A popular World War I song proclaimed "And we won't be back till it's over over there." Well, its over over there and the people in power know it full well and yet they fail to act.
According to an article in the Navy Times dated 14 April 2008, two major admissions were made in April 2nd testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Gen (ret.) Barry McCaffery was reported as saying "our allies have abandoned us." He went on to say, "It is over" and that our Army is "starting to unravel."
Lt. Gen (ret.) William Odom, who headed the NSA under Reagan, conceded that:
The path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw.... The idea that the United States has the moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it.
The article went on to report that Odom saw Maliki's drawing in of our troops to help him "destroy his Shiite competitors" as a bad sign.
This is a political setback, not a political solution... We face a deteriorating political situation... The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order.
It doesn't take much reading between the lines to know that if they are reporting this to our military personnel, then people at the top of the Pentagon are sure it is an untenable situation in Iraq. Yet knowing this and knowing that our continued presence will shed American lives in a futile political exercise, the Pentagon fails to act.
Why? Because the top Brasss know that their futures, careers, financial and political lives depend on their complacency. In a callous disregard for the people under them, it is their futures that they care about; damn the casualties. Their shortsightedness is going to cost a lot of lives, but not theirs. In their collective wisdom and ignorance they have forgotten the lessons of World War II; "I was following orders" is not an acceptable excuse. It is not acceptable excuse for the continuance of an illegal "War of Aggression". It is not an acceptable excuse for their failure to act on behalf of their charges.
Cowards, that's what they are. People willing to put others on the line to face death and disability, yet unwilling to do the right thing and oppose their current masters and their arrogance and ignorance. When you are given an illegal command you are supposed to refuse the order and go up the chain of command until the problem is resolved.
They clearly are failing to follow the rules governing command structure. If their Commander in Chief tells them to preform an illegal act, they should go over his head to his commander, We the People.
Go public, your careers be damned and the Constitution you swore to protect and defend and the people you command be saved. Go public or be branded for the Cowards you are!
