There is an interesting article in today's Erie Times News about the Erie County Republican Party selling signs reading "Support the troops: Win the war." While it is certainly everyone's right to express themselves, I am totally dumbfounded that the Republicans are lashing themselves to this albatross. Speaking from a partisan/Democrat perspective, I hope that they keep emphasizing the war through 2008. Thinking that there is some huge silent majority that thinks that the war in Iraq is a terrific thing is delusional thinking on the scale of Blanche Dubois.
Let's review: the original reason given was that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction that the United Nations inspectors weren't able to find. It was very strongly implied that unless we swooped in there, some sort of cataclysm was imminent. We sent our troops and spent money and haven't been able to find any significant WMD's, or confirmation that it was ever a serious threat. So, this is like making sure that no leprechauns were going to steal all of our gold from Fort Knox. It's not an achievable goal, because the problem wasn't real. (If the Iraqis had indeed possessed weapons of mass destruction, wouldn't the Republicans have been shouting that from the rooftops in 2004 and 2006?? If they could justify the original reason that we went to Iraq, wouldn't that be the first thing that Rove would have rolled out for Bush's re-election campaign.)
Then the administration claimed that we were there to free the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein's regime. Granted, he was a horrible person, but he is dead now.
So, what does "winning the war" actually mean? All that I hear are vague patriotically correct buzzwords that don't seem to have anything concrete that they can be attached to? If this region has been troubled for years, are we there until it turns into some kind of placid suburbia, which might mean effectively forever? Does this mean a week of no major violence in that region? A year? A decade? A century?
None of the hijackers on 9/11 were Iraqi. Most were Saudi. Osama is Saudi, and didn't particularly care for the secular government of Saddam Hussein. Just because they don't like us, does not mean that they are in cahoots with each other. Christian fundamentalists and Muslim fundamentalists are both pretty strongly antigay, but I don't believe for even a second that means that they are necessarily working together.
What about Osama? Does anyone remember him? Why are we spending time and money in Iraq and not finding him? What about all of the other trouble spots in the world? If our troops are tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, that means that they AREN'T available for Pakistan or wherever else. Spending money on Iraq means that we don't have those funds to feed our hungry, improve our educational system and improve our commerce. What are we getting for the money that we are spending? What justification do we have for the troops who are being killed or having their lives disrupted? (Call me crazy, but if our troops were home, they wouldn't be dying over there.)
What does "winning the war" mean? How are we supposed to measure success for some vague jingoistic phrase??
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