Crazed with righteous anger when we saw the towers come crashing down, and heard of thousands of lives lost, we allowed ourselves to be led astray. We eschewed and ignored the principles that have made us the great country we are. We fell into a rut of thinking we could trust an Administration to lord it over all of us, unchecked and unquestioned.
And we fell into the idea of pre-emptive wars as necessary for our well being.
Well, we've seen where that leads, haven't we? Thousands of war dead - soldier and civilian alike - and numerous reports and exposes later, we now know that the only argument for going into Iraq was to topple a murderous dictator. And if we wanted to do that, there were many other choices for humanitarian action, and much better ones to be had.
And there were much, much better ways to go forward in the War on Terror, too.
We should have been going full-steam after Al-Qaeda's quieter operations, and continued a full-strength mop-up of Afghanistan. We didn't, and it's going to bite us in the ass, one day. And we should have been putting undivided pressure on Iran, Syria and Iraq. But we didn't, and it's biting us in the ass, now.
So I am sorry - so very, very dearly sorry - for my part in this war.
Again, I wasn't the only useful idiot to be found. They're all on FOX News and other political talk show outlets, now - all trotting out crap arguments and apologias. And very few of them have had the honesty to admit that maybe, just maybe, this wasn't the best idea in the world.
All the rest are spinning in their fumes, or urging us on to the next war after this.
Maybe that's all that separates people, in the end: the willingness to admit they were wrong about something of severe consequence, and try to make amends as best they can.
Me, I can't bring the dead back to life. I can't rewind time and unwrite those things I said. I can't take those stupid, short-sighted columns back or negate them, or even ask for them to be removed.
No, they're my statements, and I have to abide by their presence in my history.
All I can do is say that I've learned my lesson, and will encourage others to learn from it as well. And that lesson is simple: no more preemptive wars. No more Iraqs. No Iran or Syria "while we're there, anyway" - not unless they actually DO SOMETHING THAT WARRANTS IT.
And "might do" or "could do" is not good enough: it has to actually happen and be traced back to them, unquestionably, the way 9/11 was traced back to Al-Qaeda and their Taliban "hosts."
Otherwise, we're going to be fighting Iraq after Iraq, and propping up most of the Middle East in the process. And that is not something I'm prepared to do, any more than I'm prepared to go along with the "more rubble, less trouble" philosophy some neo-cons want to advocate, now. I can't see either course as anything but a recipe for disaster.
And I have eaten more than my share in the last few years, courtesy of being such a useful idiot.
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