now is an endless police action that is escalating as our soldiers act as cops and that is a role that they can't do forever. Mistakes will - and have - been made as a result of this.

So, admit it's an occupation and admit that a tactical withdrawal of our troops is the only way Iraq will ever be a truly "free" nation.

___

Of course, the Republicans will have none of that. They refuse to even entertain the notion that the war will ever end. Short of complete victory - that is, that Iraq becomes completely free, completely safe and completely democratic - they won't even talk about bringing the soldiers home.

At a cost of $5 billion a month, we might want to talk about that some more, don't you think?

You do if you're not an idiot.