Don't Ask Questions For If You Do You're Unpatriotic

From www.Topplebush.com

Frankly I have no clue what exact reason applies for our going into Iraq, and I'm not particularly interested in toppling anybody much less the president of the U.S., but the current occupant of the White House and his administration Doberman pinchers are really, really getting on my nerves with questioning anyone's patriotism or support for those currently in Iraq.

First, questioning why we're in Iraq or how we got there does NOT undermine the troops or our support for them. The men and women in uniform do NOT make policy, they get out there, at the risk of life and limb, and do what they're told and they pray or otherwise hope that what they're told to do is right for the country. I want those people out there to have the best equipment, the best support, the best of every damn thing possible to get them home alive and in one whole piece. That's not to say that I have to agree with why they're where they're at, and if I don't then it's incumbent upon me to make my case for why they shouldn't be there and to try and do something about it. Now what that something is does NOT entail cutting support for those people in the field, not one iota of anything they should need should ever be denied them. But Bush would have you think that by questioning him and his administration's getting us into this adventure that somehow we're trying to put out people in Iraq out to dry - no way.

Bush's getting up there and waiving the flag and trying to make the case that we're somehow cutting off the legs of our men and women in Iraq is so below the belt and such a total fallacy as to make my gut clinch thinking about anyone who'd stoop to using that rationale to deflect criticism. He used our men and women in uniform to get us into this, and as the commander-in-chief that's his job and his call (though it'd be nice if Congress were a bit more involved in the process as the Constitution expects them to be), but now he's using them as a dung-shield to hide behind as he and his minions take heat for what's turning out to be seen and understood more and more as a questionable engagement of our military and this country's resources; G.W. Bush should be ashamed of himself.

Over 2,000 Americans are killed, many more thousands are injured, God only knows how many innocent Iraqis are killed and injured, this country has invested over $200 billion in an effort that was sold to us by Wolfowitz when he was at the Pentagon as one that would rapidly pay for itself, and we SHOULDN'T be asking why this has turned into the mess it's become? What planet is this guy from? Actually it's not what planet, no, no, no, it's a calculated effort on his part to put the questioners into the category of being disloyal, unworthy of the efforts of our men and women in uniform, and to use those men and women in uniform to hide behind. And then he stands there and says the democrats are hypocrites for taking up the charge of there being a problem. I don't doubt that many of them are, the ones who at least voted with the thought in their head that this president at that time had too much political capital to go against, so in effect they abrogated a critical evaluation or reasoned rationale for engaging this nation in Iraq. But many were also giving the benefit of the doubt to a president of a country that in some odd fashion that still doesn't quite seem real was at war. That's not an excuse, but it's at least something I can understand and appreciate, and frankly there are republicans who are also now questioning how we got into this mess, but of course Bush is doing what he can to shut them up as well.

Our adventure in Iraq was poorly planned, poorly executed (not because of the military but because of what the planners didn't tell them to do), and will very likely result in our being left with not a single Iraq but three countries, one run individually by the Kurds, the Shi'a and the Sunnis, and regardless of what results will likely hardly serve as much of an exemplar of democracy as anyone comes to understands what it should be. By virtue of how poorly we've managed this war we've lost stature with the world at large and generated no small measure of enmity from the people in this region of the world that's so ostensibly important to us that we actually preemptively invaded a country there. After you add all this up somehow Bush is able to stand there with a straight and indignant face and say we shouldn't be questioning any of this, or in effect re-writing history. Heck, there's nothing to re-write, all he's expected to explain is why we have the history written as it now is and why it's coming in at such an egregious cost.

I had many reasons to dislike Bush before his latest attempt at deflection, God knows I didn't vote for him. But now he's taken an avid dislike and pushed it over into disdain and an uncomfortable lack of respect for the man who's supposed to be representing me, mine, and our collective country.