Iraq
Posted : March 12, 2007 at 11:35 pm [America/Los_Angeles]
For all that, the poll found that Republican voters remain largely loyal to Mr. Bush and his positions on the issues. Among Republicans, 75 percent approve of his job performance, and by overwhelming numbers they approve of his handling of foreign policy, the war in Iraq and the management of the economy.
- “G.O.P. Voters Voice Anxieties on Party’s Fate”
Now that my friend is a stunning number. 75% of registered Repulicans of this country agree with the performance of President George W. Bush. I repeat, 75% of registered Republicans approve of President Bush’s leadership. In my humble opinion, this right here tells me one of two things - Most Republicans are loyal to the point that they’re unwilling to put their country ahead of their ideology or they’re just utterly confused. No matter how you look at it, it’s not a good sign at all.
On a related note, I hear my friends on the right ridicule the Senators in the Congress (Democrats & Republicans) who’re not so jazzed about this Iraq war by saying - “Look how weak they are. They just say they support our troops. The fact is these guys can’t even come to a consensus on what they really want to do in Iraq. Atleast, the President and Vice President know what they’re doing. They’re willing to throw more money and resources behind what they truly stand for. Never mind the fact that their course of action has yielded average results at best.” And I am always reminded of what my dad used to tell me when I was young - “Look kid. Getting into a bad habit is fairly easy. However, getting out of one takes a lot of hard work and is just plain hard”.
Bottom line, there is a reason why it’s hard to come up with a consensus on what ought to be done in Iraq today. Taking a country to war on dubious grounds with no planning and strategy is easy. Extricating approx. 150,000 of our men and women out of Iraq while ensuring that there is some semblance of achievement in Iraq, that our allies in the region and around the world don’t read any weakness in this action, that the sacrifices of tens of thousands of Americans and our Coalition partners not to mention innocent Iraqis in these past four years do not all go in vain, that is a hard problem my friends. And it is made even harder when folks who got us into this mess to begin with and had been wrong on just about everything ever since (yes, I am talking to you Mr. Cheney) continue to use asinine words like “slow bleed” to characterize the efforts of the few who’re trying their darndest to make a bad situation from getting worse.
Here’s a more concise way of saying the same thing - “Getting a Nation into a mess is easy. Getting a Nation out of that mess is anything but.” So, stop the political cheap shots and bickering and let’s try to see if there’s indeed a way to solve this problem. In my humble opinion, throwing more innocent lives to this problem can perhaps buy us temporary peace in a messy civil war, it ain’t going to do much to “spread liberty around the world”. If you really want to spread Democracy around the world, take all the money that’s being currently funnelled into this war and fund a public/private Manhattan-style project to root out the source of all evil - our acute dependence on oil, which in turns fuels the crappy regimes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
- Anand
Category: US |
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