Last night President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office about the end of major combat operations in Iraq.
He pointed to his campaign promise to bring Operation Iraqi Freedom to an end…and then he went into why we’ve still got 50,000 troops on the ground.
"Our combat mission is ending," he said, "but our commitment to Iraq's future is not."
President Obama spoke of our troops' service and specifically mentioned the need to repair our economy so that returning troops can get jobs.
He served up some kind words to President Bush…which triggered an automatic knee jerk from the freakishly tan and florid about the neck area House Minority Leader John Boehner, who fussed about Obama’s failure to praise Bush for the success of the troop surge.
President Obama spoke about the need for Iraqis to take the lead militarily and politically ‘cause America is gonna turn the page.
Pause…sip coffee…continue.
Now here’s the thing…the more than slightly disturbing but real as hell thing that keeps dancing a tap dance in my mind.
President Bush defined why we went to war in Iraq…to proactively prevent Iraq’s use of weapons of mass destruction against America.
There were supposed to be weapons of mass destruction stored at multiple locations in Iraq.
America went to war.
There were no weapons of mass destruction.
And now some people are trying to score political points over whether the troop surge (damn near a decade into this shit) worked and who gets credit…
…while other people, including the President, want to turn the page and move forward without a proper examination of the who, what, when and why behind this war.
Well, I call bullshit on both.
When you take a shit in the middle of the room and then smear that shit all over the floor and walls, you don’t get to take credit for putting together a kick ass clean up plan.
And we shouldn’t turn the page on a damn thing until we’ve read, understand and learn from what is written on that motherfucking page…cause this is the mind of major combat mission we should never indulge in again and history is littered with the stories of nations that failed to learn a damn thing from the fubar they created.
But obviously we need to talk about the important shit first...like the decorating changes in the Oval Office.
Blink.
5 comments:
Here! Here! Well said. After 9/11, America was hungry for revenge. President Bush was hungry to capitalize on the hunger. And what do we do? We ignore the fact that almost all of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia and attack Iraq based on a lie. But nine years later--can it really be?--Americans are now willing to let it all dissolve away, without anyone being held accountable. Sigh.
And about that cleanup plan ...
You definitely wouldn't get credit just for the plan, only perhaps once you had really cleaned everything all nice like it was, and repainted the walls and sanded and refinished the ruined floor. And we ain't never gonna do that.
Obama proves once again that he is the master of defusing political bombs. He loses nothing in this exchange. The damage is done and we all know the truth. Bush and the other losers have been exposed. Obama simply chose not to pour salt in the wounds. By not doing that he defused the ticking time bomb that is the crazy GOP. They can not touch this man. He is too smart, he is teflon. He plays the game differently and I find that interesting. I don't always agree with him but I understand where he is coming from. He has brought change and a different way of dealing with one's foes.
This whole affair is disgusting. On all sides. And by that, I mean Obama supporters have to stop talking around Obama's complicity in all this.
http://colorfulconservative.blogspot.com/2010/08/wear-scarlet-if-you-called-yourself.html
I call Kool-Aid on you, AngryBlackBitch, and on everyone, including me. I signed up. We all need to take up and stop arguing over Iraq and repeating the crap about WMDs. There's another war to discuss. And Obama ain't no cleaner than Bush.
Afghanistan is a wasteland.. no outside power has held on to it very long. We cannot, the Russians could not, the British could not, the Indian Mahrattas and Moghuls could not if we want to go back that far. And why? Because they're Afghans, who have an intensely parochial social structure based on cousin-marrying clans and tribes, the Muslim faith, and collateral sharing of family wealth. This makes state-level structures inefficient at best and notoriously fractured at worst. But even despite all that, powerful Reagan-era interests went in there, backed religious fundamentalists, and armed and trained them with OUR weapons. Prior to that, the Soviets had managed to accomplish a great deal of secularization (one of the cornerstones of Communism) and the women were all in relatively modern dress, not one in burqa or hijab.. then we went in there for the FIRST time, into No Man's land, and embroiled ourselves and fucked shit up, just like the world powers before us.
I've taken anthropology classes, and while I will squarely admit that the policies of the 1980s and 'Islamic Jihad' were and are responsible for the mess of today, I don't think that even under the best of circumstances, the Arab social structure is conducive to secular democracy, for the reasons I've mentioned. Even under the best of circumstances, the most to be hoped for would probably be fabulously wealthy 'Islamic Republics' like in Dubai or the UAE.
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