Abandon Ship

Well, here it is. My long awaited post on the war in Iraq. This is a complicated matter, but I'm going to try and keep it simple.

This isn't my thoughts on the morality or legality of our entry into the war, though I support both - this is about what we should do now. I think a protracted discussion about the merits of being there in the first place is not only irrelevant, but slows the bigger imperative - finding a solution.

If you believe the Democrats, and now even some Republicans, George W. Bush is soley responsible for the mess. No one but he and his administration thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And for that matter, he deliberately misled us. Our President is a liar. Bush lied - kids died.

Ahem. That is bullshit.

The RNC has a fabulous montage of Democrats ranting and raving pre-9/11 about the WMD's of Saddam and what we should do about it here.
Talk about vile.

There is also a superb article debunking the falsehood that Bush lied, from the relatively moderate Wall Street Journal here.

The facts are unmistakable. The Dems were clearly eager to go to war. While our President bears the ultimate responsibility for what he has done, almost our entire legislature was not only complicity - but enthusiastic about a liberation of Iraq. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton included.

And now that things have gotten tough, they want to turn and run. Yep, that's my parents generation alright.

The similarities between then and now are eerie in some ways, check this out.

Regardless of whether or not the war is justified, and I can respect the argument that it's not, we are bound to help the people of Iraq and ourselves by doing what is right. We cannot abandon them to the Islamo-fascists, as we abandoned the people of Vietnam to the communists - who proceeded to imprison, torture and slaughter millions of their own citizens after we left.

Nothing would create chaos and death faster in Iraq than a timetable for a withdrawal, except perhaps an immediate pull out, something that now a senior US lawmaker has called for. This would embolden the terrorists and create catastrophe for the people of Iraq.