The Questionable Authority makes A sadly necessary introduction:
Mr. President, meet the Constitution. Constitution, I’d like to introduce you to President George W. Bush. It’s been a long six years since Mr. Bush took office, and it’s high time the two of you got to know each other…
wherein he relates the time his wife has been in a combat zone, and what it means to him.
It is likely that as the president predicts, if the US pulls out of Iraq, there will be a disaster. But let there be no illusions about the probability of a better outcome if we stay. If only we could consider that equation before we pull the trigger on the next invasion. We are currently in an almost irredeemable situation. No amount of tough talk will make it better – that’s what got us there in the first place. High time we started being suspicious of our own chest-thumping tendencies. Past time, actually.
I could not agree with you more.
Yes, but if George pulls out, then he made a mistake and would have to apologize. And politicians are born with a chromosome that literally makes it impossible to do that… well at least I think!
And yet, tomorrow will still come.
Not every outcome in my life is to my advantage, and yet, I still survive (for a while).
Strange.
I lost a lot of my faith in people when Bush was re-elected. I used to console myself when my side would loose an election with the thought the majority might be right after all. But that time around, I couldn’t really believe it.
the insinuation is that Bush went to war illegally and against the constitution. Simply not so..I have called for the government to either go all out and win or pull up our pants and come home. But making claims that the war is illegal doesn’t make it illegal. The facts are congress voted for the war..and now they claim they are against it but don’t have the guts to stop it and could only get votes for a timetable for a pull out by adding so much pork to the bills that it is greasy with bacon fat.
Bush is not one of my heroes. But I would still vote for him over Gore or Kerry either one even though I would have to hold my nose when I did and probably gag. Hopefully there will be a better choice than what we have been offered in the past..but I have my doubts.
Congress was just as wrong giving him war powers as he was accepting them. Not sure wrong=illegal, that’s a question for brighter minds than mine. But it was still wrong.
I’d be interested to know what “going all out and winning” this war would mean. Situation’s a lot more complicated than Europe in WWII. Might not be possible to win this war with guns.
But as they say, if every tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Not really useful when what you really need is a soldering iron or a pair of tweezers. I have a hunch as to what’s in Bush’s toolbox.
I think that’s an astute observation, DOF. Bush has shirked just about every other tool of presidents to rely on dictate and force.
I think we could win in Iraq if we put another 100,000 to 200,000 troops into it, but I doubt that’s practical.
No amount of troops will ever win in Iraq. It’s not a physical battle, but one that has to be won by other means. Sending in more troops means that more troops will die.
And fuck Bush! Why anyone would vote for him is beyond me. Voting for Bush is a vote against the constitution and everything our founding fathers stood for.
There is a reason a vast majority of historians say Bush is the absolute worst president ever…
if the US pulls out of Iraq, there will be a disaster
Well, a disaster has already occurred. Thousands of innocent civilians killed, the vacuum that allowed al Qaeda to establish itself in Iraq, and overall the world is less safe from terrorism.
But making claims that the war is illegal doesn’t make it illegal.
When the President of the United States and his administration LIE to “fix the facts” around an objective (i.e., they were determined to go to war against Saddam Hussein no mater what), then we have illegal, impeachable behaviour. You can dance on the head of your “Congressional resolution pin” all you want, Guy, but this whole thing is not only illegal but obviously immoral, and I think you know that.
but don’t have the guts to stop it and could only get votes by adding so much pork
Oh please. First, name me ONE funding/authorization bill in the history of the US Congress that has NOT had pork. Second, a helluva lot of the “pork” is funding to TAKE BETTER CARE OF VETERANS after their multiple tours of duty in a disastrous war.
Third, the situation is that the troops ARE in Iraq, there IS a mess there, all created by W. So to get out, Congress has decided to impose milestones for the Iraqi government and people to meet, to “step up” in the parlance. In essence, Congress is offering Bush a REASONABLE strategy for conclusion, something which Bush and his amateur “leadership” team have clearly not had.
I have called for the government to either go all out and win or pull up our pants and come home
Reasonable, but unfortunately at this point in time it isn’t possible to do so, IMO. If it were, I would certainly not entrust that task to Bush. He has repeatedly proven he doesn’t have the intelligence to know HOW to do either.
It’s possible that 200,000 troops with nearly unlimited resources and an equally unlimited mandate (think post WW-II Japan) could secure the borders, root out the really bad actors, and establish a somewhat sympathetic puppet government there. If that’s how you define victory, yeah, it’s possible. Of course that’s what we had right up until two months before Saddam invaded Kuwait, because that’s when we stopped sending him money.
Also, the analogy to post WW-II Japan isn’t quite apt. They had one central authority that they followed religiously, and that authority surrendered to the Americans and told them to cooperate. Which they did.
As I said, a nearly irredeemable situation. ‘Spoze it will make us think twice before the next invasion?
Nothing is capable of making some neo-cons think twice. Dick Cheney, for instance, hasn’t learned a thing. I don’t even think it’s an exaggeration to say that, either.
The problem with puppet governments is that eventually, someone cuts the strings.
QA has had a number of follow-up posts to this one, most recently an open letter to his representatives in which he calls for any more war funding to be directly funded by a tax increase. I have proposed the same thing before, for a lot of reasons which QA expresses more fully than I did.