Losing the Peace...
Get used to seeing this story. You'll be seeing it a lot.
And it will only continue to break your heart and make your stomach roil with anger.
The Bush administration's critics have said for months (long before the first platoon was sent anywhere near the Persian Gulf region) that we stood to face an increasingly hostile population who would see us as occupiers as much as liberators. That we would soon become the enemy. That our soldiers would be placed in harm's way between warring factions—at the mercy of hundreds, if not thousands, of newly minted guerrilla fighters.
The Future is now.
And, if the U.S. military could have major problems with Saddam's forces using guerrilla strategies while armored divisions were steamrolling across their country, it stands to reason that now, when we are standing still, we have little-to-no defense against individuals walking into a crowd of soldiers with munitions, or snipers sitting on hills or rooftops, or even aping your basic, Los Angeles drive-by. Every U.S. citizen in the entire Gulf region, in and out of uniform, is now a sitting duck. And soon may well become a dead duck.
We may not see sexy news accounts of battles here or there from which to take honor or glory. But the death toll will rise. The body bags will continue to come, in a very quiet, underreported drip, drip, drip. Until we wake up in a few months or years, horrified, to find that the numbers have reached hundreds, or thousands, of U.S. dead.
No matter what lies emerge from the Pentagon or White House, rest assured that the correct comparison today is not to post-war Japan or Germany; the correct comparison is to Russian-occupied Chesnya. With its steady stream of body bags airlifted home to questioning, disbelieving, grieving Russian parents. Airlifted home from a war that supposedly ended years ago.
The fact is that 42 American lives have been lost (to date) just since the president's preening, peacock strut around the deck of the U.S. carrier Abraham Lincoln off San Diego on May 1—showing off his "tuff stuff" to the world and claiming the war was over. This clearly shows that members of this administration either:
- Have no conception whatsoever of what they're doing—at great peril to American lives; or,
- Could care less how their actions impact the lives of Americans who don't happen to be them.
Add to this the additional fact that 181 Americans have lost their lives (to date) on such a grand adventure—a thrill ride, if you will— manufactured merely to whet the appetites of red-blooded Neo-cons and campaign contributors everywhere, and you have an administration whose hubris has cost it its very soul. With a scandal that has dragged down our American soul with it.
For these people who so pride themselves on their values and their morals, that stone must weigh mightily upon their necks for eternity.
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posted by Gotham 2:57 PM
