100 Years? 50 Years? The Price We Are Paying
The war in Afghanistan is now in its seventh year. The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 have a name, al Qaida, and they came from Osama bin Laden's organization in Afghanistan. The Afghan government refused to turn over the terrorists and it made sense to go after this specific group for the specific action they had taken.
But Afghanistan was a winnable war that got put on the back burner so Bush and the neocons could give our nation a war we did not need. And now we don't quite have the resources to finish either war and we have a president and a Republican candidate who wish to turn both wars into political footballs instead of giving our nation a sensible exit strategy. John McCain and George W. Bush find it convenient to see terrorists everywhere. The term 'terrorist' is in danger of meaning whatever these two characters want it to mean.
John McCain has gone a step further by calling anybody who supposedly is a terrorist a member of al Qaida. It's gibberish of course (when McCain speaks of the 'League of Nations' and a '100 years of war,' we know he isn't the sharp man that he once was). The reality is that the neocons and right wing Republicans are still fighting the Vietnam War, the Cold War and, maybe for John McCain, the Korean War and World War II.
Soldiers are dying for the delusions of right wing Republicans. Soldiers are dying because many otherwise decent Americans have stopped paying attention to how often they have been lied to by George W. Bush and John McCain. The McCain/Bush wars are dragging our nation down. You can't spend $100 billion a year and keep letting our soldiers get killed because powerful people don't want to admit they made a horrible mistake.
Icasualties.org has been keeping track of the number of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan for some time now. Their statistics go back to the beginning of the war and those statistics are grim. Our soldiers are doing their best to serve honorably but they have been misled by the Bush Administration and many members of Congress.
Fifty-Two Americans died in Iraq last month. That's lower than the number killed in April of last year; in fact, the deaths for last month are half of what they were a year ago. But Bush's war in Iraq—or the occupation as some now call it—has been going on for over five years. Last month was better than most months since we invaded Iraq. But there are no good months for the families of those who have been killed. And there are no good months for the Iraqis whether they are pro-American, anti-American or just want everybody to go home and leave them be.
Click on icasualties.org and look at the numbers. The numbers are painful to look at but they are nothing compared to the loss of losing a son or a husband or a father. But look at the numbers. We have the full numbers for sixty-two months. Forty-one of those months have been worse or right at 52 deaths. Forty-one months is almost three and a half years. Twenty-one of the sixty-two months have had fewer fatalities than we had in April. Twenty-one months is almost two years. Almost. By the time a new president sits in the White House, we will have been in Iraq almost six years with no end in sight. Wars are not supposed to go on this long.
Call it a war. Call it an occupation. Call it the Bush empire or colony project. Five years and there are still no honest answers from the White House. And John McCain promises more of the same. We have problems at home and the politicians aren't paying attention. We have problems abroad but we are so tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're getting nowhere. Bush and McCain have talked of attacking Iran. They have both lied about the reasons. They both have tried to repeat the false talking points that led us into war in Iraq in the first place. They lied. The war in Iraq was not necessary. More war is not good for America.
We need to change course. The American people have a choice. It's up to the American people to start thinking about the future. It's time to turn our backs on the Republican way of doing business and rediscover who we are as a people and as a democracy. It's time to bring our soldiers home, retrain them for the difficult years ahead and resume our real role as leaders of the free world and a people who want to leave the world a better place for our children and grandchildren.
But Afghanistan was a winnable war that got put on the back burner so Bush and the neocons could give our nation a war we did not need. And now we don't quite have the resources to finish either war and we have a president and a Republican candidate who wish to turn both wars into political footballs instead of giving our nation a sensible exit strategy. John McCain and George W. Bush find it convenient to see terrorists everywhere. The term 'terrorist' is in danger of meaning whatever these two characters want it to mean.
John McCain has gone a step further by calling anybody who supposedly is a terrorist a member of al Qaida. It's gibberish of course (when McCain speaks of the 'League of Nations' and a '100 years of war,' we know he isn't the sharp man that he once was). The reality is that the neocons and right wing Republicans are still fighting the Vietnam War, the Cold War and, maybe for John McCain, the Korean War and World War II.
Soldiers are dying for the delusions of right wing Republicans. Soldiers are dying because many otherwise decent Americans have stopped paying attention to how often they have been lied to by George W. Bush and John McCain. The McCain/Bush wars are dragging our nation down. You can't spend $100 billion a year and keep letting our soldiers get killed because powerful people don't want to admit they made a horrible mistake.
Icasualties.org has been keeping track of the number of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan for some time now. Their statistics go back to the beginning of the war and those statistics are grim. Our soldiers are doing their best to serve honorably but they have been misled by the Bush Administration and many members of Congress.
Fifty-Two Americans died in Iraq last month. That's lower than the number killed in April of last year; in fact, the deaths for last month are half of what they were a year ago. But Bush's war in Iraq—or the occupation as some now call it—has been going on for over five years. Last month was better than most months since we invaded Iraq. But there are no good months for the families of those who have been killed. And there are no good months for the Iraqis whether they are pro-American, anti-American or just want everybody to go home and leave them be.
Click on icasualties.org and look at the numbers. The numbers are painful to look at but they are nothing compared to the loss of losing a son or a husband or a father. But look at the numbers. We have the full numbers for sixty-two months. Forty-one of those months have been worse or right at 52 deaths. Forty-one months is almost three and a half years. Twenty-one of the sixty-two months have had fewer fatalities than we had in April. Twenty-one months is almost two years. Almost. By the time a new president sits in the White House, we will have been in Iraq almost six years with no end in sight. Wars are not supposed to go on this long.
Call it a war. Call it an occupation. Call it the Bush empire or colony project. Five years and there are still no honest answers from the White House. And John McCain promises more of the same. We have problems at home and the politicians aren't paying attention. We have problems abroad but we are so tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're getting nowhere. Bush and McCain have talked of attacking Iran. They have both lied about the reasons. They both have tried to repeat the false talking points that led us into war in Iraq in the first place. They lied. The war in Iraq was not necessary. More war is not good for America.
We need to change course. The American people have a choice. It's up to the American people to start thinking about the future. It's time to turn our backs on the Republican way of doing business and rediscover who we are as a people and as a democracy. It's time to bring our soldiers home, retrain them for the difficult years ahead and resume our real role as leaders of the free world and a people who want to leave the world a better place for our children and grandchildren.
Labels: Bush, Iraq, John McCain
posted by Poechewe at 5:08 PM
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