If Iraq isn’t in a civil war, what kind of a war is it in?
The president denied the opportunity this week to recognize the war in Iraq as a civil war, instead blaming Al Qaeda for the latest explosion of violence that has killed more than 200 people since Thanksgiving Day.
While most non-straw brained people would be able to see the positive correlation between the definition of civil war – a war between political factions or regions within the same country – and the unending violence between the Shiites and Sunnis of Iraq, President Bush continues living in his own alternative reality, where apparently the streets of Baghdad are flowered with rose petals instead of bullets and sunshine and rainbows are bursting through all those dark clouds of despair in the hearts of the Iraqi people.
To think it was nearly two years ago when Bush, alongside Gen. George Casey (then commander of coalition forces in Iraq) and all the other war groupies, actually told the American people the job was finished and we were on our way out is sickening.
To quote the president from March 2005 – “I’m pleased to announce that the Department of Defense and I have formulated a plan for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. We’ll just go through Iran … It’s only a hop, skip and a jump to the east.”
Casey had something to say as well: “The fact is, we’ve accomplished our goals in Iraq. Now it’s time to bring our men and women home – via Iran.”
How unfunny these statements seem now we’ve accomplished hardly anything (if anything at all) and we won’t be hopping, skipping and jumping anything through Iran, let alone our armed forces.
But I’m not just blaming these liars for their grave misrepresentation of Iraq then and the dire straights we are in now.
No, I don’t believe this is the time to stand around and point fingers, but if I were going to do it, I would plead the assistance of many hands.
Instead of calling “sinner” at all the president’s men, we should be calling for an answer to drown out the silence screaming from behind closed doors in Washington where our freshly elected representatives sit and chat.
The withdrawal strategy is indeed worthy of copious consideration before a final blueprint is drawn up, but that doesn’t mean we need to waste as much time and as many lives in figuring out how to get out of the mess as we have spent getting into it.
Even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to be doing as much as our government is to formulate a strategy to end the continued bloodshed within Iraq.
When Ahmadinejad met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani this week to encourage the expulsion of terrorists and offer his continued support to the war-torn nation, it might have just been talk. But what are we doing?
When you can start to see the good someone like Ahmadinejad, you know things are getting bad.
Simply put, the American government needs to do something in Iraq – and that something needs to be something other than sending American youth to drive around in tanks and get shot at or blown up in the crossfire of a civil war.
A plan to fulfill the best interests of the American troops and the Iraqi people is long past due.
Worst-case scenario, we might have to adjust the timeline we set for withdrawal and progress of the Iraqi people taking control, but what we’re doing now – sitting on the very bloody sidelines waiting for someone else to make the play – is too costly, both in lives and dollars.
Whether the president wants to recognize the civil war that is in front of his face or not, our duty and the duty of our representatives is to make sure we get as many of our people left in Iraq as possible home safely and ensure we don’t leave the Iraqi people to clean up our mess on their own.