Posted by
Tonewah on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 4:15:00 PM
I am NOT a war protester. If my country is at war, I support our Soldiers, Airmen, Marines and Sailors FULLY. HOWEVER, I do NOT support politicians who would risk the lives of those brave men without a real threat to our country, or to 'save face'. I despised Bill Clinton for it back in the '90s when he sent our military into the Balkans as a diversion for his nefarious affairs. Why should I blindly support Bush, now? I just won't do it.
First of all, back in 2003, when we first went into Iraq, our President, MY President, the one I voted for in 2000, George W. Bush, told us there were weapons of mass destruction and that Al Qaida was being trained to use them against us with the full knowledge of Saddam Hussein. We were shown pictures of training camps, and weapons caches. I believed him. He wouldn't make that up just to start a war. After all, he was the man who said we would no longer 'police the world'. Iraq had horrendous weapons they intended to use against us. We had to stop them.
Meanwhile, a small doctor from Texas screamed in opposition from the House floor. We laughed him to scorn, but he would not shut up. He said there were no weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq was no threat to American national security. He advised that we should keep our troops here to secure our borders to protect us from terrorism. At least "declare war," Dr. Paul said. We didn't listen. He proposed sensible, Constitutional ways of bringing terrorists to justice. We disregarded them.
We invaded Iraq. We hit the targets dead-on, because our military is the best trained, best equipped fighting force in the world. But when the 'shock and awe' was over, we found no sizable amounts of WMD. If there had ever been WMD, our intelligence failed in that we didn't find them before they were moved out of the country. If WMD were never there to begin with, someone is a LIAR. Either way, Saddam is overthrown... Mission Accomplished: Iraqi threat eliminated. Right?
Suddenly, the emphasis shifted. We were now 'liberators'. That's why we stayed. But 'insurgents' were determined to mess that all up for us, and Iraq. Bush told us we needed to stay longer to clear out the 'insurgents'. That's when the bodies started piling up.
Now, we're 'Nation Building'... more bodies. What happened to 'Mission Accomplished'?
Nobody really likes war in the long run. Seeing people dying will wear down the support of the most popular causes. This I understand. It is NOT, however, the reason I am opposed to staying in Iraq. If this was a true war on terrorism, I'd be behind the 'war' 100%. But it's not. It's a time consuming, soldier killing, nation building exercise, something George W. Bush promised he would not do.*
"We broke it, we bought it." Gov. Mike Huckabee so quaintly put it. We 'broke' Iraq, now we're supposed to 'buy' it, whatever that means. Firstly, we didn't 'break' anything. Saddam Hussein broke it. If you want to get down to the nitty-gritty, the Iraqi people broke it by not rising up against a brutal dictator on their own. They never asked for our help to overthrow him in the first place. It's like when we went into Somalia to try to help the starving people that were being oppressed by greedy warlords. What did they do? They shot down our helicopters and killed our men, doing unspeakable things that anger me, even now. I know there are good people in Iraq, but, for the most part, they don't DESERVE our help. Let 'em make their own country. We did it.
* "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world and nation building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road, and I'm going to prevent that." "...we're going to have kind of a nation building core from America? Absolutely not. Our military is meant to fight and win war. That's what it's meant to do. And when it gets overextended, morale drops." "I don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into another country and say, 'We do it this way, and so should you.'" "The exit strategy needs to be well defined." “I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building.”
- George W. Bush, October 2000, Presidential Debate