How much more can we give? This President has sent thousands of young people to their deaths in a war that wasn’t properly planned and executed. We have made mistake after mistake in Iraq. We still have no idea of where the end of this road will lead. We see carnage day after day on our television screens and on the internet. We are still hearing the same rhetoric from the administration and its side men such as John McCain that say we are no starting to ‘win” this war. Sorry McCain, but we have heard that too many times to believe it now. Go peddle your rhetoric to your conservative Republican base that wants and needs to believe in something, anything that will help to sooth the wounds that came when they realized that they were being played just like the rest of us.
There is no truth coming from this administration. Bush believes that he is going to pin this loss in the battlefield on the Democrats. Unless the rest of this country was drinking bad liquor and was in a four year blackout, he’s going to have a hard time convincing anyone that this needless war is anybody but George W. Bush’s fault. That the Democrats want to take away funding for this comedy of errors that Bush has foisted on our nation doesn’t mean that the Democrats aren’t patriotic, in fact it means just the opposite. They don’t want to throw away more lives and more money into a failed war and a failed diplomatic policy that the Bush Administration has been supporting. Those that still side with this President are the ones that can well be called unpatriotic. The operative word here, rather than unpatriotic, should be delusional, for the entire policies of this administration are delusional.
The basic tenant of American foreign policy has been “constructive engagement” with our foes. Somewhere along the way to the White house, Bush was never appraised of this or else he felt that he could put forth his foreign policy without it. The trouble with not using constructive engagement is that it becomes very difficult to negotiate with an adversary without dialogue. It’s just about impossible to win an argument with someone if you aren’t talking to them. Is Iran and Syria and North Korea supposed to learn what it is they should be doing or saying by watching CNN? Does this administration think that Syria or Iran should unilaterally make concessions to a nation that holds them in such low regard that it won’t even negotiate with them? Are the American people supposed to support these kinds of actions and condone this type of behavior?
The American people know the truth, and only the most rabid right-winger will fall for this new “spin” that the Democrats are responsible for us not winning in Iraq because they are demanding a pull-out date. Bush had better get used to some cold hard realities, because when they come around to bite him where he sits, he had better brace himself. The old adage “what goes around comes around” has never been proved in such an illuminating way. Bush had better be ready for people to question him about what the hell he has been doing. Too bad Nixon isn’t around to give him some pointers on dealing with a Congress that is sick and tired of a President.