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I was disappointed in the speech after the hype here last night. It was, largely, a stock Democratic campaign speech, other than the jab at Chenney.
As long as Kerry has not position either he or we are comfortable with on Iraq, we are all going to publicly squirm and Rove will just keep putting salt on the wound until we implode.
He needs to be stronger on Iraq. The war, like that in which he fought a generation ago, was a terrible mistake. Perhaps well intentioned by some, but largely the result of failures of leadership to see the reality beyond their own beliefs.
We must not wait for 58,000 to die before we recognize this. We cannot remake the Middle East into the Midwest at bayonet point. If we try, we will have to divert every last penny into the military, and our nation will go the way of the Soviet Union: a broken economy lorded over by a small cabal of plutocrats who profited from our misgovernance.
Yes, George Bush is leading us down the wrong path hear at home--presiding over the first contraction of employment since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, while our leading export is our jobs and factories--but they are leading us into the very maw of Hell in the Middle East. Every great nation which has tried what Bush and Chenney seek in the Middle East has crept home with its tail between its legs, most famously and recently the Soviet Union. But Bush and Chenney need only ask the historically literate of our allies in Great Britian of the wisdom of our actions.
Iraq was a mistake. Saddam Hussein was the blood enemy of those who attacked us on 9-11, and a chastened and contained little tyrant at that. The first gulf war and sanctions broke the back of his regime, and he was no longer a real threat to anyone beyond his borders. Yes, given the arguments presented by respected leaders like Collin Powell, many in the Congress gave the President the authority to compell Saddam to submit to real inspections, and to lay the rest the threat of weapons of mass distruction.
And it was working. Under the very real threat of American action, the doors were reopened to inspectors, and proscribed weapons such as long range missles were being destroyed. But for Bush and Chenney, 9-11 and W-M-D were merely an excuse for a great adventure in national building and good old fashioned imperialism. They had a plan to remake the middle east into a happy collection of peaceful democracies by making a public example of one dictator, and establishing a large U.S. military presence in the middle of the region.
History has shown that this is a terrible mistake, for which we will pay a high price if we persist. Two hundred billion and one thousand lives is enough. It is clear the adventure is failing. We need a President who recognizes this, and who is committed to establishing a peaceful status quo that threatens neither the U.S. nor Israel, or any other ally of ours.
But it is clear, in the post Osama bin Laden world, that the United States cannot do this alone. We remain in the view of most south Asians the "evil imperialist" of the cartoonish propoganda from the era of Vietnam. If we do not learn from our own recent history, we doom the next generation to their own futile war in Asia. We must make change in the mideast and elsewhere a project of the entire free world, and not just a fansaty of a few eggheads at the Pentagon.
Knonwing what we know how about the trust worthiness of our President and his carefully crafted intelligence, we know that the invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake. What we need is new leadership that will recognize this fact, and use American ingenuity to make the most of a bad situation. We are in Iraq, and cannot just leave without a plan for stabilization of the region.
Bush has not plan. We must have a president who can see reality when it confronts him and who can act on it.
Note: Yes, this is starting to turn into a first-person statement, but I was once paid to write speeches. (And yes, there's some long, unbreathable lines in there, but hey, its a first draft....
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