The War In April 2006

I just had a long holiday weekend in Las Vegas so excuse me if I’m not too current on world news. Maybe you can answer a couple questions for me? What’s up with the Pope? Is he alive or dead? I haven’t seen Liz Taylor around lately. Is she still as big as Sasquatch or is she doing the Atkins again? It’s amazing how much you miss just by spending three nights gambling away the mortgage on your parents' home and two days stuffing yourself at the strip club buffet line. What’s that? We’re still fighting in Iraq?

You are fucking kidding me, right? We can’t still be over there getting blown up. Surely we have learned by now that the situation is hopeless and we should just cut and run. The only strategy that I have seen up to this point is for our soldiers to try and not get blown up by religious fanatics. We could pursue that strategy more effectively if we had all of our soldiers back here at home.

I thought the pro-war crowd said this wasn’t anything like Viet Nam? Maybe they are right. Maybe Iraq is worse than Viet Nam? I’ll be that the soldiers serving in Iraq wish that Iraq were more like Viet Nam. At least the guys who were in Nam could go out and get drunk, stoned, and laid. It is positively unhealthy for men the age of our soldiers not to be trying to get laid, drunk, and stoned.

The bottom line is that none of the predictions of the geniuses who dreamed up this war, and those who have supported it from the beginning, have turned out to be accurate. Just about everyone who opposed the war from the beginning said that we were headed for disaster. On the one hand you had the neo-cons saying that we would be welcomed as liberators. On the other you had those of us who thought that we were headed towards facilitating a civil war in Iraq and opening a wound that would bleed America for quite possibly a generation.

Once again I ask this question for those who support the war: What is your best-case scenario for Iraq? Democracy? Are you fucking kidding? Voting doesn’t equal democracy. Elections don’t equal security. Without security who cares who is in power?

Our war against terrorists should have been waged in secret. On the outside the United States should have turned the other cheek after 9/11. We should have flooded the Muslim world with goodwill and good deeds. We should have concentrated our efforts on solving the Palestinian homeland issue. We should have removed our troops from Saudi Arabia.

We have pursued the most bellicose foreign policy in U.S. history by an administration that is intimately involved in the petroleum industry. The oil industry and our complete lack of an energy strategy in this country have conspired to further empower the most unstable region on the globe.

Oil just went over $70 a barrel. Is that our strategy in Iraq? Because if that is our strategy it is working brilliantly. Unfortunately, I’m not in the oil business like the Bush family so I’m pretty much screwed by these rising fuel prices. Bush has done a great job as president if you look at the presidency as part of the Bush family business. If you are merely a lowly citizen you are fucked. If you are a citizen and a soldier you are totally fucked.