Train said:
"Justifiable war" is an oxymoron
Anyone who believes in "preemptive war" has zero credibility and zero right to refer to themselves as rational. I'm all for addressing the reality on the ground in Iraq but that reality cannot be filtered through the twin lenses of American hubris and self-righteousness. It needs to be filtered through the lenses of humility and contrition. We broke it and we can't fix it alone. At least not continuing to intervene militarily other than as part of an international peacekeeping and anti-terrorism force.
Only in conjunction with the broader international community, which includes Iran playing a meaningful role.. Do we even stand a chance of contributing something meaningful to Iraq's reconstruction?.
We lost our moral legitimacy, which is key, when we went it alone.
We bombed it to rubble and then didn't have a plan to put people to work rebuilding it (not that we should have bombed it to dust in the first place). We certainly haven't done a good job preventing ethnic cleansing or assisting refugees and their destination nations. In fact there is ample evidence that we've done nothing to help them in pursuit of political gain. The reality is our ME and worldwide foreign policy needs a complete and fundamental overhaul and reorientation.
Superpower my ass. We don't seem so powerful now, do we. Bleeding lives and money in pursuit of a dying resource into perpetuity if we stay on this path. The power to destroy isn't half as meaningful as the power to peacefully build bridges and adapt quickly to changing circumstances.
Some never seem capable of learning the very simple lesson that most people will never accept an occupying force on their soil any more than Americans would on theirs.
For their decisions to have been bad we must first lose....
Amateur gamblers sitting at the table and down a thousand dollars instinctively feel that the money is not lost until they walk away from the table. Casinos around the world make a fortune on this mentality. An experienced professional gambler knows otherwise. When you are down a grand you are down a grand. It is already lost money and the only decision to be made is how much more are you are willing to risk.
Inexperienced investors will not feel like they have lost money on a stock that has lost value until they sell it. Experienced investors know that the money is lost and the real question to ask is ?If I didn?t already own the stock would I buy it??
It is this emotion that the pro Iraq war establishment banks on to hide their incompetence and protect their reputations. They do not want us to feel that anything has been lost until we decide to walk away from the table. In this way their decisions were not bad because we have not yet lost and they are set up to label the persons who have the courage to get us out of this occupation as the losers deserving of our scorn.
Unfortunately we are not talking about poker chips and stock investments here. Our loss is measured in human lives, a disintegrating Constitution and a unstable economy. We endure this endless loss just to protect the legacy of a corrupt administration and its merry band of enablers.
What we need now is new leadership that can make courageous decisions. What we don?t need are the cowards we have now who are too terrified to admit their mistakes and walk away from the table while we still have an Army & state treasure intact.