A Faith-based Exit

Standing last evening in an oddly unfamiliar Cabinet Room stripped of President Nixon’s mahogany table, George W. Bush, displaying his faith-based exit strategy, essentially told the American people that he still believes in a place called hope:

Our coalition enforced…one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history…We are rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization, not on the fringes of its influence, but at the heart of its power…We are helping the long suffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East…Our strategy in Iraq will require new resources.

No matter this glowing record of self-described faith-based success, the President will require his people to belt-tighten an additional $87 billion out of their own cash-strapped American pockets in furtherance of Iraqi healthcare, Iraqi infrastructure, the illusion of Iraqi democracy and, of course, endless global war.
The President quoted a letter from an officer in the 3rd ID:

He wrote about his pride in serving a just cause, and about the deep desire of Iraqis for liberty…”They are starved for freedom and opportunity."

That may be Mr. President, that may be, but take this as a letter from an old non-com serving “on the front lines of freedom” here in Kentucky.
There are plenty of your fellow citizens here in America, Mr. Bush, who are “starved for freedom and opportunity”.
America needs healthcare, a renewed infrastructure and protection from terror.
Leave the bubble of your security cocoon sometime Mr. President on your fundraising jaunts and take a walk past the blocks of boarded-up storefronts that comprise the central cores of America’s cities.
Speak, at some point in your presidency, before an assembly of real citizens and not just before hand-selected photo groupings of contributors or smiling untested troops and you yourself might sense the errors of your “strategy”.
Defending you and your advisors, Condolezza Rice said, of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, yesterday on CNN:

They got us to the place we are now.

This place where defeat isn’t an option and actions for some have no consequence is the sad place where we find ourselves.
I actually heard, this weekend, Republican Senators, in defense of the “strategy”, describe wounded soldiers as “bumps on the road”. Imagine that; a thousand armless and legless young people are diffused into mere bumps on the road.
The President had no words for the wounded in Sunday’s speech:

The heaviest burdens in our war on terror fall, as always, on the men and women of our Armed Forces…We are grateful for their skill and courage…we honor the sacrifice of their families. And we mourn every American who has died so bravely, so far from home.

The Bush administration’s decadent on the cheap strategy failed to secure Afghanistan and has, to date, failed to secure Iraq while further endangering our young troops lives.
No American can be happy with this present state of affairs.

Regarding Mr. Bush and the miserable failure of his “strategy”, I am reminded of the Cartoon Network’s slogan for the newly produced Duck Dodgers series:

If he’s our future, we’re history.

Photo: Tina Hager, The White House

- posted by Sean @ 12:25 PM