Will W meet Cindy Sheehan

[mburbank]

Okay, I've been away for a week.

Apportioner, I would have been pleased if her quest was more centered on accountability.

Kevin, I would have and did feel differently about folks that died in Afghanistan up until the moment we opted out of Torah Borah and focused instead on Iraq. Ms. Sheehan and I would have parted ways. This does not mean, however, that I would accept the administrations word or the quality of their intelligence in future cases of who harbored terrorists or to what degree. Afghanistan was a very rare case. I don't have to agree with Sheehan across the board to be glad she put a little of the human cost into the spotlight for a little while. I was very pleased that she equated her suffering with the suffering of arabs, AKA colateral damage.

As for the "Well, we never should have done it but now we have to finish the job" argument, there's an element of truth in int, BUT... it all depends on what you think the 'job' is, and wether it can ever be 'finished'. I think the War on Terrorism or Against Global Extremism, or whatever crap the whitehouse PR department is calling it this week can never be won, which is it's foremost value to people who cannot envision an America without a cold war style villian to define themselves against. Iraq is very likely to become an Islamist, Iran style state with us right there, let alone if we leave. Maybe we should stay so that when we change the next regime we won't have to drive so far. If the job can never be done we are committing ourselves to a permanent presence, which would certainly account for the type of bases we're building.

The operation analogy strikes me this way. As opposed to elective surgery, I think it was a violent crime perpetrated against a nasty thug, but it should be noted just about the weakest thug in the gang. Just because it turns out the person who commited the crime has medical training doesn't make them the ideal guy to stop the internal bleeding.

If I thought our presence was doing more good than bad in Iraq, I'd be all for staying, and even if we started the war for all the wrong reasons, I'd think soldiers were dieing for a reason. I don't. I think our presence is making things worse. I think we make it look on daily basis as if the most bizarre claims of I slamist seperatist fanatics are true. I think we take people who have a strong dislike for the US and create an environment in which they can bloom into full fledged suicidal loonies. I think the best thing we could do for Iraq (and it's not a real good deal) is leave.