Cake isn't the only childish enjoyment for Bush and McCain
In the current Presidential race, there has been a focus shift in the past few weeks away from the struggling economy and back to the war in Iraq. Senator Obama recently published an op-ed in the New York Times simply titled “My Plan For Iraq,” in which he outlined that same topic. Senator McCain also submitted an article, but because his “Victory in Iraq” piece did not even manage to define what victory in Iraq was, the New York Times chose not to run it.
What would be victory in Iraq? Senator John McCain has stated several times that we, the United States, are “winning” in Iraq. He also went on to say that he would “rather lose a political campaign than lose a war” and therefore that Senator Obama “would rather lose a war than a political campaign.” This of course contradicts common sense for all those who managed to at least finish Obama’s short NYT article, not to mention it’s nothing but low-ball attack drawn out of nothing.
There is also a growing idea that we need to “win” in Iraq, as opposed to lose. It’s based on the mindless patriotism of pride for pride’s sake, and it is costing us tens of billions of dollars every month and more importantly, the lives of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. This mindset is illustrated clearly in this brief video:
The inherent problem is that people are trying to use a slogan to justify an unjustifiable war. We know the slogans; These colors don’t run and Stay the course. We went in initially because someone in the Bush administration fabricated evidence, we supported it because we were all angry over 9/11, but we have all recognized by now that we were wrong. We should not have gone, and now over 4500 US troops have died to support Bush and McCain’s fictional cause of “winning” in Iraq.
From what I have been able to determine, President Bush and John McCain both have a similar definition of winning: not leaving. If we leave, according to them, it’s because we weren’t able to kill enough things. Or maybe they just don’t want to leave all that oil behind. Regardless, it is the middle school mentality that not fighting whenever you are confronted somehow makes you a coward or less of a man. It is juvenile and wrong, but that is really why they cannot leave. They can’t lose a fight because their manhood is insecure.
So when you hear someone say that the surge is working, ask them what the goal of the surge was. Do they know? Do you? When someone says we are winning in Iraq, ask them how such a thing is possible. Ask yourself this: if in two years the troops are home and Iraq is somewhat stable, and the costs were a worldwide increase in terrorism, 5000 US soldiers dead, 200,000 innocent Iraqi civilians dead and over 1.4 trillion dollars spent funding the war, will we celebrate our victory?
Is that a war we can win?
