Truth

Every now and then someone will say something so stupid and boneheaded, that it really pisses me off. Congratulations to a certain reader, who has become the latest to join the list. In response to the Doonesbury cartoon I posted yesterday, he left the following comment:

"Guess they have to put up more of them stone thingies in Washigton where the carv the names of fallen US soldiers.

I have to second solar in her opinion. Do you know that actually more civilians was killed bu US bombs in Afganistan than there was cevilians killed in the WTC attac? I wonder how many Iraqies have been killed so far."

First of all, is it really necessary for me to point out that the latest "stone thingie" in DC was built to honor the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died saving a certain continent's collective asses from the Germans? We didn't have to do that, you know. We could have just sat here on our side of the ocean minding our own business, inventing electricity, light bulbs, airplanes, cars, and toilet paper that doesn't have the consistency of sandpaper. Meanwhile the French, the Belgians, the Dutch, and everyone else in Europe could have sat on their side of the damn ocean learning to speak German. So for someone to make such an ignorant comment about the WWII Memorial goes beyond the pale.

Just because I am opposed to the war in Iraq and think that George "Dufus" Bush has royally f*cked up the United States's standing in the international community, don't assume for one minute that I am ashamed to be an American. This country has bailed out the rest of the world more than once, and very rarely do we get a word of thanks in response.

And don't attempt to make our actions in Afghanistan seem like a mistake. I don't particularly give a crap whether the civilian death count there is more or less than the number of people we lost on 9-11. This isn't a pissing contest in which we're somehow keeping score and get to go home when the magic number hits 3,000. The bottom line is that Afghanistan knowingly harbored the man who was responsible for those deaths. When they refused to give him up, we had no choice but to take the gloves off.

Yes, I think that it's terrible that innocent people die in a war. But you know what? A lot of innocent people were sitting at their desks on 9-11 drinking coffee and reading that day's "Dilbert" when a plane came flying their their offices. And in 1998 a lot of innocent people were just walking down the street in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi when truck bombs went off. And the carnage hasn't stopped since in the last two and a half years. The 200 innocent people commuting to work on those Spanish trains can attest to that, as can the almost 200 innocent people who died in the Bali nightclub bombing. The difference is that at least we try to avoid civilian deaths rather than deliberately targeting them.

Oh, and as far as the Afghan war is concerned, it was brilliantly executed. But now even that success is now being drawn into question because 1) the Taliban is reasserting itself and 2) we still don't have bin Laden.

Once it became apparent that we weren't going to find Osama in Afghanistan, we should have just given Musharaff $50 billion or so and told him to look the other way. Then we should have gone into western Pakistan and kicked some serious ass until someone eventually said enough is enough and decided to cough up bin Laden.

That brings me to the reason why I think Iraq has turned out to be such a mistake. First and foremost, the whole bloody affair has proven itself to be a costly diversion from the War on Terror. And anyone who argues otherwise is just plain ignorant. Iraq never had any terrorists--at least not until we went in there and got rid of Hussein. That's when it became like an amusement park when the ticket takers decide to go on strike! Terrorists began pouring across the borders from the left and from the right and from every other damn direction. And why? Because we didn't have enough troops on the ground to control the borders, much less the rest of the country. And why was that? Because Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bush, and Cheney got cocky after their apparent success in Afghanistan and decided to ignore the warnings of people like Colin Powell and Anthony Zinni who said 1) don't invade Iraq and 2) you're going to need 400,000 troops if you do.

We had Hussein well contained with the no-fly zones that have been in place since 1991. And enough international pressure--consistently applied across the board--could have forced Hussein to allow the UN inspectors to continue to do their jobs. Two years ago Bush had the credibility and stature to pull that off.

Some people have used the argument that Saddam would have just expelled the inspectors again. Well, while that's certainly possible, it's also unlikely. Hussein was shrewd enough to realize that Bush wasn't Clinton.

Bill may have been popular with the chicks, but he was also a pussy when it came to international relations. The man should have gone after bin Laden after the attacks on the African embassies--and later the USS Cole--but he didn't, further perpetuating the image of the United States as a paper tiger. That image of the US being too timid to strike back further contributed to the attacks of 9-11.

Which brings me back to my original point: Why the hell are we wasting our time, our resources, our money, and the lives of our troops in Iraq? Bush wants to transform something? Fine! Those assets and precious lives could have been much better used in transforming Afghanistan. Most importantly, we would have probably had bin Laden by now.

I was never particularly a fan of Michael Moore. And I thought his speech at the Oscars last year was a disgrace. But my opinion of him has recently changed a great deal. I heard an interview of him shortly after his film, Fahrenheit 911, won at Cannes. Someone asked what he would have done after 9-11. And Moore's reply? "I would have gone after the man who killed 3000 people."

Amen to that.