Today is the day. The fifth year of this war that we find ourselves in. Five years ago today, The Bushinator ordered American Aircraft to begin bombing strategic targets in Baghdad and all over Iraq in a prelude to the most efficient military action in history.
Then the rest of the war hapened, the war that we werenot told would happen, but which we knew probably would.
I am not going into any kind of political diatribe or useless rambling about the evils of the Bushies and the lies perpetrated upon the people of both the US and the world. Everyone knows that stuff, and repeatedly hammering it out into the blogosphere along with pedantic ranting about how we must change this now (despite the physical impossibility of such an action) is doing nothing but desensitizing us to the realities of the arguments surrouding this very divisive issue.
I will, however, put this out there:
To the troops: I am very proud of you and want to pass on my best wishes to you all. As a memebr of a military family and someone who is blown away by the sacrifices that you make to follow what you believe, my kudos to you are not countable and I deeply appreciate all that you do. I send you all the best of wishes today and thank you for your continued service in the face of all the crap that you have to face, both foreign and domestic. Please stay strong and come home safely.
To those who think that we should pull out of Iraq immediately: Please read your history books, and brush up on political theory. To rapidly pull the United States out of the quagmire that we not only created but must now fix would be a disaster of epic proportions. The rapid development of a power vacuum in the Middle east would destabilize the entire region, a region that is important to the economies of most of the world, and leave the entire region susceptible to the influences of peope who would do harm to and destabilize the entire world.. Not only that, but the failure of the United States to clean up it’s mess would devalue the young lives lost in this conflict. Please understand that there are far better and less damaging was for the US to pull out of Iraq, and that the continued calls for an immediate withdrawal are only going to incense those who think that we should stay in the area (and who are still in power in the government).
Now don’t get me wrong. I have been against this war from the very beginning. I am one of those who believes that the public was lied to from the beginning about Iraq and it’s danger (though I was not one of those who believed that Iraq had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11), and I believe, through research into RAND and some of the staffers who ahve been together since the Nixon administration, that the Bushies have been planing this since before he was elected.
That being said, I am not one of those who equates the wrongs of the governemtn with the troops. They are not connected, as the US military is a professional, volunteer force. Those men are doing their job, nothing more or less, and doing so regardless of their ideas about its leadership or the war that they are fighting.
Please don’t confuse the two, as doing so takes away from the sacrifices made and the lives both lost and broken by this war.
-Jeremy-
PS: Please make any coments on this post intelligent and researched, as well as specific to what I have written and leave out any overt political or reactionary bull. I don’t need to be flamed for my opinion and am not looking for an argument, nor does anyone else need to read inflammatory statements. Thank you.
